David Sedaris -- Dress Your Family in Corduroy and Denim

This shall have to be tres vite, because I have many things to do before I leave for Paris in three hours. Which will probably be refreshing. The short entry part, not the leaving for Paris part. The leaving for Paris part will be kind of dirty and tiring and a hassle. Which reminds me that I shoud find a hotel for tonight.

Dad has been telling me to read this book for a couple months, and I found it at a store in Rennes for like, three euros, and figured hell. And it was totally worth it because it took me under 24 hours to read (under 24 normal hours, which include sleeping and eating and traveling and being on the phone, not 24 uber-hours like La Short Stuff with a new Harry Potter), and it's really funny.

I especially liked how self-aware Sedaris is about himself and his life; often that can get obnoxious (I find it continually obnoxious how oddly self aware I am of my own life, for example, and how completely stupid in other respects; but more than that, in books if the person is too self aware, and knows it, or not self aware enough, or not funny enough about it... it's really easy to mess up. Du Maurier's Rebecca being the Platonic form of that) but he does a good job being funny about it, and being sort of okay with his neuroses, not getting defensive. I liked that.

The order to the stories/essays was sort of weird, they weren't chronological and didn't seem to follow any particular pattern. But I really enjoyed the stories themselves. "Six to Eight Black Men" especially had me just cracking up.

Plus, it is totally awesome that this guy lives in Normandie. (I find living in Europe is bad for my inner fangirl. As if being an American in France were some sort of special condition, like being a member of the same fraternity or something, that entitles you to certain bonuses. I've been to LA a ton of times in my life, and while I might sometimes get bored and check out the drivers of other cars to see if any of them are drunk celebrities, but I've never wanted to go to Beverley Hills and camp out there hoping to spot one. Whereas here, in France, anytime I hear of a famous American out here I want to go swap crazy cultural stories. I found out Olivia de Havilland lives in Paris and I want to stalk her. I find out David Sedaris lives in Normandie and I want to invite myself over for tea at his house. It is so bad.) In that vein, now I really want to read his other book about learning French. I love reading about other people struggling with French, it makes me feel normal instead of bone stupid. I envy all the viewers-at-home who can read those kind of books and chuckle and titter comfortably, secure in the knowledge that they have never had to give up on pronouncing a word and perform a short exercise in the art of mime in order to find Q-Tips in a damn drugstore.

Back to the book. This is difficult, as I didn't really think about the essays in depth. So I don't have a ton to say about it. It's very funny, I enjoyed it, it's a quick read, I recommend it.

I liked the stories of his own adult life better than the stories of his family. I get very paranoid about writing or reading anything very personal about real people who are not famous. Famous people are fair game. But to Sedaris's credit, he talks about that, and the consequences it has for his family life, and I like that. I couldn't do it, and I liked the essays better that were about travelling, or movie reviews, or cleaning apartments in New York (which was an AWESOME story, by the way) and his boyfriend and stuff like that. But I certainly didn't have a problem reading the rest of it.