Theft by Finding: Diaries
Ratings43
Average rating3.9
Ok I've lost my place and I'm calling it. I was using this as background noise more or less while I did housework, but this collection for me is the epitome of ‘just because one can does not mean one should'.
There are a few morsels here and there and probably a handful of gems, but currently I'd rather spend my time on other things.
Keep it up David, I understand that not every project is genius.
I also keep meaning to get and watch “Do I Sound Gay?”
This one starts slow, and doesn't follow the traditional essay structure of Sedaris's other work, but once you get past the first few years (in which he's clearly in the early stages of finding his voice), this book is such a delight. I heard him do a reading from bits of it, or perhaps the next installment, at a theater in Boston, and I was cracking up the whole time. Sedaris has such a knack for pulling the absurd and hilarious out of the everyday; he sees the world as this cast of crazy, but still loveable, characters, and that's a fun frame in which to live one's life. It inspired to me to want to write a similar kind of diary, cataloguing less the thoughts and feelings that plague me, and more the weird joys and oddities in the world and ourselves.
Well written, interesting and funny stories and the beginning was a fun trip back to the past. On the other hand, after the first half I ended up with snark-fatigue and had to push myself to finish.
Pepys is next :-P
But actually: I love this. It's wonderfully uneven. Boring, funny, sad, scatological, and gay. But not all at once.
A bit profane and scattershot, but you should expect that from a book that excerpts from diaries spanning decades.
I was expecting to like this more than I did, considering I've loved several of his books of essays. The beginning years are ROUGH, but the closer we get to the present, the more his writing expands into the type of material we know from his other books, more cohesive, more long-form stories. Some of the entries were very good: poignant or heartbreaking or funny, as the situation called for. And it was really sweet getting to see how he was first introduced to Hugh and how their relationship began! I think it was just kind of jarring to go from one thing to the next so quickly, as diaries tend to do.
In the preface, he says he doesn't expect anyone to read this straight through, but just flip through it more like a coffee table book. I read it straight through, though, and...well, I maybe would recommend his suggestion of treating it more like a coffee table book? I do love David Sedaris, and I've been to some of his readings and always love his diary excerpts. And it was cool to see some diary entries that I recognized had been later turned into full fledged essays or stories–especially all the stuff about his French teacher.
There is a fair amount of stuff in here, especially in the earlier years, that's a little jarring to read now–there are many entries where he just copies down verbatim very offensive conversations he's overheard without much comment, and I understand that he's presenting them like, “Wow I can't believe these people said this out loud!!” and it's the kind of thing that he can maybe pull off in a story or essay, but here it's kind of like “wow I just read the n-word a bunch of times.”
IDK, I think I'd have enjoyed it more if it were annotated in some way? But it is what it is, and there are some definite gems in here, but I'd probably only recommend it to die-hard Sedaris fans.
First book I've read in a long time that kept me up way past my bedtime. Just couldn't stop reading those quirky little diary entries.