my least favorite of the sedaris books.

I hate to admit this but I bought it because I thought the stories might be funny. I should have not been so foolish for David Sedaris, the editor, is both funny and heartbreakingly sad himself and so it is with the stories. I really liked his selections and cried at one or two or three, maybe four, possibly five. The stories are written by acknowledged masters as Flannery O'Connor, Joyce Carol Oates, Alice Munro and Amy Hempel. Additionally, he included some authors I had never read and some I never knew wrote short stories like Patricia Highsmith. I want to read more of Akhil Sharma and am especially eager to read more of Jean Thompson.

Not as good as his other books

Children Playing Before a Statue of Hercules by David Sedaris (Simon & Shuster 2005) (Fiction). These are selected short writings from other authors that touched David Sedaris when he read them. He liked the works enough to include them in this new book. My rating: 7/10, finished 2007.

Short stories that I generally enjoyed! They aren’t BY David Sedaris, but he curated the collection.

This was not what I expected. Of course, I didn't read the description of the book, which would explain why. I saw this listed under David Sedaris on Overdrive and thought it was more of his essays, but instead it is a collection of short stories compiled and edited by him. It was still good and entertaining, but in a different way than a collection of just Sedaris's writing would be.

Another anthology I couldn't make it through, I guess I just don't have the patience for them. I'd rather read stories by David Sedaris than read stories he picked out.

With David Sedaris as the editor, I was expecting more of the stories to be humorous, and I was surprised to find so many stories that were, frankly, depressing. That didn't prevent me from thoroughly enjoying the collection, though. I suppose it would be difficult to go wrong with that collection of authors. Very enjoyable.

Normally a fan, I disliked most of this collection.

The great thing about a collection of short stories is that you get a variety of styles and stories. If you don't like one, skip it. Some of the writing in this collection is wonderful, even if others weren't my cup of tea. But overall, I liked it a lot

I loved this book! Wonderful portraits of characters and their individual struggles in the world.

David Sedaris' collection of fave short stories