When You Are Engulfed in Flames

This book is really funny. I love Mr. Sedaris's humor. It's personal and honest. I enjoyed reading this book and look forward to reading his other books.

Sedaris keeps getting better! Crossword puzzle is the BEST chapter of his yet. Who doesn't need a good laugh?! Oh - the talent! genius.

Every day, we're exposed to dozens of situations that we find funny, sad, ironic, thought provoking, etc. David Sedaris is one of the few people who makes note of such situations and then can turn them into best-selling books. His latest, When You Are Engulfed in Flames successfully follows his usual format.

As with most of his books, Sedaris scatters his stories between his childhood, his young adulthood, and the present. There are stories about his childhood home, one of his first apartments, trying to make friends with a spider, fighting with people on airplanes, and trying to scare away birds with the faces on LP covers. But much of this book is about smoking (The Smoking Section). For anyone who grew up in the 1960s and 1970s where almost everyone smoked anywhere they liked, this will take you down memory lane. Only Sedaris can find the irony in our attitudes about cigarettes. "It seems crazy to cut smoking mothers out of textbooks, but within a few years they won't be allowed in movies either. A woman can throw her newborn child from the roof of a high-rise building. She can then retrieve the body and stomp it while shooting into the windows of a day care center, but to celebrate these murders by lighting a cigarette is to send a harmful message." Also, "It's safe to assume that by 2025, guns will be sold in vending machines, but you won't be able to smoke anywhere in America." He's got a point! He also details (in humorous fashion) his battle to quit smoking.

I always look forward to Sedaris when I need a book that is entertaining. Also, when Sedaris pokes fun at himself (which he often does), I can often identify with his experiences. He has become one of those authors whose books I automatically read when they are published.

Being a ardent Sedaris fan, I was prepared to be delighted by Sedaris' latest book "When You're Engulfed in Flames"; I was expecting a satirical feat, a notable achievement as is his usual custom. What I got was a litany of aches, pains, ailments, and hypochondria of an aging man, getting older and sicker by the turning of every page, listing his illnesses, some real, some [perhaps] imaginary, from coughs, to cysts and boils, to gingivitis leading to gum surgery. This book was a major disappointment; it's definitely not a buy, may be a library check-out. Sorry David!

I laughed. Out loud. On an airplane reading this book. BTW... Also check out the interview he did with Jon Stewart about it. Hysterical.