david sedaris essay me talk pretty one day

Me Talk Pretty One Day

At the age of forty-one, I am returning to school and having to think of myself as what my French textbook calls "a true debutant." After paying my tuition, I was issued a student ID, which allows me a discounted entry fee at movie theaters, puppet shows, and Festyland, a far-flung amusement park that advertises with billboards picturing a cartoon stegosaurus sitting in a canoe and eating what appears to be a ham sandwich.

I've moved to Paris in order to learn the language. My school is the Alliance Française, and on the first day of class, I arrived early, watching as the returning students greeted one another in the school lobby. Vacations were recounted, and questions were raised concerning mutual friends with names like Kang and Vlatnya. Regardless of their nationalities, everyone spoke what sounded to me like excellent French. Some accents were better than others, but the students exhibited an ease and confidence I found intimidating. As an added discomfort, they were all young, attractive, and well dressed, causing me to feel not unlike Pa Kettle trapped backstage after a fashion show.

I remind myself that I am now a full-grown man. No one will ever again card me for a drink or demand that I weave a floor mat out of newspapers. At my age, a reasonable person should have completed his sentence in the prison of the nervous and the insecure--isn't that the great promise of adulthood? I can't help but think that, somewhere along the way, I made a wrong turn. My fears have not vanished. Rather, they have seasoned and multiplied with age. I am now twice as frightened as I was when, at the age of twenty, I allowed a failed nursing student to inject me with a horse tranquilizer, and eight times more anxious than I was the day my kindergarten teacher pried my fingers off my mother's ankle and led me screaming toward my desk. "You'll get used to it," the woman had said.

I'm still waiting.

The first day of class was nerve-racking, because I knew I'd be expected to perform. That's the way they do it here--everyone into the language pool, sink or swim. The teacher marched in, deeply tanned from a recent vacation, and rattled off a series of administrative announcements. I've spent some time in Normandy, and I took a monthlong French class last summer in New York. I'm not completely in the dark, yet I understood only half of what this teacher was saying.

"If you have not meismslsxp by this time, you should not be in this room. Has everybody apzkiubjxow ? Everyone? Good, we shall proceed." She spread out her lesson plan and sighed, saying, "All right, then, who knows the alphabet?"

It was startling, because a) I hadn't been asked that question in a while, and b) I realized, while laughing, that I myself did not know the alphabet. They're the same letters, but they're pronounced differently.

"Ahh." The teacher went to the board and sketched the letter a. "Do we have anyone in the room whose first name commences with an ahh?"

Two Polish Annas raised their hands, and the teacher instructed them to present themselves, giving their names, nationalities, occupations, and a list of things they liked and disliked in this world. The first Anna hailed from an industrial town outside of Warsaw and had front teeth the size of tombstones. She worked as a seamstress, enjoyed quiet times with friends, and hated the mosquito.

"Oh, really," the teacher said. "How very interesting. I thought that everyone loved the mosquito, but here, in front of all the world, you claim to detest him. How is it that we've been blessed with someone as unique and original as you? Tell us, please."

The seamstress did not understand what was being said, but she knew that this was an occasion for shame. Her rabbity mouth huffed for breath, and she stared down at her lap as though the appropriate comeback were stitched somewhere alongside the zipper of her slacks.

The second Anna learned from the first and claimed to love sunshine and detest lies. It sounded like a translation of one of those Playmate of the Month data sheets, the answers always written in the same loopy handwriting: "Turn-ons: Mom's famous five-alarm chili! Turnoffs: Insincerity and guys who come on too strong!!!"

The two Polish women surely had clear notions of what they liked and disliked, but, like the rest of us, they were limited in terms of vocabulary, and this made them appear less than sophisticated. The teacher forged on, and we learned that Carlos, the Argentine bandonion player, loved wine, music, and, in his words, "Making sex with the women of the world." Next came a beautiful young Yugoslavian who identified herself as an optimist, saying that she loved everything life had to offer.

The teacher licked her lips, revealing a hint of the sadist we would later come to know. She crouched low for her attack, placed her hands on the young woman's desk, and said, "Oh, yeah? And do you love your little war?"

While the optimist struggled to defend herself, I scrambled to think of an answer to what had obviously become a trick question. How often are you asked what you love in this world? More important, how often are you asked and then publicly ridiculed for your answer? I recalled my mother, flushed with wine, pounding the table late one night, saying, "Love? I love a good steak cooked rare. I love my cat, and I love . . ." My sisters and I leaned forward, waiting to hear our names. "Tums," our mother said. "I love Tums."

The teacher killed some time accusing the Yugoslavian girl of masterminding a program of genocide, and I jotted frantic notes in the margins of my pad. While I can honestly say that I love leafing through medical textbooks devoted to severe dermatological conditions, it is beyond the reach of my French vocabulary, and acting it out would only have invited unwanted attention.

When called upon, I delivered an effortless list of things I detest: blood sausage, intestinal pâté, brain pudding. I'd learned these words the hard way. Having given it some thought, I then declared my love for IBM typewriters, the French word for "bruise," and my electric floor waxer. It was a short list, but still I managed to mispronounce IBM and afford the wrong gender to both the floor waxer and the typewriter. Her reaction led me to believe that these mistakes were capital crimes in the country of France.

"Were you always this palicmkrexjs ?" she asked. "Even a fiuscrzsws tociwegixp knows that a typewriter is feminine."

I absorbed as much of her abuse as I could understand, thinking, but not saying, that I find it ridiculous to assign a gender to an inanimate object incapable of disrobing and making an occasional fool of itself. Why refer to Lady Flesh Wound or Good Sir Dishrag when these things could never deliver in the sack?

