Naked by David Sedaris Summary and Reviews
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Book Reviews of Naked
Book Review: Almost shot my latte out of my nose!!
Summary: 5 Stars
I pulled this book out while getting ready to board a plane. I was sipping on a Starbuck's drink while I read. It was not long before I laughed so hard that I almost shot my latte out of my nose! I continued laughing until I cried. By the time I got to 30,000 feet I had no eye makeup left! I love David Sedaris. He is gritty and real. His stories remind me of the families I grew up around back East. I can't wait to read more of his books. Quirky stories and expertly delivered.Book Review: Always a Star
Summary: 4 Stars
Sedaris is a cult classic. Although this book is not `Me Talk Pretty One Day' it has its own merit. Sedaris' whit and humor are refreshing and have made a huge impact on the idea of the memoir. It should not go without notice that many memoirs, including Burroughs, have been compared to Sedaris.Book Review: America's greatest living humorist?
Summary: 4 Stars
Now that Woody Allen has more or less quit writing comedy for print, I wonder if David Sedaris isn't the finest writer of pure comedy that we have today. He is certainly the most widely read. I read most of this on the El commuting into downtown Chicago, and I was amazed while reading it how many other people were reading it as well, as well as Sedaris's other books.On one level, Sedaris employs an exceedingly simple formula: he take events and people in his own life, and in makes us laugh at the people he has known, but even more at himself. I can imagine that Sedaris did indeed suffer from an obsessive-compulsive disorder, but I very much doubt that it was as extreme as it portrays it to be in "A Plague of Tics." But that imaginative exaggeration is what makes him an artist instead of a mere autobiographer. He also succeeds because he writes with enormous wit. I like the fact that he is hard to anticipate. Where a story starts off is not where it will end up. You imagine you know what a particular story is about, only to find it galloping off in another direction.
I went on from this one to read (well, listen--my friend lent me a CD copy of it) ME TALK PRETTY ONE DAY. I actually prefer the stories in NAKED, which are set in Sedaris's childhood and youth, to the more recent book, which mainly features stories from his adulthood and residence in France. But I can strongly recommend both.
Book Review: Amusing
Summary: 4 Stars
Not hilarious as suggested by other readers, but amusing in every way. Written in a frank, straight forward way, you can almost imagine you are sitting next to David as he goes about his crazy life. The first chapter was off-putting for me and I ended up reading it last instead of first and it made a whole lot more sense for me in that order. I'll read more of his books for sure!Book Review: Amusing
Summary: 3 Stars
I finished NAKED by David Sadaris and have to say that I am neutral about this book. It was amusing but I had a hard time with all the 'craziness' that he has experienced. Can one person really meet that many odd people in one lifetime? I realize that as a writer and a humorist he was able to take some liberties but this was supposed to be a recounting of his life up until now. Also thru the whole book he talked past tense but the last chapter entitled 'naked' talked in the present tense which I found bothered me because it seemed kind of random although I suppose at the time maybe he was writing it right then. One more thing was the way he skipped around and didn't just follow one pattern from age to age but went to his childhood and then to an adult and then back to teenager etc. It made it kind of hard to follow at times. I would have preferred to listen to this book opposed to reading it. It might be better understood in the authors own voice.