Review by New York Times Review
BLIND SPOT, by Teju Cole. (Random House, $40.) This lyrical essay in photographs paired with texts explores the mysteries of the ordinary. Cole's questioning, tentative habit of mind, suspending judgment while hoping for the brief miracle of insight, is a form of what used to be called humanism. MY FAVORITE THING IS MONSTERS, by Emil Ferris. (Fantagraphics, paper, $39.99.) In this graphic novel, drawn entirely on blue-lined notebook paper, a monster-loving 10-year-old in 1960s Chicago tries to make sense of a neighbor's death, her mother's decline from cancer, and her crush on another girl. The story is punctuated by drawings of the covers of the horror magazines she loves. CHEMISTRY, by Weike Wang. (Knopf, $24.95.) A Chinese-American graduate student struggles to find her place in the world, arguing with her parents about whether she can give up her Ph.D. and wondering whether to marry her boyfriend. Wang's debut novel is both honest and funny. CATTLE KINGDOM: The Hidden History of the Cowboy West, by Christopher Knowlton. (Eamon Dolan/Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, $29.) The 20-year grand era of cowboys and cattle barons is a story of boom and bust. Knowlton's deftnarrative is filled with sharp observations about cowboys and fortune-hunters. THEFT BY FINDING: Diaries (1977-2002), by David Sedaris. (Little, Brown, $28.) Over 25 years, these diaries mutate from a stress vent, to limbering-up exercises for the kind of writing Sedaris is going to do, to rough drafts. His developing voice - graceful, whining, hilarious - is the lifeline that pulls him through. TOWN IS BY THE SEA, by Joanne Schwartz. Illustrated by Sydney Smith. (Groundwood/House of Anansi, $19.95; ages 5 to 9.) This evocation of daily life in a picturesque, run-down seaside town in the 1950s stirs timeless, elemental emotions. The ocean light is contrasted with the coal mine far below, where a boy's father works and where he is destined (and resigned) to follow. OTIS REDDING: An Unfinished Life, by Jonathan Gould. (Crown Archetype, $30.) It's hard to write about Redding; he died at 26 and no one has anything nasty to say about him. Gould relies on interviews with his surviving family members and exhaustive research into his early years as a performer to tell his story. THE COMPLETE STORIES, by Leonora Carrington. Translated by Kathrine Talbot and Anthony Kerrigan. (Dorothy, paper, $16.) The Surrealist painter and fabulist wrote 25 fantastical and droll stories in English, Spanish and French. COCKFOSTERS: Stories, by Helen Simpson. (Knopf, $23.95.) Nine tales offer memorable characters, comic timing, originality, economy, poignancy and heart. Although they are entertaining, the mortality and the passage of time is an underlying theme. The full reviews of these and other recent books are on the web: nytimes.com/books
Copyright (c) The New York Times Company [August 30, 2019]
Review by Booklist Review
*Starred Review* Sedaris' diaries are the wellspring for his cuttingly funny autobiographical essays, and he now presents a mesmerizing volume of deftly edited passages documenting 35 years of weird, disturbing, and hilarious experiences. Theft by Finding, Sedaris' latest riddling title, following Let's Explore Diabetes with Owls (2013), is a sly allusion to his artistic method: he is a champion eavesdropper and omnivorous observer, and this selective diary is basically a set of meticulous field notes cataloging atrocious human behavior. In 1977, college-dropout Sedaris is hitchhiking out West, picking fruit for pitiful wages, and getting high. He returns to Raleigh, his hometown, where he works odd jobs, makes art, and matter-of-factly records a litany of alarming encounters with enraged strangers, a theme that continues after he moves to Chicago, attends art school, and begins writing in earnest, and then in New York, where he ascends. People throw rocks and bottles at him, insult and threaten him, demand money and cigarettes. He records a constant barrage of racist, sexist, and anti-gay outbursts, and portrays an array of hustlers, eccentrics, bullies, and misfits. Sedaris is caustically witty about his bad habits and artistic floundering. Even when he cleans up his act, falls in love, and achieves raving success, Sedaris remains self-deprecating and focused on the bizarre and the disquieting. A candid, socially incisive, and sharply amusing chronicle of the evolution of an arresting comedic artist. HIGH-DEMAND BACKSTORY: Devotees of mega-best-selling Sedaris have been waiting for access to his diary, and a robust marketing plan will get the word out fast.--Seaman, Donna Copyright 2017 Booklist
From Booklist, Copyright (c) American Library Association. Used with permission.
Review by Publisher's Weekly Review
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. (May) © Copyright PWxyz, LLC. All rights reserved.
(c) Copyright PWxyz, LLC. All rights reserved
Review by Library Journal Review
Humorist Sedaris's first volume of diaries offers his unique point of view in snippets from the years 1977-2002. The entries are irregular in length and veer wildly from topic to topic. In them you will find funny snark; portraits of ugly racism, sexism, and homophobia; Sedaris's drug use; life as a teacher, writer, and odd-job man; reliance on his parents; watching his sister's (Amy Sedaris) success; and his own slow journey toward his own. There are usually no connections between the short entries, and the author himself suggests that this is the kind of material to dip into at random and just listen for a while. Sedaris reads the entries himself, giving them authenticity and the intended delivery. With its eclectic, disconnected, and brief pieces, this is the ideal library checkout. However much of the audio-book the listener is able to get to before it's due back, it will be a rewarding experience. VERDICT Recommended for aspiring authors, NPR listeners, people interested in late 20th-century experiences, and, of course, fans of snark. ["For Sedaris fans, this is a primary source not to miss, but even the more casual reader will be drawn in, as the author comes into his own as a writer and a person": LJ 4/15/17 review of the Little, Brown hc.]-Tristan Boyd, Austin, TX © Copyright 2017. Library Journals LLC, a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.
(c) Copyright Library Journals LLC, a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.
Review by Kirkus Book Review
Raw glimpses of the humorist's personal life as he clambered from starving artist to household name.For years, Sedaris (Let's Explore Diabetes with Owls, 2013, etc.) has peppered his public readings with samples from his diaries, usually comic vignettes with a gently skewed view of humanity. Those are in abundance here. "Jews in concentration camps had shaved heads and tattoos," he writes after learning about a Chicago skinhead's arrest. "You'd think the anti-Semites would go for a different look." Forced to trim his toenails with poultry shears for lack of clippers, he writes, "that is exactly why you don't want people staying in your apartment when you're not there, or even when you are, really." The diaries also provide Ur-texts for some of the author's most famous stories, like his stint as a Macy's Christmas elf that led to his breakthrough radio piece, "The SantaLand Diaries," or the short-tempered, chalk-throwing French teacher in Me Talk Pretty One Day (2000). But though the mood is usually light, the book is also a more serious look into his travails as an artist and person: Sedaris is candid about his early ambitions to succeed as a writer, his imposter syndrome as a teacher, his squabbles with his never-satisfied dad and mentally ill sister, Tiffany, and his alcoholism. Even that last challenge, though, is framed as comic, or at least the stuff of non sequitur: "Today I saw a one-armed dwarf carrying a skateboard. It's been ninety days since I've had a drink." While Sedaris' career took flight during the period this book captures, success didn't change him much; it just introduced him to a broader swath of the world to observe and satirize. He can hardly believe his good luck, so he's charmed by the woman who, upon escorting him to a packed bookstore reading, exclaims, "goodness, they must be having a sale." A surprisingly poignant portrait of the artist as a young to middle-aged man. Copyright Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.
Copyright (c) Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.
