I went to the Barnes & Noble in Dublin looking for David Sedaris’s Me Talk Pretty One Day. I’d heard how funny it was, and I was just craving a funny read.
The woman at the store told me they had one copy left. I was thrilled. It felt lucky. I felt chosen for about ten nanoseconds.
I followed her down the aisle to the S’s, and there he was. Sedaris. A couple of titles. And next thing you know – Her fingers start zigzagging across the spines, left to right, a little faster now. Then she looks over at me with a little smirk to burst my bubble and share with me that…….
The one last copy was not there.
Wah wah.
I was already figuring out where I’d drive next. I was in that mode. I was getting my hands on this book. The prowl was on.
I made my way toward the front with a big upside-down smile, only to get sidetracked by a book Goebi had been telling me about, Arundhati Roy book. And there I was at the intersection of spirituality and nonfiction. I mean, literally. Both aisles were calling me.
And then, pow. Right there in my face, on the wrong shelf, sat Me Talk Pretty One Day.
I lit up. I grabbed that copy because that shit was meant for me.
I’ve said this before. We don’t find books. They find us.
I mean, what are the chances? I’m no mathematician, but if I had to guess, I’d say I was standing among a million books. It’s a big Barnes & Noble. There’s a whole second floor and a glass elevator in the middle of the store that goes up so slowly you have time to reconsider whatever you went upstairs for.
I sat down on this little stool, popped the book open, and started reading. I was barely a paragraph in when I started laughing hysterically. Out loud. I mean, it was crazy. I had a complete and total laughing spell right there inside Barnes & Noble. It took me a few minutes to regain my composure. My face was drenched in laugh tears.
I got out of there fast. Got in my car and raced home, jumped into my PJs, and cuddled up with Kashi, my badass Doberman. I read, laughed, and laugh-cried for almost two hours.
I’m an avid reader, but I usually read in spurts, thirty minutes at a time. I don’t generally sit for two hours unless I’m truly enraptured with a book. David Sedaris had me at the first paragraph.
What Makes David Sedaris So Funny
In the title essay, Sedaris is forty-one and taking French in Paris. He’s telling you about the places he can get into at a discount with his student ID when he gets to an amusement park with a billboard of a dinosaur in a canoe, eating “what appears to be a ham sandwich.”
It’s the what appears to be that gets me. We’re already looking at a dinosaur in a canoe, and here he is being careful about the sandwich. There’s also the fact that he’s a grown man going back to school, nervous about how he’ll fit in, and one of the first things he tells you about is where he can get in cheap with his student ID.
Then he gets to class. Everyone seems younger, better dressed, and much more at ease than he is. He feels like “Pa Kettle trapped backstage after a fashion show.” There’s a whole room full of people speaking French, and with that one line you know exactly how it feels to be him standing in it.
Read the title essay in Esquire.
Four David Sedaris Books to Look For
1. Me Talk Pretty One Day
This is where I’d start. The essays range from childhood speech therapy to trying to learn French as an adult. If you’re craving a funny read the way I was, get your hands on this one.
2. Dress Your Family in Corduroy and Denim
This collection spends more time with the Sedaris family, from the things siblings do to embarrass one another to the old grievances they can still recall in remarkable detail.
3. Calypso
Sedaris buys a beach house on the North Carolina coast and brings his family together there. The essays make room for grief, getting older, and the peculiar things people do when they’ve known each other all their lives.
4. Happy-Go-Lucky
These essays take him through the pandemic and his father’s final years. It’s a later collection to reach for if you’re curious how he writes about family as everybody gets older.
For Reading in Bed
My setup that night was PJs, Kashi, and the last copy of Me Talk Pretty One Day. If you like to read in bed, here are a couple of things to keep by the nightstand, including a clip-on reading light and a holder to keep the book open.
SHOP MY READING COLLECTION
More from Sue’s Blues
Read my review of Steinbeck’s Cannery Row.
Hopefully this has inspired you do cuddle up with a good read and just escape the rat race for a little while.