The teacher proceeded to belittle everyone from German Eva, who hated laziness, to Japanese Yukari, who loved paintbrushes and soap. Italian, Thai, Dutch, Korean, Chinese--we all left class foolishly believing that the worst was over. We didn't know it then, but the coming months would teach us what it is like to spend time in the presence of a wild animal. We soon learned to dodge chalk and to cover our heads and stomachs whenever she approached us with a question. She hadn't yet punched anyone, but it seemed wise to prepare ourselves against the inevitable.

Though we were forbidden to speak anything but French, the teacher would occasionally use us to practice any of her five fluent languages.

"I hate you," she said to me one afternoon. Her English was flawless. "I really, really hate you." Call me sensitive, but I couldn't help taking it personally.

Learning French is a lot like joining a gang in that it involves a long and intensive period of hazing. And it wasn't just my teacher; the entire population seemed to be in on it. Following brutal encounters with my local butcher and the concierge of my building, I'd head off to class, where the teacher would hold my corrected paperwork high above her head, shouting, "Here's proof that David is an ignorant and uninspired ensigiejsokhjx ."

Refusing to stand convicted on the teacher's charges of laziness, I'd spend four hours a night on my homework, working even longer whenever we were assigned an essay. I suppose I could have gotten by with less, but I was determined to create some sort of an identity for myself. We'd have one of those "complete the sentence" exercises, and I'd fool with the thing for hours, invariably settling on something like, "A quick run around the lake? I'd love to. Just give me a minute to strap on my wooden leg." The teacher, through word and action, conveyed the message that, if this was my idea of an identity, she wanted nothing to do with it.

My fear and discomfort crept beyond the borders of my classroom and accompanied me out onto the wide boulevards, where, no matter how hard I tried, there was no escaping the feeling of terror I felt whenever anyone asked me a question. I was safe in any kind of a store, as, at least in my neighborhood, one can stand beside the cash register for hours on end without being asked something so trivial as, "May I help you?" or "How would you like to pay for that?"

My only comfort was the knowledge that I was not alone. Huddled in the smoky hallways and making the most of our pathetic French, my fellow students and I engaged in the sort of conversation commonly overheard in refugee camps.

"Sometimes me cry alone at night."

"That is common for me also, but be more strong, you. Much work, and someday you talk pretty. People stop hate you soon. Maybe tomorrow, okay?"

Unlike other classes I have taken, here there was no sense of competition. When the teacher poked a shy Korean woman in the eyelid with a freshly sharpened pencil, we took no comfort in the fact that, unlike Hyeyoon Cho, we all knew the irregular past tense of the verb "to defeat." In all fairness, the teacher hadn't meant to hurt the woman, but neither did she spend much time apologizing, saying only, "Well, you should have been paying more attention."

Over time, it became impossible to believe that any of us would ever improve. Fall arrived, and it rained every day. It was mid-October when the teacher singled me out, saying, "Every day spent with you is like having a cesarean section." And it struck me that, for the first time since arriving in France, I could understand every word that someone was saying.

Understanding doesn't mean that you can suddenly speak the language. Far from it. It's a small step, nothing more, yet its rewards are intoxicating and deceptive. The teacher continued her diatribe, and I settled back, bathing in the subtle beauty of each new curse and insult.

"You exhaust me with your foolishness and reward my efforts with nothing but pain, do you understand me?"

The world opened up, and it was with great joy that I responded, "I know the thing what you speak exact now. Talk me more, plus, please, plus."

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Reviews of Me Talk Pretty One Day by David Sedaris

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Me Talk Pretty One Day

by David Sedaris

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Tells a most unconventional life story. "Original, acid, and wild" --said the Los Angeles Times . Written as 17 autobiographical essays.

"As far as I was concerned, the French could be cold or even openly hostile. They could burn my flag or pelt me with stones, but if there were taxidermied kittens to be had then I would go and bring them back to this, the greatest country on earth." David Sedaris's new collection, Me Talk Pretty One Day, tells a most unconventional life story. It begins with a North Carolina childhood filled with speech-therapy classes ("There was the lisp, of course, but more troubling than that was my voice itself with its excitable tone and high, girlish pitch") and unwanted guitar lessons taught by a midget. From budding performance artist ("The only crimp in my plan was that I seemed to have no talent whatsoever") to "clearly unqualified" writing teacher in Chicago, Sedaris's career leads him to New York (the sky's-the-limit field of furniture moving) and eventually, of all places, France. Sedaris's move to Paris poses a number of challenges, chief among them his inability to speak the language. Arriving a "spooky man-child" capable of communicating only through nouns, he undertakes language instruction that leads him ever deeper into cultural confusion. Whether describing the Easter bunny to puzzled classmates, savoring movies in translation (It Is Necessary to Save the Soldier Ryan), or watching a group of men play soccer with a cow, Sedaris brings a view and a voice like none other. "Original, acid, and wild" --said the Los Angeles Times to every unforgettable encounter.

Chapter One Go Carolina

ANYONE WHO WATCHES EVEN THE SLIGHTEST amount of TV is familiar with the scene: An agent knocks on the door of some seemingly ordinary home or office. The door opens, and the person holding the knob is asked to identify himself. The agent then says, "I'm going to ask you to come with me." They're always remarkably calm, these agents. If asked "Why do I need to go anywhere with you?" they'll straighten their shirt cuffs or idly brush stray hairs from the sleeves of their sport coats and say, "Oh, I think we both know why." The suspect then chooses between doing things the hard way and doing things the easy way, and the scene ends with either gunfire or the gentlemanly application of handcuffs. Occasionally it's a case of mistaken identity, but most often the suspect knows exactly why he's being taken. It seems he's been expecting this to happen. The anticipation has ruled his life, and now, finally, the wait is over. You're sometimes led to believe ...

