Theft by Finding

Only David Sedaris should narrate books by David Sedaris. He's simply wonderful. Covering the period ranging from his starving early days to his much-deserved outrageous success, these diary entries are well worth hearing, including an entire entry of "uh's." Even his unfinished ramblings are well crafted, and Sedaris is truly a delight to hear. He's candid about his early drug use and drinking, self-deprecating about perceived flaws, and completely honest about his emotions. With his inimitable sweetly sarcastic delivery, he precisely records encounters with anti-gay thugs and gay perverts and recounts examples of the ignorant sexist, racist, and vicious comments he experiences. Everyone who listens to these diary entries, beginning in 1977 and going thru 2002, will be satisfied, but waiting eagerly for more, narrated by Sedaris, of course. S.J.H. Winner of AudioFile Earphones Award � AudioFile 2017, Portland, Maine

Starred review from March 13, 2017
This American Life and New Yorker humorist Sedaris (Naked) displays the raw material for his celebrated essays with these scintillating excerpts from his personal journals. Sedaris collects entries stretching back to his penniless salad days working odd jobs (apple picker, construction worker, house cleaner, a now-famous stint as a Christmas elf), hanging out at the International House of Pancakes and wrestling half-heartedly with drink and drugs. He moves on to his breakthrough as a memoirist and playwright and then to later embroilments and obsessions, including a fixation on feeding flies to pet spiders. Here as elsewhere, Sedaris is a latter-day Charlie Chaplin: droll, put-upon but not innocent, and besieged by all sorts of obstreperous or menacing folks. The frequent appearance of colorful weirdos spouting pithy dialogue may strike some readers as unlikely to be entirely true. But Sedaris’s storytelling, even in diary jottings, is so consistently well-crafted and hilarious that few will care whether it’s embroidered.