David Sedaris

Last week at dinner with the B&B gang we got to talking about book clubs. Everyone living in the house reads a lot and we have a stack of paperbacks that is starting to take over the communal dining area. I told them about the book club that I joined when I first moved to STL to meet people. The woman who was hired by the school district to facilitate the group, didn’t really understand what a facilitator was supposed to do. For the first 20-30 minutes of the meeting we basically got a monologue from her about her life and her kids who were all living the word of God, which was demonstrated by their dedication to one of the most expensive private Catholic schools in St. Louis. The more she talked, the more you realized that she was very close-minded, and in my opinion then not really living in a Christian way, but I digress. You might be wondering, why did I keep going? The rest of the group was wonderful. It was a really mixed bag with an age span from college student to retiree. We actually discussed the book! Maybe it was the evil side of me that when our facilitator asked for “light” recommendations for the month of January, I mentioned David Sedaris’ Me Talk Pretty One Day, knowing that while our facilitator was bound to hate it, the rest would love it as I do. True to form, she hated it.

When I mentioned this book to the B&B gang, N laughed out loud. He told me he had read that book, not knowing what it was going to be about and found himself laughing out loud. He started quoting the book, especially the first essay, Go Carolina. I told them that I have a copy of that book in my office. So if I’m having a really bad day, I can read a little and it always makes me smile. I brought the book home for H to read and she is enjoying it. Another work colleague is also now reading it. For my David Sedaris loving friends, know that I am spreading the word, and that nothing about his work is lost in translation!

For those of you not familiar with David's work, here's a clip of him reading an essay on Letterman. I remember watching this with H when it originally aired, and even he smiled.