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Published 2019

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David Sedaris returns with his most deeply personal and darkly hilarious book.

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A funny and revealing collection of essays which reveal a complex and utterly recognizable character that's aiming for the stars but hits the ceiling, and the inimitable city that has helped shape who she is.

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Home — Essay Samples — Literature — Me Talk Pretty One Day — David Sedaris’ Book Me Talk Pretty One Day: Rhetorical Analysis

David Sedaris' Book Me Talk Pretty One Day: Rhetorical Analysis

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The narratives presented by both writers in “Prison Studies” and “Me Talk Pretty One Day,” both describe each author’s pursuit of literacy given different circumstances. In Sedaris’s account, he is illiterate in the French [...]

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Me Talk Pretty One Day

by David Sedaris

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May 4, 2009

9780316073653

Nonfiction / Humor / Form / Essays

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A new collection from David Sedaris is cause for jubilation. His recent move to Paris has inspired hilarious pieces, including Me Talk Pretty One Day, about his attempts to learn French. His family is another inspiration. You Cant Kill the Rooster is a portrait of his brother who talks incessant hip-hop slang to his bewildered father. And no one hones a finer fury in response to such modern annoyances as restaurant meals presented in ludicrous towers and cashiers with 6-inch fingernails. Compared by The New Yorker to Twain and Hawthorne, Sedaris has become one of our best-loved authors. Sedaris is an amazing reader whose appearances draw hundreds, and his performancesincluding a jaw-dropping impression of Billie Holiday singing I wish I were an Oscar Meyer weinerare unforgettable. Sedariss essays on living in Paris are some of the funniest hes ever written. At last, someone even meaner than the French! The sort of blithely sophisticated, loopy humour that might have resulted if Dorothy Parker and James Thurber had had a love child. Entertainment Weekly on Barrel Fever Sidesplitting Not one of the essays in this new collection failed to crack me up; frequently I was helpless. The New York Times Book Review on Naked

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Me Talk Pretty One Day

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By David Sedaris

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David Sedaris

About the author.

David Sedaris is the author of the books Let’s Explore Diabetes with Owls , Squirrel Seeks Chipmunk , When You Are Engulfed in Flames , Dress Your Family in Corduroy and Denim , Me Talk Pretty One Day , Holidays on Ice , Naked , and Barrel Fever . He is a regular contributor to The New Yorker and BBC Radio 4. He lives in England.

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Me Talk Pretty One Day

David sedaris, ask litcharts ai: the answer to your questions.

Identity and Insecurity

The essays collected in David Sedaris ’s Me Talk Pretty One Day cover a wide range of topics, but nearly all of them revolve around the way Sedaris thinks about his own identity. With this in mind, he interrogates his sexual orientation and the many efforts he makes to cultivate an interesting and alluring personality, whether this means becoming a conceptual artist or trying to blend into life in Paris as an American who can…

Humor, Commentary, and Observation

David Sedaris ’s Me Talk Pretty One Day is a collection of anecdotal essays, most of which have the same simple goal: to provide humorous commentary about everyday life and human behavior. Whether Sedaris is writing about an awkward situation at a party or the distorted perceptions people have about other cultures, his attention to life’s details renders him uniquely capable of taking something familiar and helping readers see it anew. Most often, he does…

Class and Belonging

In Me Talk Pretty One Day , David Sedaris reckons with class and status, often trying to figure out how he fits into society at large. This is especially apparent in his youth and young adulthood, when class disparities feel particularly glaring because he is still in the process of establishing himself both financially and, to a certain extent, culturally. During his first few years living in New York City, for example, he acutely feels…

Me Talk Pretty One Day

By: David Sedaris

• Narrated by: David Sedaris
• Length: 5 hrs and 51 mins
• 4.5 out of 5 stars 4.5 (12,017 ratings)

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In his newest collection of essays, David Sedaris lifts the corner of ordinary life, revealing the absurdity teeming below its surface. His world is alive with obscure desires and hidden motives, a world where forgiveness is automatic and an argument can be the highest form of love. Dress Your Family in Corduroy and Denim is another unforgettable collection from one of the wittiest and most original writers at work today.

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If you've ever laughed your way through David Sedaris's cheerfully misanthropic stories, you might think you know what you're getting with Calypso. You'd be wrong. When he buys a beach house on the Carolina coast, Sedaris envisions long, relaxing vacations spent playing board games and lounging in the sun with those he loves most. And it's as idyllic as he imagined, except for one tiny, vexing realization: it's impossible to take a vacation from yourself. With Calypso, Sedaris sets his formidable powers of observation - and dark humor - toward middle age and mortality.

Excellent, as always

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Back when restaurant menus were still printed on paper, and wearing a mask—or not—was a decision made mostly on Halloween, David Sedaris spent his time doing normal things. As Happy-Go-Lucky opens, he is learning to shoot guns with his sister, visiting muddy flea markets in Serbia, buying gummy worms to feed to ants, and telling his nonagenarian father wheelchair jokes. But then the pandemic hits, and like so many others, he’s stuck in lockdown, unable to tour and read for audiences, the part of his work he loves most.

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• Performance 4.5 out of 5 stars 555
• Story 4.5 out of 5 stars 552

In David Sedaris' world, no one is safe and no cow is sacred. A manic cross between Mark Leyner, Fran Lebowitz, and the National Enquirer , Sedaris' collection of essays is a rollicking tour through the national Zeitgeist: a do-it-yourself suburban dad saves money by performing home surgery; a man who is loved too much flees the heavyweight champion of the world; a teenage suicide tries to incite a lynch mob at her funeral; a bitter Santa abuses the elves.

