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The History Connection - When You Are Engulfed in Flames
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List Price: $25.99
Our Price: $11.04
Your Save: $ 14.95 ( 58% )
Availability: Usually ships in 24 hours
Manufacturer: Little, Brown and Company
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Average Customer Rating:  
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Binding: Hardcover
Dewey Decimal Number: 814.54
EAN: 9780316143479
ISBN: 0316143472
Label: Little, Brown and Company
Manufacturer: Little, Brown and Company
Number Of Items: 1
Number Of Pages: 336
Publication Date: 2008-06-03
Publisher: Little, Brown and Company
Release Date: 2008-06-03
Studio: Little, Brown and Company
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Spotlight customer reviews:
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Customer Rating:
Summary: seemed somewhat different...but not worse than others.
Comment: This was a nice read--but, a little different from other David Sedaris books...not in a bad way. This book is about David's adult life...
Customer Rating:
Summary: Fabulous!
Comment: I really was surprised by how much I enjoyed this. A few times, I laughed aloud- quite unusual for me if I am alone reading. Honestly, I was sorry when I finished the book-
Customer Rating:
Summary: Huh?
Comment: After seeing some of the reviews on Amazon, I'm wondering if I even read the same book as everyone else. Everyone touts David Sedaris as this great comedic writer, and raves that his stream-of-consciousness short stories are hilarious or poignant by turns. There was the odd humorous moment here and there, but I can't say I found this book "laugh-out-loud funny" at all. Mostly I found it to be a lot of pointless rambling in a person's mind...which is probably fairly realistic, but not particularly interesting to me. Maybe I'm just not cut out for the short story style of writing.
Customer Rating:
Summary: don't make assumptions
Comment: to those of you reviewing this book and other David Sedaris books, please don't assume as some of you have noted, that your older Aunt, mother or grandmother shouldn't read this for fear of being shocked. Come on now, getting older does not mean one's sense of humor is diminished.
The book is funny, as are all his books and yes even us old women get it!
Customer Rating:
Summary: a catharsis of resignation
Comment: David Sedaris is a writer who appreciates the finer things in life. The finer things we either ignore or simply don't see on a day-to-day basis. Throw in a dripping glob of neuroses and an erudite air of resignation and you too can arrive at the astute observations he so dutifully illustrates in his latest book, When You are Engulfed in Flames.
I think of Sedaris as an unconventional connoisseur of sorts. From sweat angels to the acumen of easily procuring dishwashing jobs, Stadium Pals, flaming mice, husbandry for spiders named "Big Chief Tommy", confronting airplane irritants, and finally to "finishing" smoking while learning Japanese, his musings evoke a nostalgia for times and things past never yet experienced.
This particular collection of essays centers around movement. Specifically regarding travel, Sedaris shares his experiences either en route to or upon arrival of the multitude of destinations to which he's traveled, some foreign, some domestic, all bizarre. Whether it be Japan, Thailand, France, the West Coast, Chicago, North Carolina, New York or wherever-have-you, his stories are ironic in that they all focus not on his destination, but rather the inner processing of his immediate surroundings, most notably his melancholy paranoia and courageous cynicism. It's more about the people he meets and his subsequent detachment from the normal workings of the world, not just the places he visits. It is the journey apparently, not the destination that matters. Sedaris' latest book is sublimely resigned, a comforting read for when the good times are indeed literally killing you.
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Editorial Reviews:
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"David Sedaris's ability to transform the mortification of everyday life into wildly entertaining art," (The Christian Science Monitor) is elevated to wilder and more entertaining heights than ever in this remarkable new book.
Trying to make coffee when the water is shut off, David considers using the water in a vase of flowers and his chain of associations takes him from the French countryside to a hilariously uncomfortable memory of buying drugs in a mobile home in rural North Carolina. In essay after essay, Sedaris proceeds from bizarre conundrums of daily life-having a lozenge fall from your mouth into the lap of a fellow passenger on a plane or armoring the windows with LP covers to protect the house from neurotic songbirds-to the most deeply resonant human truths. Culminating in a brilliant account of his venture to Tokyo in order to quit smoking, David Sedaris's sixth essay collection is a new masterpiece of comic writing from "a writer worth treasuring" (Seattle Times).
Praise for When You Are Engulfed in Flames:
"Older, wiser, smarter and meaner, Sedaris...defies the odds once again by delivering an intelligent take on the banalities of an absurd life." --Kirkus Reviews
This latest collection proves that not only does Sedaris still have it, but he's also getting better....Sedaris's best stuff will still--after all this time--move, surprise, and entertain." --Booklist
Table of Contents:
It's Catching
Keeping Up
The Understudy
This Old House
Buddy, Can You Spare a Tie?
Road Trips
What I Learned
That's Amore
The Monster Mash
In the Waiting Room
Solutions to Saturday's Puzzle
Adult Figures Charging Toward a Concrete Toadstool
Memento Mori
All the Beauty You Will Ever Need
Town and Country
Aerial
The Man in the Hut
Of Mice and Men
April in Paris
Crybaby
Old Faithful
The Smoking Section
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