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I love David Sedaris, so I was bound to enjoy this second part of his Diaries, and I did.

But why?

The main reason is that Sedaris sees the humor in every day life. He watches the world around him and records it from his perspective. As a storyteller with a particular interest in telling and helping others tell personal stories, I can't help but be charmed by this and impressed by the way Sedaris goes through life.

What surprised me was the degree to which he's provoking people around him in order to create humorous or shocking (and he leans towards the latter) situations at the expense of others. It's as if as he got older, his internal dialogue lost its filter. It was no longer enough to wonder how one might respond to a provoking comment, but time to try it out and see the look on their faces. While the writing is good, this way of being in the world can be mean to people and I wonder if that's worth it.

As I read through 500 pages of extracts, I was struck over and over again by the fact that this is exactly the extracts. The daily discipline and work that it takes to create this much material is impressive. It speaks to someone who sits themselves down to do the work no matter what. There's a valuable lesson there for anyone who wants to write and write better, no matter your genre or topic.