• 1 out of 5 stars

Be warned- Santaland Diaries is NOT included

• By David on 06-05-12

David Sedaris Live at Carnegie Hall

• Length: 1 hr and 13 mins
• Original Recording
• Overall 4.5 out of 5 stars 1,836
• Performance 4.5 out of 5 stars 864
• Story 4.5 out of 5 stars 857

If you are driving, pull over. If you are at work, close your door, unless you don't mind your colleagues seeing you doubled over, in tears, on your office floor. With this recording, taped before a delirious sold out audience at Carnegie Hall, you are there as David Sedaris performs new stories from his upcoming book. A parrot who mimics an ice maker, lovers quarreling over a rubber hand, and a Santa Claus who moonlights from his job as bishop of Turkey, the cast of characters is like no other.

Too little for too much

• By Jim on 11-05-03

By: Tina Fey

• Narrated by: Tina Fey
• Length: 5 hrs and 32 mins
• Overall 4.5 out of 5 stars 60,440
• Performance 4.5 out of 5 stars 50,577
• Story 4.5 out of 5 stars 50,345

Before Liz Lemon, before Weekend Update , before Sarah Palin, Tina Fey was just a young girl with a dream: A recurring stress dream that she was being chased through a local airport by her middle-school gym teacher. She also had a dream that one day she would be a comedian on TV. She has seen both these dreams come true. At last, Tina Fey's story can be told. From her youthful days as a vicious nerd to her tour of duty on Saturday Night Live . Tina Fey reveals all, and proves what we've always suspected: You're no one until someone calls you bossy.

Tina Fey broke my new SUV

• By Warren on 04-07-11

Stone Mattress

By: Margaret Atwood

• Narrated by: Margaret Atwood, Rob Delaney, Mark Bramhall, and others
• Length: 10 hrs and 2 mins
• Overall 4 out of 5 stars 607
• Performance 4.5 out of 5 stars 522
• Story 4 out of 5 stars 528

A collection of highly imaginative short pieces that speak to our times with deadly accuracy. Vintage Atwood creativity, intelligence, and humor: think Alias Grace. Margaret Atwood turns to short fiction for the first time since her 2006 collection, Moral Disorder , with nine tales of acute psychological insight and turbulent relationships bringing to mind her award-winning 1996 novel, Alias Grace.

Staggeringly Good

• By The Amester on 06-01-15

Themes and Variations

• Length: 30 mins
• Overall 4.5 out of 5 stars 1,809
• Performance 5 out of 5 stars 1,485
• Story 4.5 out of 5 stars 1,466

Dismissed by a bored author at a book signing, a betrayed young man named David Sedaris made a vow. Someday, when it was his turn at the table, he’d connect with his readers. The experience has been even more revealing than he’d hoped.In this hilarious and perceptive essay, the celebrated humorist reflects on the unusual patterns of forced socialization between author and audience, and the obligations and sometimes surprising returns of not-so-chance encounters with strangers: jokes, secrets, insights, and even charity.

It’s true!

• By N. Charest on 04-28-20

By: Amy Poehler

• Narrated by: Amy Poehler, Carol Burnett, Seth Meyers, and others
• Length: 7 hrs and 31 mins
• Overall 4.5 out of 5 stars 54,326
• Performance 5 out of 5 stars 47,301
• Story 4.5 out of 5 stars 47,068

Amy Poehler is hosting a dinner party and you're invited! Welcome to the audiobook edition of Amy Poehler's Yes Please . The guest list is star-studded with vocal appearances from Carol Burnett, Seth Meyers, Michael Schur, Patrick Stewart, Kathleen Turner, and even Amy’s parents - Yes Please is the ultimate audiobook extravaganza.

Listen to this book for sure

• By S.F. on 10-31-14

Lafayette in the Somewhat United States

By: Sarah Vowell

• Narrated by: Sarah Vowell, John Slattery, Nick Offerman, and others
• Length: 8 hrs and 7 mins
• Overall 4.5 out of 5 stars 3,618
• Performance 4.5 out of 5 stars 3,258
• Story 4.5 out of 5 stars 3,239

From the best-selling author of Assassination Vacation and Unfamiliar Fishes , a humorous account of the Revolutionary War hero Marquis de Lafayette - the one Frenchman we could all agree on - and an insightful portrait of a nation's idealism and its reality. Lafayette in the Somewhat United States is a humorous and insightful portrait of the famed Frenchman, the impact he had on our young country, and his ongoing relationship with instrumental Americans of the time.

You likely haven't heard it this way...

• By William L. Scott III on 06-04-16

I Can't Make This Up

• Life Lessons
• By: Neil Strauss - contributor, Kevin Hart
• Narrated by: Kevin Hart
• Length: 11 hrs and 15 mins
• Overall 4.5 out of 5 stars 55,704
• Performance 5 out of 5 stars 50,186
• Story 4.5 out of 5 stars 49,930

Superstar comedian and Hollywood box-office star Kevin Hart turns his immense talent to the written word by writing some words. Some of those words include: the , a , for , above , and even even . Put them together and you have the funniest, most heartfelt, and most inspirational memoir on survival, success, and the importance of believing in yourself since Old Yeller .

