
Reviews

This was just okay. I've already forgotten most of the stories here. Nothing really sticks with you.

I like the non-fiction stories so much better than the fiction; if this was just the non-fiction it would be a solid 5 stars.

I was given this book for Christmas when I was eleven years old which may not have been the best idea. I don't think I got what I should've out of it or so I've thought for the past years. But maybe just maybe it's something different. The first essay in this book, The Santaland Diaries, is just sososo fantastic. But the rest of the pieces in this book don't really keep up with it, in favor of a kind of sensationalization. I've read one other David Sedaris book and a few other scattered essays and I think that these essays, apart from the first, are the Sedaris essays that I've read that feel like they're really trying the hardest to garner a reaction from the reader. But it wasn't a not-enjoyable experience— David Sedaris is a fantastic writer as always.

Three of the stories I had just read in other collections, so it only took a few hours to finish this one. I will probably reread it at Christmas time ; it’ll be an antidote to any saccharin nostalgia— or as a friend recently put it “it cleanses the palate”. Looking forward to that.

2% laugh out loud, 105% corny

I liked it. Good short stories, none really connected but they all focus on a different aspect of the holidays.

Delightfully wicked. I find myself hearing some of his characters voices within me. The judgements, the ridiculousness. The stories are unexpected and refreshing and help you see your own family’s crazy in a lighter way. As a writer, he also helps expand my sense of what I can do with little pieces of my real life, or how I can exaggerate to the point of narrative interest.
















