A Carnival of Snackery: Diaries: Volume Two (Language Acts and… (edició 2021)

Library Audiobook: So…David is still funny with a “get off my lawn” mentality. The book is laid out by year with vignettes differentiated by date, but not in date order. So you’re listening to something that happens in December & then you’re back to March. And listening is the way to go. David’s dry sense of humor comes across better when he narrates.

Tracey Ullman also narrates some passages, but to be honest, they just confused me. It was strange listening to her talk from David’s perspective with a British accent. Luckily, it doesn’t happen too often.

His tone is of a world weary child. Still affected by little things, but way over bigger things. His relationship with his father is discussed & is everything you think it would be after so many books. There’s hurt & arguments, but also a wanting to earn his father’s love. As his father gets older & the fights become fewer, you feel David’s pain & indignation over the elder Sedaris’ failure to feel remorse over how he’s treated his gay son.

There are many funny moments, often involved with book signings. David knows how to make a room love him. This was a fun book, a poignant book. Have a great time reading it! ( )

Sedaris' voice is perfect to me, literally and figuratively. This is a trite thing to say, but he just seems so NORMAL. Perhaps I just mean human. He doesn't hide the nasty side of his personality, and I love that. Actually, maybe I mean honest? In any case, he seems like he'd be fun to hang out with for a while, and then he'd be really fucking annoying. Like most of us. I loved this book.

Thank you to Libro.FM for the ALC! ( )

Sedaris is the Seinfeld of writing. He can write about pretty much nothing, and you still are amused and entertained. I had never read anything else by him, but had heard him on TV, thought he was pretty funny, and thought that his wry take on the world might be just right for this somewhat depressing time in our country (post-Covid, war in Ukraine). I was right - he's a nice escape.

Since I don't know him well - or at least I didn't until I read this book - one of my initial observations was that he travels ALL the time. His diary entries come from all corners of the globe. I learned that this is part of his work - to attend lectures and book signings - and that he uses his interactions with people he meets in his travels to feed more books. I also quickly understood that no topic is off limits - ribald jokes, raw language, etc. Sometimes it was a little blue for me, but I was always interested in the next thing he had to report on. I wondered how Hugh, his partner, and his father and siblings felt about him writing about them, but it seems he has an understanding with them. He is not a mean person. He just calls it as he sees it.

There were moments that were more serious, as he described his sister Tiffany's suicide, his father's dementia or the emergence of Donald Trump near the end of the book.

In the end I'm left with one question: What's the deal with all the litter in England? Sedaris won't be around forever to take care of it. ( )

Our meals {at the resort} are included, and though they give the illusion of bounty, each course is smaller than the one before. Last night started with a thin slice of pate followed by an araignee -- a crab that looks like a spider. It was large, but, unlike a lobster, with its weighty claws and tail, there was really no meat to be had -- a tablespoon maybe. … Then came a small lump of fish accompanied by a taste of ratatouille, a thimble of rice, three mushrooms, and a boiled potato the size of a molar.

SO many giggles and some out-loud laughs in these short, well-crafted diary entries (though some are long enough to have been essays in his collections).

Seinfeld did a similar collection of his bits recently ("Is This Anything?" to which I answered No) but this, the second volume of diary entries from Sedaris (or Sid Harris, as some people misinterpret) is very entertaining and sometimes poignant and insightful. The book-signing line after a Sedaris reading is hours long, and my god: the raunchy, funny, fascinating stories he gets and gives! This comment from some correspondence stays with me:

One {letter} was from a woman who wrote that when deaf people get their hearing, they’re always surprised that the sun makes no noise. They naturally assumed it would roar. ( )

I haven't laughed this much at a book since his first book, Naked. The inner dialogue from things like standing in line in airports is just viciously hilarious. ( )