this stuff is great.

love it...

I only listened to Holidays on Ice and really enjoyed his stories about being an elf in Macys. His fiction stories always seem so poor in contrast.

Very funny, interesting, and unique guy.

Very often he uses his real life, and it's fun and quirky, and his viewpoint is sensitive, break sometimes, and worth hearing.

I listened to the audio of this just before I went to bed. and I'd be lying there, laughing out loud!

The odd part of him: Last night, he started talking about touching stranger's heads, like it's the most normal thing in the world, and it got really creepy. Like, you're the one with OCD fella, not me; because the assumption is that you're relating to some of the stuff he writes, and suddenly it's like 'Woah!'

This is the ultimate way to experience David Sedaris! Unbelievable hilarity!

Overall, I love David Sedaris. I will say that there were some stories of his in the middle of the set that I didn't care for, so I fast forwarded past them. Then there were stories I just love, and they were as good as always!

This is wrong. Why do I love this SO MUCH? And I do! I listen to it over and over. It is my go to when I want to listen to something when my children are not around. So. Damn. Funny.

'My sisters, stuffed with sausages.......'
Who can resist someone who writes a sentence like that?
Having just suffered through Anthony Bourdains 'Medium Raw', my favorite story is Sedaris commenting on trying to get an ordinary meal in NYC that isn't 'tarted up' in the ultra hip terribly cool fashion of haute haute cuisine.
This is a LONG collection of Sedaris' monologues, him improving in time.

Lots of overlap, but did contain "Naked."

The funniest part is Amy Sedaris playing various roles, including their brother "The Rooster."

Uneven in approach and execution. Like Louis C.K. Sedaris shoots as much as for poignancy as comedy and probably hits as much as he misses. While never laugh out loud funny, some of the stories stand out as very humorous including those around his time as an elf in Macy's Santa's workshop and his halting attempts to learn French after moving there with his boyfriend. The Macy's stories play less for laughs and more for social commentary including some patron's asking to avoid Santas of African-American decent - an anecdote that has the power to surprise even those with a low expectation of racial tolerance among the general Manhattan populace. The effort to learn French from scratch at midlife allows for some refreshing devotion to sheer silliness particularly with Sedaris' attempts to get French medical attention. Among most of the rest of the books, the laughs come less frequently although a fake newsletter about homophobia is as good as anything by other, better, comedy writers.

Sedaris' writing tends to organize each chapter or vignette so that it lands on a poignant moment. The structure works well at times but the repetition of it, particularly when going across several of his books in a long string, can get predictable. The writing tends to have a sad sack Charlie Brown bent to it which when not played for laughs can get a little grating prompting the infrequent response of "buck up, cupcake."

In short, read Holidays on Ice and Me Talk Pretty One Day and skip the others.

I read the books first and thoroughly enjoyed them, but when you hear him read the stories it gives them a voice far exceeding anything I could have imagined (literally and figuratively). I recommend this if you have or have not read them.