AUDIOBOOK
About
David Sedaris's best stories and essays, spanning his remarkable career, as selected and read by the author himself. Featuring fresh and classic recordings, including a new essay and an interview exclusive to the audiobook.
For more than twenty-five years, David Sedaris has been carving out a unique literary space, virtually creating his own genre. A Sedaris story may seem confessional but is also highly attuned to the world outside. It opens our eyes to what is absurd and moving about our daily existence. And it is almost impossible to listen without laughing.
Now, for the first time collected in one volume, the author brings us his funniest and most memorable work. In these stories, Sedaris shops for rare taxidermy, hitchhikes with a lady quadriplegic, and spits a lozenge into a fellow traveler's lap. He drowns a mouse in a bucket, struggles to say "give it to me" in five languages, and hand-feeds a carnivorous bird.
But if all you expect to find in Sedaris's work is the deft and sharply observed comedy for which he became renowned, you may be surprised to discover that his words bring more warmth than mockery, more fellow feeling than derision. Nowhere is this clearer than in his writing about his loved ones. In these essays, Sedaris explores falling in love and staying together, recognizing his own aging not in the mirror but in the faces of his siblings, losing one parent and coming to terms, at long last, with the other.
Taken together, the performances in “The Best of Me” reveal the wonder and delight Sedaris takes in the surprises life brings him. No experience, he sees, is quite as he expected, it's often harder, more fraught, and certainly weirder, but sometimes it is also much richer and more wonderful.
“The Best of Me” spans a career spent watching and learning and laughing, quite often at himself, and invites listeners deep into the world of one of the most brilliant and original writers of our time.
For more than twenty-five years, David Sedaris has been carving out a unique literary space, virtually creating his own genre. A Sedaris story may seem confessional but is also highly attuned to the world outside. It opens our eyes to what is absurd and moving about our daily existence. And it is almost impossible to listen without laughing.
Now, for the first time collected in one volume, the author brings us his funniest and most memorable work. In these stories, Sedaris shops for rare taxidermy, hitchhikes with a lady quadriplegic, and spits a lozenge into a fellow traveler's lap. He drowns a mouse in a bucket, struggles to say "give it to me" in five languages, and hand-feeds a carnivorous bird.
But if all you expect to find in Sedaris's work is the deft and sharply observed comedy for which he became renowned, you may be surprised to discover that his words bring more warmth than mockery, more fellow feeling than derision. Nowhere is this clearer than in his writing about his loved ones. In these essays, Sedaris explores falling in love and staying together, recognizing his own aging not in the mirror but in the faces of his siblings, losing one parent and coming to terms, at long last, with the other.
Taken together, the performances in “The Best of Me” reveal the wonder and delight Sedaris takes in the surprises life brings him. No experience, he sees, is quite as he expected, it's often harder, more fraught, and certainly weirder, but sometimes it is also much richer and more wonderful.
“The Best of Me” spans a career spent watching and learning and laughing, quite often at himself, and invites listeners deep into the world of one of the most brilliant and original writers of our time.