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    The Best of Me
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    The Best of Me
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    The Best of Me
    Audiobook13 hours

    The Best of Me

    Written by David Sedaris

    Narrated by David Sedaris

    4/5

    ()

    Currently unavailable

    Currently unavailable

    About this audiobook

    “Genius… It is miraculous to read these pieces… You must read The Best of Me.” —Andrew Sean Greer, New York Times Book Review

    David Sedaris’s best stories and essays, spanning his remarkable career—as selected and read by the author himself. Featuring fresh and classic recordings, including a new essay and an interview exclusive to the audiobook.

    A New York Times Book Review Editors’ Choice
    A CNN and Christian Science Monitor Best Book of the Month​

    For more than twenty-five years, David Sedaris has been carving out a unique literary space, virtually creating his own genre. A Sedaris story may seem confessional, but is also highly attuned to the world outside. It opens our eyes to what is at absurd and moving about our daily existence. And it is almost impossible to listen without laughing.
     
    Now, for the first time collected in one volume, the author brings us his funniest and most memorable work. In these stories, Sedaris shops for rare taxidermy, hitchhikes with a lady quadriplegic, and spits a lozenge into a fellow traveler’s lap. He drowns a mouse in a bucket, struggles to say “give it to me” in five languages, and hand-feeds a carnivorous bird.
     
    But if all you expect to find in Sedaris’s work is the deft and sharply observed comedy for which he became renowned, you may be surprised to discover that his words bring more warmth than mockery, more fellow-feeling than derision. Nowhere is this clearer than in his writing about his loved ones. In these essays, Sedaris explores falling in love and staying together, recognizing his own aging not in the mirror but in the faces of his siblings, losing one parent and coming to terms—at long last—with the other.
     
    Taken together, the performances in TheBest of Me reveal the wonder and delight Sedaris takes in the surprises life brings him. No experience, he sees, is quite as he expected—it’s often harder, more fraught, and certainly weirder—but sometimes it is also much richer and more wonderful.
     
    Full of joy, generosity, and the incisive humor that has led David Sedaris to be called “the funniest man alive” (Time Out New York), The Best of Me spans a career spent watching and learning and laughing—quite often at himself—and invites listeners deep into the world of one of the most brilliant and original writers of our time.

    The Best of Me AUDIOBOOK TRACK LISTING
    Introduction (new recording)
     
    From Barrel Fever 1994         
    Glen’s Homophobia Newsletter Vol. 3, No. 2. 
     
    From Holidays on Ice 1994      
    Front Row Center with Thaddeus Bristol  (new recording)
    Christmas Means Giving  (new recording)
     
    From Naked 1997
    the incomplete quad  (new recording)
     
    From the New Yorker 
    Girl Crazy  (new recording)
    Card Wired  (new recording)
    How to Spend the Budget Surplus  (new recording)
     
    From Me Talk Pretty One Day 2000
    You Can’t Kill the Rooster (new recording)
    Me Talk Pretty One Day  (new recording)
    Jesus Shaves  (new recording)
     
    From the New Yorker
    Dog Days    (new recording)

    From Dress Your Family in Corduroy and Demin 2004           
    Us and Them 
    Let It Snow 
    The Ship Shape 
    The Girl Next Door 
    Repeat After Me   
    Six to Eight Black Men (live recording)
    Possession 
    Nuit of the Living Dead 
     
    From When You Are Engulfed in Flames 2008                      
    Solution to Saturday’s Puzzle  (live recording)
    The Understudy
    Town and Country    (live recording)
    In the Waiting Room  (live recording)
     
    From The New Yorker
    Undecided
    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherHachette Audio
    Release dateNov 3, 2020
    ISBN9781549160769
    Unavailable
    The Best of Me
    Author

    David Sedaris

    David Sedaris is the author of the internationally bestselling Barrel Fever, Naked, Holidays on Ice, Me Talk Pretty One Day, Dress Your Family in Corduroy and Denim, When You Are Engulfed in Flames, and Squirrel Seeks Chipmunk.

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    Reviews for The Best of Me

    4/5

    131 ratings11 reviews

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    • 3/5
      Well written and funny, I will say this is a great book and my introduction to David Sedaris. I’m not sure whether my attention wasn’t quite where it should have been, or if his style just isn’t my thing, but I wasn’t captivated. Still though, I’d recommend it to a friend.
    • 4/5
      Good stuff of course, but I had heard virtually all of these stories already. I think they were mostly drawn from recent collections and not so much from old ones which I’m less familiar with. Or maybe I’ve read them all now? (Horrors)

      There was a one-hour interview with Sedaris at the end,that was kind of interesting.

      Of course, I listened to this on audiobook.
    • 4/5
      This Sedaris collection overlaps with the last one I listened to, so it wasn't quite as funny.
    • 4/5
      A greatest hits collection of the author's work, pulling from both fiction and nonfiction. It was very enjoyable to sit back and revisit these great moments in the author's canon.
    • 4/5
      Short stories from Sedaris. Some of them were printed in other books.
    • 4/5
      David Sedaris has put together a series of essays that he has enjoyed and gone back to over the years. I laughed out loud at some of these and had my heartstrings tugged at others. I enjoyed the author's reading of his essays, I feel that having him read them was authentic.
      Sedaris explores family and traditions, and is a keen observer of other people. The interview at the end of the audiobook is also enjoyable.
    • 5/5
      The Best of Me by David Sedaris is a very highly recommended collection of 46 essays spanning his career. All of these previously published essays were personally chosen by Sedaris as representing the best of his writing. This is a collection for fans who will appreciate seeing what he has selected as the best and this would be an excellent introduction for those new to Sedaris.

      David Sedaris is one of the few humorists who can keep me laughing even if I have read the essay before. As with any collection, not every single piece would have been chosen by me (I believe there were 2 I didn't care for as much) but that is simply quibbling over what is a masterful presentation of many of his memorable pieces. His writing can leave me laughing so hard I'm crying and then continuing to chuckle long afterwards. There are other essays that are serious and heartbreaking as events from his life and family are the subject. Now, I believe it is that time of year to reread Holidays on Ice.
    • 4/5
      As always, some of the stories were uproariously funny and some were sad. I always enjoy David Sedaris though because of his unique way of recounting an incident and his unusual view of the world.
    • 4/5
      audiobook- humor/short fiction and biographical essays (old classics as well as more newly published, relatively unheard works spanning the author's long career; don't skip the bonus interview at the end)
    • 4/5
      Pandemic read. Excellent. being well versed in David Sedaris, I agree that these are some of the best.
    • 4/5
      I really like David Sedaris, so I seek out his writing often in various places. In The Best of Me, he has gathered many of his favorite essays and stories and put them chronologically into one collection. For readers like me--familiar with his work--it is fun to reread favorites, find new pieces, and to see his growth as a writer. For new readers, it’s a good introduction to his often unbelievable comments, brutal honesty, and wicked sense of humor. A definite recommendation that can be read straight through for those with stronger constitutions, or taken one story and time for others.