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Overview

Notes From Your Bookseller

David Sedaris is a unique talent. He's funny, a great observer of human nature, slightly neurotic and an excellent writer. The last part is what really comes out in this compendium of awesomeness that showcases Sedaris' best work over the past 25 years. It's hard to believe he has been at it this long and the mere act of culling through all the great stuff and picking "the best" was a difficult one. It's a great and funny journey though, and an excellent book to pick up and put down when you need a good laugh.

“Genius… It is miraculous to read these pieces… You must read The Best of Me.” —Andrew Sean Greer, New York Times Book Review

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.

New York Times Book Review Editors’ Choice
A CNN and Christian Science Monitor Best Book of the Month​

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 at 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 TheBest 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.
 
Full of joy, generosity, and the incisive humor that has led David Sedaris to be called “the funniest man alive” (Time Out New York), 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.

The Best of Me AUDIOBOOK TRACK LISTING
Introduction (new recording)
 
From Barrel Fever 1994         
Glen’s Homophobia Newsletter Vol. 3, No. 2. 
 
From Holidays on Ice 1994      
Front Row Center with Thaddeus Bristol  (new recording)
Christmas Means Giving  (new recording)
 

From Naked 1997
the incomplete quad  (new recording)
 
From the New Yorker 
Girl Crazy  (new recording)
Card Wired  (new recording)
How to Spend the Budget Surplus  (new recording)
 
From Me Talk Pretty One Day 2000
You Can’t Kill the Rooster (new recording)
Me Talk Pretty One Day  (new recording)
Jesus Shaves  (new recording)
 
From the New Yorker
Dog Days    (new recording)

From Dress Your Family in Corduroy and Demin 2004           
Us and Them 
Let It Snow 
The Ship Shape 
The Girl Next Door 
Repeat After Me   
Six to Eight Black Men (live recording)
Possession 
Nuit of the Living Dead 
 
From When You Are Engulfed in Flames 2008                      
Solution to Saturday’s Puzzle  (live recording)
The Understudy
Town and Country    (live recording)
In the Waiting Room  (live recording)
 
From The New Yorker
Undecided
 
 From Squirrel Seeks Chipmunk 2010
The Cat and the Baboon    (live recording)
The Motherless Bear  (new recording)
The Faithful Setter  (new recording)
 
From Let’s Explore Diabetes with Owls 2013
Dentists Without Borders  (live recording)
Memory Laps 
Think Differenter   (new recording)
Loggerheads 
If I Ruled the World 
Easy, Tiger 
Laugh, Kookaburra  (live recording)
Just a Quick e-Mail
A Guy Walks into a Bar Car
Standing By  (live recording)
Understanding Understanding Owls 
 
From Calypso 2019                                          
Now We Are Five 
A House Divided 
The Perfect Fit 
Leviathan 
A Modest Proposal
Why Aren’t You Laughing? 
The Spirit World 
 
From The New Yorker:
Unbuttoned  (new recording)
 
Audio Exclusive
Interview with Paul Constant (new recording)

Product Details

ISBN-13: 9781549160752
Publisher: Hachette Audio
Publication date: 11/03/2020
Product dimensions: 5.30(w) x 5.70(h) x 1.60(d)

About the Author

About The Author
David Sedaris is the author of eleven previous books, including, most recently, The Best of Me, Calypso and Theft by Finding. He is a regular contributor to The New Yorker and BBC Radio 4. In 2019, he was inducted into the American Academy of Arts and Letters. He is the recipient of the Thurber Prize for American Humor, Jonathan Swift International Literature Prize for Satire and Humor, and the Terry Southern Prize for Humor.

Hometown:

London, England

Date of Birth:

December 26, 1956

Place of Birth:

Johnson City, New York

Education:

B.F.A., School of the Art Institute of Chicago, 1987

Table of Contents

Introduction 3

Glen's Homophobia Newsletter Vol. 3, No. 2 9

Front Row Center with Thaddeus Bristol 19

Christmas Means Giving 23

The Incomplete Quad 33

Girl Crazy 43

Card Wired 47

How to Spend the Budget Surplus 51

You Can't Kill the Rooster 55

Me Talk Pretty One Day 63

Jesus Shaves 69

Dog Days 75

Us and Them 79

Let It Snow 87

The Ship Shape 91

The Girl Next Door 101

Repeat After Me 115

Six to Eight Black Men 127

Possession 133

Nuit of the Living Dead 139

Solution to Saturday's Puzzle 149

The Understudy 157

Town and Country 169

In the Waiting Room 177

Undecided 185

The Cat and the Baboon 189

The Motherless Bear 193

The Faithful Setter 199

Dentists Without Borders 207

Memory Laps 213

Think Differenter 225

Loggerheads 229

If I Ruled the World 241

Easy, Tiger 245

Laugh, Kookaburra 253

Just a Quick E-mail 263

A Guy Walks into a Bar Car 267

Standing By 279

Understanding Understanding Owls 287

Now We Are Five 297

A House Divided 311

The Perfect Fit 323

Leviathan 333

A Modest Proposal 345

Why Aren't You Laughing? 353

The Spirit World 365

Unbuttoned 375

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