Me Talk Pretty One Day
By David Sedaris
288 pages (Humorous Essay Collection Non-Fiction)

This book is a series of stories. Sedaris breaks it into part one and part deux. The first part involves his life growing up with his family and part of his life in New York. Part Duex involves his moving and living in France.

Sedaris is a humorous author. He draws the reader in with laughter, but makes valid and meaningful points about life. It is extremely easy to read. Each chapter is a story by itself. He starts with his speech teacher as a young man. David’s lisp lands him in Speech Therapy and his uncomfortable “relationship” with his teacher becomes a source of amusement. He spends a whole quarter with her and not until the last day does he know anything about her. Sedaris has an easy way of sliding from subject to subject and he juxtaposes seemly unrelated things. He delves into being one half of a gay couple and a great part of his book focuses on his short comings while trying to live in a small town in France.

I found the book to be entertaining and funny. Part of the book focuses on Sedaris and his father and it honestly made me feel uncomfortable as he revealed “weird” things about his dad. In fact it seemed like a part of the books humor was derived from finding faults in other people. This put me off a bit.

Me Talk Pretty One Day is considered by many to be one of the funniest books. I don’t fall into this category. It was funny at times and entertaining throughout, but also parts of it put me off. I imagine most people would find it worth a read, but I’m not going to say it’s the greatest thing out there.

4 Emotional: The whole book delves into the personal life of Sedaris and the reader gets to view life as if they were David.

2 Intellectual: I didn’t find it to be intellectually engaging, but of course that wasn’t the point. It was a memoir of sorts and it was more emotional.

2 Long Term: I think many would disagree on this. It is a very popular book and probably will be so for a while, but I feel there are better reads out there and eventually this will fade.

8 out of 13. Not Bad, Not Great.

Keep Turning Pages