Best Audiobook I Ever Listened To

• By Sam Clear on 07-13-17

By: Neil Strauss - contributor , and others

Publisher's summary

• Abridged Audiobook
• Categories: Biographies & Memoirs

Critic reviews

"At his best, he makes you laugh out loud, which indeed may be worth the price of admission." ( The New York Times )

Featured Article: The top 100 memoirs of all time

All genres considered, the memoir is among the most difficult and complex for a writer to pull off. After all, giving voice to your own lived experience and recounting deeply painful or uncomfortable memories in a way that still engages and entertains is a remarkable feat. These autobiographies, often narrated by the authors themselves, shine with raw, unfiltered emotion sure to resonate with any listener. But don't just take our word for it—queue up any one of these listens, and you'll hear exactly what we mean.

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There's Nothing in This Book That I Meant to Say

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• Narrated by: Paula Poundstone
• Length: 5 hrs and 59 mins
• Overall 4 out of 5 stars 574
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• Story 4 out of 5 stars 354

What do the lives of Lincoln, Helen Keller, Joan of Arc, and other historical figures have in common with Paula Poundstone? In the hands of this wryly observant and self-deprecating comedian, the answer is outrageously funny and unexpectedly touching. Poundstone compares her crazy life to theirs, as she holds forth on her children, her career, and the time in her life when it appeared she would lose them both.

• By Evelyn on 02-11-07

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• Adventures of an Iranian American, at Home and Abroad

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• Narrated by: Firoozeh Dumas
• Overall 4 out of 5 stars 304
• Performance 4.5 out of 5 stars 173
• Story 4.5 out of 5 stars 175

In the best-selling memoir Funny in Farsi , Firoozeh Dumas recounted her adventures growing up Iranian American in Southern California. Now she again mines her rich Persian heritage in Laughing Without an Accent , sharing stories both tender and humorous on being a citizen of the world, on her well-meaning family, and on amusing cultural conundrums, all told with insights into the universality of the human condition. (Hint: It may have to do with brushing and flossing daily.)

• By Sara on 01-29-14

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• Narrated by: Jeff Woodman
• Length: 10 hrs and 57 mins
• Overall 4 out of 5 stars 368
• Performance 4.5 out of 5 stars 329
• Story 4 out of 5 stars 329

When George Hodgman leaves Manhattan for his hometown of Paris, Missouri, he finds himself - an unlikely caretaker and near-lethal cook - in a head-on collision with his aging mother, Betty, a woman of wit and will. Will George lure her into assisted living? When hell freezes over. He can't bring himself to force her from the home both treasure - the place where his father's voice lingers, the scene of shared jokes, skirmishes, and, behind the dusty antiques, a rarely acknowledged conflict...

Title Should Be Georgeville-It's All About George

• By Sara on 10-08-15

• A Memoir of My Father

By: Alysia Abbott

• Narrated by: Alysia Abbott
• Length: 10 hrs and 21 mins
• Overall 4.5 out of 5 stars 117
• Performance 4.5 out of 5 stars 107
• Story 4.5 out of 5 stars 106

A beautiful, vibrant memoir about growing up motherless in 1970s and 80s San Francisco with an openly gay father. After his wife dies in a car accident, bisexual writer and activist Steve Abbott moves with his two-year-old daughter to San Francisco. There they discover a city in the midst of revolution, bustling with gay men in search of liberation - few of whom are raising a child. Steve throws himself into San Francisco's vibrant cultural scene.

Great representation of the time

• By AvidReader22 on 06-07-19

The Unspeakable

• And Other Subjects of Discussion

By: Meghan Daum

• Narrated by: Meghan Daum
• Length: 6 hrs and 48 mins
• Overall 4 out of 5 stars 116
• Performance 4.5 out of 5 stars 98
• Story 4 out of 5 stars 98

It's a report tempered by hard times. In "Matricide", Daum unflinchingly describes a parent's death and the uncomfortable emotions it provokes; and in "Diary of a Coma" she relates her own journey to the twilight of the mind. But Daum also operates in a comic register. With perfect precision, she reveals the absurdities of the marriage-industrial complex, of the New Age dating market, and of the peculiar habits of the young and digital.

Complaining about her dead mom.

• By Erik Hermansen on 11-23-14

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• Narrated by: Sean Runnette
• Length: 12 hrs and 6 mins
• Overall 4 out of 5 stars 48
• Performance 4.5 out of 5 stars 43
• Story 4 out of 5 stars 43

Sensitive, big-hearted, and achingly self-conscious, 40-year-old Aaron Englund long ago escaped the confines of his Midwestern hometown, but he still feels like an outcast. After 20 years under the Pygmalion -like direction of his older partner, Walter, Aaron at last decides it is time to stop letting life happen to him and to take control of his own fate.

Stories I'd Tell in Bars

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• Narrated by: Jen Lancaster, John Fletcher
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• Overall 4 out of 5 stars 360
• Performance 4.5 out of 5 stars 322
• Story 4 out of 5 stars 319

Unfiltered. Unapologetic. Older, but not wiser, Lancaster goes back to basics in this hilarious essay collection about everything from taking community policing classes to accidentally getting high with her waiter after a fancy dinner. These are the tales she'd tell if she met you in a bar... if she weren't too lazy to put on pants and go to a bar. Offering advice ranging from how to remain happily married to a man who refuses to blow his damn nose already to not creating An Incident at the cheese counter during an attempt at Whole30, she's you, only louder.

self absorbed

• By D D H on 06-15-19

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• Narrated by: Ray Chase
• Length: 5 hrs and 45 mins
• Overall 4.5 out of 5 stars 45
• Story 4.5 out of 5 stars 43

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• By RockyDog on 01-31-19

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By: Ann Patchett

• Narrated by: Ann Patchett
• Length: 11 hrs and 36 mins
• Overall 4.5 out of 5 stars 1,681
• Performance 4.5 out of 5 stars 1,502
• Story 4.5 out of 5 stars 1,485

Blending literature and memoir, Ann Patchett, author of State of Wonder and Bel Canto examines her deepest commitments: to writing, family, friends, dogs, books, and her husband in This Is the Story of a Happy Marriage . Together, these essays, previously published in The Atlantic, Harper , Vogue , and The Washington Post , form a resonant portrait of a life lived with loyalty and with love.

