Naked (1997)

I was surprised by how much I enjoyed this book. This isn't a typical read for me; this selection was governed by my Book Club. I'm not used to fiction without at least a few elements of wizardry, dragons, or gratuitous sex and violence.

Naked is a collection of short autobiographical stories following a young man and his atypical experiences with his family, friends, and coworkers. While it may sound banal, the stories were over-the-top enough to be thoroughly entertaining but somehow did not strain credulity. Characters were vivid; I could HEAR the senile angry grandmother, the resentful clockmaker, the wise nudist. The narrator was especially genuine. David captured the thought process of a teenager perfectly: The martyr complex, the daydreaming, the insight, the boldness, and the terrible, terrible decision-making skills. He is not a perfect person, or even a great person, but he tries. I feel compelled to point out that the main character is gay. This plays, understandably, a huge part in his life stories, but is not the focus of the novel.

I struggled for a long time with the meaning of the text. While its a short story collection, it follows a timeline and there is some overlap between tales. However, it still lacks a goal, an arc. Reading fantasy, a genre defined by epic quests and comprised nearly entirely of allegory and metaphor, has trained me altogether wrongly to interpret this novel. Despite this, I was able to appreciate the themes on judging and evaluating people and found them refreshingly deep for a novel that is this humorous.

The novel breezed along, sporting both a short length and a light style befitting its facetious nature.

TL;DR: Surprisingly good and short enough its no big loss if you hate it. ( )

I registered a book at BookCrossing.com!
http://www.BookCrossing.com/journal/14219272

This is not a mystery. It's another collection of essays and stories by David Sedaris who is truly a delightful story teller. You may have heard his now famous recitation of his Santa Land Diary on NPR. They've played it every Christmas for years. He was an elf (and not too happy about it) at Macy's one year and tells hilarious tales about the experience. Naked includes a story about his experience at a nudist camp. It's a natural for Sedaris! ( )

All books have value, this one has an excellent dust cover, a certain strength, resilient, sharp, a perfect instrument to remove gristle from between your teeth....... ( )

Another collection of memoirs by David Sedaris, with a range of quality on display. Whether all the "true stories" are true is questionable but doesn't bother me as much as it apparently bothers others.

Highlights of "Naked" include visiting a nudist colony, working with a strange, legless man cutting pieces of stone into clocks shaped like the state of Oregon and selling them at fairs, his collection of tics and hitchhiking in the 1960s with a quadriplegic woman. ( )