Book-It 'o13! Book #21
The Fifty Books Challenge, year four! (Years one, two, three, and four just in case you're curious.) This was a library request.
Title: Let's Explore Diabetes with Owls by David Sedaris
Details: Copyright 2013, Little, Brown and Company
Synopsis (By Way of Front Flap): "A guy walks into a bar car and...
From here the story could take many turns. A guy walks into a bar car and meets the love of his life. A guy walks into a bar car and finds no one else is there. When this guy is David Sedaris, the possibilities are endless, but the result is always the same: he will both delight you with twists of humor and intelligence and leave you deeply moved.
In Let's Explore Diabetes with Owls, Sedaris remembers his father's dinnertime attire (shirtsleeves and underpants), his first colonoscopy (remarkably pleasant), and the time he considered buying the skeleton of a murdered Pygmy.
The common thread? Sedaris masterfully turns each essay into a love story: how it feels to be in a relationship where one loves and is loved over many years, what it means to be part of a family, and how it's possible, t hrough all of life's absurdities, to grow to love oneself. With Let's Explore Diabetes with Owls, David Sedaris shows once again why his work has been called "hilarious, elegant, and surprisingly moving" (Washington Post).
"
Why I Wanted to Read It: I've long been a fan of David Sedaris's work and was excited that he had a new book out (and a real one, not just fiction like Squirrel Seeks Chipmunkalthough I didn't think it was that bad of a book, regardless of the critics).
How I Liked It: Sedaris caught a considerable amount of bad press for his last publication, probably the only of his works to be poorly received. While he's dabbled in fiction before, he's kept it to essays, generally interspersed within his personal essays. When Squirrel Seeks Chipmunk bombed, Sedaris (and his agent) knew his next book had better bring it.
Thankfully, Let's Explore Diabetes with Owls is the Sedaris (and the Sedaris family) we've all come to know. The book features fiction (in a note preceding the text, he mentions that he's met several teenagers who essentially recite short stories/essays as monologues competitively, and he included six essays that serve that purpose, nothing that "these stories should be self-evident" since they're the "pieces in which I am a woman, a father, and a sixteen-year-old girl with a fake British accent.") but even it is more in the vein of his older work.
What feels new is the fact this book is easily more political than any of Sedaris's previous work. Generally, Sedaris has avoided most politics (save for mentioning his siblings shame of his father's support of George W Bush via bumper stickers on his car and a tongue-in-cheek bit he did for NPR about living in France during the initial invasion of Iraq), but this book devotes three full chapters (two of them based on fictional characters, one a particularly gullible TEA Partier, the other a militant anti-gay gun nut who goes on a rampage after the 2011 New York state decision) and part of a fourth on politics, mainly Obama's reception overseas and at home (Sedaris is particularly blistering when he's shoved with TEA partiers while waiting in a customer service line at an airport).
Whatever familiar and unfamiliar territory Sedaris takes, there are some constants. At least one chapter comes off as filler (even by Sedaris's "slice of life" style, he isn't really able to glean much from an otherwise just irksome coffee encounter) and what I feel to be the problem that most plagued Squirrel Seeks Chipmunk occasionally turns up here: Sedaris occasionally has difficulty tying up a chapter, and it shows. While this is less of a problem in this format, in a book that's a mock on children's fables, it tends to sink the ship.
For the minute flaws, though, Let's Explore Diabetes with Owls is still easily one of his best, including a chapter that prompted laughs from me I haven't gotten since his iconic "SantaLand Diaries" (given the depth of that laughter that provoked, that's really saying something; and I get at least one good laugh at everything he's done).
So for the little bump in the road, he's back and better than ever.
Notable: The book lacks mention of any current shenanigans with his sister Amy (always a delightful part of his books), but she's the subject of the book's dedication.
Title: Let's Explore Diabetes with Owls by David Sedaris
Details: Copyright 2013, Little, Brown and Company
Synopsis (By Way of Front Flap): "A guy walks into a bar car and...
From here the story could take many turns. A guy walks into a bar car and meets the love of his life. A guy walks into a bar car and finds no one else is there. When this guy is David Sedaris, the possibilities are endless, but the result is always the same: he will both delight you with twists of humor and intelligence and leave you deeply moved.
In Let's Explore Diabetes with Owls, Sedaris remembers his father's dinnertime attire (shirtsleeves and underpants), his first colonoscopy (remarkably pleasant), and the time he considered buying the skeleton of a murdered Pygmy.
The common thread? Sedaris masterfully turns each essay into a love story: how it feels to be in a relationship where one loves and is loved over many years, what it means to be part of a family, and how it's possible, t hrough all of life's absurdities, to grow to love oneself. With Let's Explore Diabetes with Owls, David Sedaris shows once again why his work has been called "hilarious, elegant, and surprisingly moving" (Washington Post).
"
Why I Wanted to Read It: I've long been a fan of David Sedaris's work and was excited that he had a new book out (and a real one, not just fiction like Squirrel Seeks Chipmunkalthough I didn't think it was that bad of a book, regardless of the critics).
How I Liked It: Sedaris caught a considerable amount of bad press for his last publication, probably the only of his works to be poorly received. While he's dabbled in fiction before, he's kept it to essays, generally interspersed within his personal essays. When Squirrel Seeks Chipmunk bombed, Sedaris (and his agent) knew his next book had better bring it.
Thankfully, Let's Explore Diabetes with Owls is the Sedaris (and the Sedaris family) we've all come to know. The book features fiction (in a note preceding the text, he mentions that he's met several teenagers who essentially recite short stories/essays as monologues competitively, and he included six essays that serve that purpose, nothing that "these stories should be self-evident" since they're the "pieces in which I am a woman, a father, and a sixteen-year-old girl with a fake British accent.") but even it is more in the vein of his older work.
What feels new is the fact this book is easily more political than any of Sedaris's previous work. Generally, Sedaris has avoided most politics (save for mentioning his siblings shame of his father's support of George W Bush via bumper stickers on his car and a tongue-in-cheek bit he did for NPR about living in France during the initial invasion of Iraq), but this book devotes three full chapters (two of them based on fictional characters, one a particularly gullible TEA Partier, the other a militant anti-gay gun nut who goes on a rampage after the 2011 New York state decision) and part of a fourth on politics, mainly Obama's reception overseas and at home (Sedaris is particularly blistering when he's shoved with TEA partiers while waiting in a customer service line at an airport).
Whatever familiar and unfamiliar territory Sedaris takes, there are some constants. At least one chapter comes off as filler (even by Sedaris's "slice of life" style, he isn't really able to glean much from an otherwise just irksome coffee encounter) and what I feel to be the problem that most plagued Squirrel Seeks Chipmunk occasionally turns up here: Sedaris occasionally has difficulty tying up a chapter, and it shows. While this is less of a problem in this format, in a book that's a mock on children's fables, it tends to sink the ship.
For the minute flaws, though, Let's Explore Diabetes with Owls is still easily one of his best, including a chapter that prompted laughs from me I haven't gotten since his iconic "SantaLand Diaries" (given the depth of that laughter that provoked, that's really saying something; and I get at least one good laugh at everything he's done).
So for the little bump in the road, he's back and better than ever.
Notable: The book lacks mention of any current shenanigans with his sister Amy (always a delightful part of his books), but she's the subject of the book's dedication.