Entertaining, engrossing, and elucidative essays

• By Bonny on 01-07-14

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By: Rebecca Schuman

• Narrated by: Christa Lewis
• Length: 8 hrs and 57 mins
• Overall 4.5 out of 5 stars 22
• Performance 5 out of 5 stars 19
• Story 4.5 out of 5 stars 19

Schadenfreude is the story of a teenage Jewish intellectual who falls in love - in love with a boy (who breaks her heart), a language (that's nearly impossible to master), a culture (that's nihilistic but punctual), and a landscape (that's breathtaking when there's not a wall in the way). Rebecca is an everyday, misunderstood '90s teenager with a passion for Pearl Jam and Ethan Hawke circa Reality Bites until two men walk into her high school civics class: Dylan Gellner and Franz Kafka, hitching a ride in Dylan's backpack.

A humorous, delectable read

• By Amazon Customer on 07-13-17

By: Nell Zink

• Narrated by: Cassandra Campbell
• Length: 8 hrs and 12 mins
• Overall 4 out of 5 stars 200
• Performance 4 out of 5 stars 179
• Story 3.5 out of 5 stars 178

Stillwater College in Virginia, 1966. Freshman Peggy, an ingénue with literary pretensions, falls under the spell of Lee, a blue-blooded poet and professor, and they begin an ill-advised affair that results in an unplanned pregnancy and marriage. The couple are mismatched from the start - she's a lesbian, he's gay - but it takes a decade of emotional erosion before Peggy runs off with their three-year-old daughter, leaving their nine-year-old son behind.

Misbegotten, mishandled, misfired novel

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• Length: 7 hrs and 44 mins
• Overall 4.5 out of 5 stars 290
• Performance 4.5 out of 5 stars 266
• Story 4.5 out of 5 stars 263

In the spirit of Mindy Kaling, Kelly Oxford, and Sarah Silverman, a compulsively listenable and outrageously funny memoir of growing up as a fish out of water, finding your voice, and embracing your inner crazy person from popular actress, writer, and comedian Bonnie McFarlane.

Sandy!!! She wrote a book...it's crazy, a book!!!

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• A Memoir of Growing Up Iranian in America
• Length: 5 hrs and 40 mins
• Overall 4 out of 5 stars 2,083
• Performance 4.5 out of 5 stars 1,651
• Story 4 out of 5 stars 1,651

In 1972, when she was seven, Firoozeh Dumas and her family moved from Iran to Southern California, arriving with no firsthand knowledge of this country beyond her father's glowing memories of his graduate school years here.

The melting pot, next generation

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• Overall 4.5 out of 5 stars 1,038
• Performance 4.5 out of 5 stars 953
• Story 4 out of 5 stars 949

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Best Audio Book I’ve heard ever.

• By M on 11-23-17

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By: Clinton Kelly

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• Length: 4 hrs and 55 mins
• Overall 4.5 out of 5 stars 462
• Performance 4.5 out of 5 stars 403
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Clinton Kelly is probably best known for teaching women how to make their butts look smaller. But in I Hate Everyone, Except You , he reveals some heretofore unknown secrets about himself, like that he's a finicky connoisseur of 1980s pornography, a disillusioned critic of New Jersey's premier water parks, and perhaps the world's least enthused high school commencement speaker.

Filthy language overshadowed stories

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The Fran Lebowitz Reader

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In "elegant, finely honed prose" ( The Washington Post Book World ), Lebowitz limns the vicissitudes of contemporary urban life—its fads, trends, crazes, morals, and fashions. By turns ironic, facetious, deadpan, sarcastic, wry, wisecracking, and waggish, Fran Lebowitz is always wickedly entertaining.

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Curiously, mundanely real

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This book will not disappoint you.

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• Overall 4 out of 5 stars 1,770
• Performance 4.5 out of 5 stars 1,089
• Story 4 out of 5 stars 1,087

This collection of sharply observed animal-themed tales is a delight, told with David Sedaris's trademark blend of hilarity and goodnaturedness. Though the characters may not be human, the situations in these stories bear an uncanny resemblance to the insanity of our own everyday interactions.

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LIVE recordings of new, previously unreleased David Sedaris stories!

Overpriced and Undergood

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Children Playing Before a Statue of Hercules (Unabridged Selections)

By: Edited by David Sedaris

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• Length: 2 hrs and 54 mins
• Overall 4 out of 5 stars 357
• Performance 4.5 out of 5 stars 215
• Story 4 out of 5 stars 216

Children Playing Before a Statue of Hercules is a collection of short stories, some classic, others impending, selected and introduced by David Sedaris.

Great stories but only 5 of 17 are included

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Pretty Ugly

• By: David Sedaris, Ian Falconer - illustrator
• Length: 3 mins
• Overall 2.5 out of 5 stars 11
• Performance 3.5 out of 5 stars 10
• Story 2.5 out of 5 stars 10

Meet Anna Von Ogre, a delightful monstrosity. When Anna’s attempt to gross out the family backfires, she finds herself stuck with a face of such beauty that even the neighbors are repulsed. How the sickeningly adorable, rosy-cheeked little girl finds her inner ugly again is the subject of a hilarious fable for the ages.

