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David Sedaris is an adorable little sassmouth. His idiosyncratic brand of humor possesses many fine, laudable traits; it is by turns indecently irreverent, snotty, crude, painfully neurotic, silly, self-deprecating, and even downright morbid. Unfortunately, this collection of autobiographical essays just wasn’t as consistently funny and entertaining as his other books. The first half was genuinely hilarious, and reading it frequently led to uncontrollable giggling and explosions of loud, rambunctious laughter. The second part, however, had so many strained, awkward jokes that I spent most of the time cringing with embarrassment on their behalf; the poor things were trying way too hard.

If you want top-shelf Sedaris, I’d recommend starting with either Dress Your Family in Corduroy and Denim or perhaps Me Talk Pretty One Day, both of which provide much stronger examples of his distinctively snarky, sardonic wit.

I’ll leave you with this excerpt, which duly notes the intrinsic futility of attempting to read a book on a crowded cross-country bus, surrounded by aggressively opinionated hillbillies with no real conception of boundaries or personal space:

“Books offered no relief. Failing to act even as a shield, their presence attracted everything from mild curiosity to open hostility.

‘You think you’re going to learn something from a book?� said the man sitting next to me. ‘Let me tell you a little something, bookworm, you’ll learn more on this goddamned bus than you would in a whole…� He paused, attempting to recall the name given to such a place. ‘You’ll learn more here than in a whole pyramid full of books. You could fill a racetrack with every piece of shit ever written, but you’ll learn more right here.�

Having never seen a racetrack full of books, I thought it premature to contradict him.