Stupid Short Waste

• By Amira on 03-30-24

By: David Sedaris , and others

What listeners say about Me Talk Pretty One Day

• 4.5 out of 5 stars 4.5 out of 5.0
• 5 Stars 8,080
• 4 Stars 2,372
• 3 Stars 907
• 2 Stars 341
• 1 Stars 317
• 4.5 out of 5 stars 4.7 out of 5.0
• 5 Stars 6,916
• 4 Stars 1,057
• 3 Stars 394
• 2 Stars 134
• 1 Stars 146
• 5 Stars 5,898
• 4 Stars 1,653
• 3 Stars 616
• 2 Stars 255
• 1 Stars 196

Reviews - Please select the tabs below to change the source of reviews.

Audible.com reviews, amazon reviews.

• Overall 5 out of 5 stars

Just too good.

You either get David, or you don't. I'd like to count myself amoungst the former. If you like his unique style, he's a singular treat.

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4 people found this helpful

Who lives like this? Better yet, who lives like this, can admit to it and make it so side-achingly funny? Definitely his best book in my opinion, and all the better to hear him read it himself.

1 person found this helpful

Simply Wonderful

This book is the funniest thing I have heard in a long time. I laughed so hard at times, I could barely breathe. Simply wonderful!

• WeddingChris

Bizarre and fun - LOVE it

I find myself laughing out loud in sort of a snort and chortle way... completely unexpected. This book takes you on a wild and wonderfully colorful journey through this bizarre author's life/mind/family. I absolutely LOVE this book and HIGHLY recommend it. It was recommended to me a few years ago by my very intelligent and highly evolved daughter (she's single and gorgeous if anyone is interested!) My only regret (about this book, not about life in general) is that I waited so long to get it. I am seriously looking forward to reading the rest of his works. YOU'LL LOVE IT.

a benchmark selection

A heart rendingly honest and poignantly delivered collection of autobiographic essays. Here is revealed the story of a wonderfully jaded, neurotic and self effacing eletist whose complex inner and family life provide ample fodder for comedy without smacking of exhibitionist voyerism. All the same, typically sobering subject matter is masterfully orchestrated into uproarously hillarious and irreverent fare. This gets a 5/5 not only for the dissarming humor but also for literary merit on par with the best in genre. If Catch 22-like humor gets you ticklish, a listen to Me Talk Pretty One Day will get you crying uncle.

me love me talk pretty one day

Hoot this book she was. David is funny from the first line to the last making fun of conventions of acceptable speach. Fun listen.

• Performance 5 out of 5 stars
• Story 5 out of 5 stars

Brilliant, masterfully written,

Love, this book, it's AWESOME Incredibley entertaining, Comedic Nonfiction Storytelling Genius, Love Him 💯 💕

• Amazon Customer

I loved it.

I can’t remember laughing out loud to too many books, but I did to this wonderful book.

Do not listen to this book while driving

It is too hilarious and the tears running down my eyes almost made me crash Fantastic book leaves you wanting more

• Overall 4 out of 5 stars
• Performance 4 out of 5 stars

• Jeff Silver

funny and weird

Odd stories, funny how he describes things. Interesting perspective and self deprecating style. Would reccomend

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Entertainment | more potential jurors dismissed as trump’s hush money trial conducts 1st full day of jury selection, entertainment, entertainment | david sedaris bringing trademark wit to the bay area.

“If I were to read things from a book or to read old things, the audience would think, ‘God, haven’t you done anything since we saw you three years ago?’” he said in an interview with the Sentinel.

Thus, Sedaris’ current tour consists of essays he recently wrote but has not yet published, inspired by his travels and other topics. His sardonic wit and way with words will be front and center when he stops by UC Berkeley, Santa Cruz and Santa Rosa this May.

Sedaris grew up in Raleigh, North Carolina, as the second oldest of six siblings — including his sister Amy, a comedienne and actress with many credits — and his upbringing is a frequent subject in his writing. In the early ’90s, future “This American Life” host Ira Glass saw Sedaris reading a diary he had kept since 1977 at a Chicago club and asked him to appear on his local radio show “The Wild Room.” That led to his first NPR appearance in 1992, where he read his essay “The Santaland Diaries” about his experiences working as a Christmas elf at Macy’s iconic Herald Square location in New York City.

The reading was a success, even going so far as to be adapted into a one-act play at New York’s Atlantic Theater Company with Timothy Olyphant in the starring role. It also launched Sedaris’ writing career, propelling him to write 11 essay collections, including “Barrel Fever,” “Me Talk Pretty One Day,” “Dress Your Family in Corduroy and Denim,” “Let’s Explore Diabetes with Owls,” “Calypso” and “Happy-Go-Lucky.” Many of his books have topped the New York Times Best Seller list, and he is also the recipient of two Lambda Literary Awards and two Audie Awards for his audiobook readings.

Sedaris’ newest book, “Pretty Ugly,” is his first children’s book. Illustrated by the late Ian Falconer, it tells the story of an ogre girl whose attempts to gross out her family backfire so she becomes stuck with a face that her ogre peers consider hideous: that of a picturesque, rosy-cheeked human girl.

The story was actually first published in 2001 in Francoise Mouly and Art Spiegelman’s comic book anthology “Little Lit: Strange Stories for Strange Kids.” Mouly, the art director for the New Yorker, recruited well-known illustrators such as Jules Feiffer, Crockett Johnson, Barbara McClintock and Maurice Sendak. She paired Sedaris with Falconer, best known nowadays for his “Olivia” series and for creating the covers for 30 New Yorker issues, who also previously worked with Sedaris on the set design for “The Santaland Diaries” and later did the illustrations for Sedaris’ short story collection “Squirrel Seeks Chipmunk.”

The story was republished in February as a standalone book by Mouly’s Toon Books. Sedaris said he never expected to write a children’s book, as he never had any interest in it, but it took him five minutes to write the story.

Falconer never got to see the story’s wider publication as he died in 2023. Sedaris praised him as a brilliant artist and loved the way the book turned out, despite the story and illustrations being worked on separately.

“I handed (the story) over to Ian, and he came up with the drawings and I didn’t question them,” he said. “We just completely left each other alone, and it worked out great. I don’t know what the experience is like for other people — I don’t know if there’s a big back and forth between the illustrator and the author — but there have been times in my life when I’m working with a professional, and I figure this is what they do for a living, and they’ve made a name for themselves, and I’m certainly not going to tell them what to do, and that was the case with Ian.”

Sedaris hasn’t gotten many reactions from kids to “Pretty Ugly,” except for the goddaughter of his partner Hugh Hamrick who said she wanted to have it read to her over and over again.

“That seems like a pretty good endorsement,” he said.

Apart from that, children’s books are a new world for Sedaris.

“As a rule, I’d say it’s a pretty bad idea to write books for people that don’t have any money,” he said. “It’s not like children can go out and buy the books themselves, so I guess the real audience are parents and grandparents.”

Sedaris will not be reading from “Pretty Ugly” on his tour, nor will he read from any of his other published books. Instead, he will be reading from essays he recently wrote.

“Some of them I wrote a few months ago, and then I just put them in a file called ‘Spring 2024,’” he said. “I’m looking back on them and saying ‘Hmm, OK, this ending isn’t strong enough’ or ‘Wow, this really works’ or ‘Maybe I need to scrap this.’”

Sedaris said the process allows him to test out and tinker with his essays if they ever do get published.

“I had an essay in the New Yorker in January ,” he said. “It’s one of the ones I brought with me on my fall tour, so I read it out loud, I don’t know, 30 times? Every night, I would change it, even if I was just changing a word or two, but I had the audience in front of me, so I thought, ‘Why would I waste this opportunity to discover if this word works better than this one?’ By the time I gave it to the New Yorker, the rewriting was really minimal.”

Most of the essays Sedaris is reading on his tour are about places he has visited, such as France, England, Kenya, Tanzania and Pakistan. He said these essays have taught him why he does not write for travel magazines.

“Travel magazines, you can never say anything bad about a place because the hotels and the restaurants and such are the advertisers, so they simply don’t allow it,” he said.

Thankfully, Sedaris had positive experiences in all the places he visited, especially Pakistan.

“I’ve never been to Disneyland, but it would really have to work to outdo Pakistan for the title of ‘The Friendliest Place on Earth,’” he said. “It was insane how friendly people were, how welcoming they were, complete strangers stopping you over and over and over in the street: ‘Can we get a picture together?’ ‘Can you talk to my wife on the telephone?’ … They don’t get any visitors, so when you bother going there, they’re just so friendly and honored.”

In addition, Santa Cruz audiences might hear some essays Sedaris had written during the previous tour alongside stories he wrote for this tour.

“Depending on how the new stuff goes, I might find myself reading things from the last tour at this show as well, but none of it will have been published in a book,” he said.

BAY AREA TOUR DATES

MAY 5: BERKELEY | CAL PERFORMANCES, UC BERKELEY

MAY 6: SANTA CRUZ |  SANTA CRUZ CIVIC AUDITORIUM

MAY 7: SANTA ROSA  | LUTHER BURBANK CENTER FOR THE ARTS

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David Sedaris launches new tour, new kids' book and lots of new gripes

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Humorist, writer, social commentator and observer of the human condition David Sedaris is known for his sharp wit, cynicism and knack for telling a story. He's shared with readers his decades-old tale of working as a Macy’s Christmas Elf in his "Santaland Diaries" essay and musings about the pandemic realities of isolation in his book “Happy Go Lucky."

Now, Sedaris adds the children’s book “ Pretty Ugly ” to his vast collection of books and essays.  He's setting off on a 7-month whirlwind international tour where he’ll introduce new essays, observations and hours-long book-signing sessions to the mix.

Sedaris joins host Robin Young to talk about his career, and of course, what bugs him these days.

Find tour dates here .

Book excerpt: 'Pretty Ugly'

By David Sedaris

This segment aired on April 10, 2024.

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Me Talk Pretty One Day Audio CD – Unabridged, April 26, 2022

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• Language English
• Publisher Little, Brown & Company
• Publication date April 26, 2022
• Dimensions 5.35 x 0.85 x 5.75 inches
• ISBN-10 1668613891
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• Publisher ‏ : ‎ Little, Brown & Company; Unabridged edition (April 26, 2022)
• Language ‏ : ‎ English
• ISBN-10 ‏ : ‎ 1668613891
• ISBN-13 ‏ : ‎ 978-1668613894
• Item Weight ‏ : ‎ 5 ounces
• Dimensions ‏ : ‎ 5.35 x 0.85 x 5.75 inches
• #2,790 in Parenting & Families Humor
• #4,580 in Humor Essays (Books)
• #9,611 in Essays (Books)

About the author

David sedaris.

David Sedaris lives in Paris. Raised in North Carolina, he has worked as a housecleaner and most famously, as a part-time elf for Macy's. Several of his plays have been produced, and he is a regular contributor to ESQUIRE and Public Radio International's 'This American Life'.

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