Dress Your Family in Corduroy and Denim

Dress Your Family in Corduroy and Denim is my Book #8.

I finally got to finish a David Sedaris book and I'm glad I did. I first heard about him some years back, and I had a copy of Me Talk Pretty One Day sitting on my shelf for like years, really. I'm not really sure why I didn't read it, except now I sort of regret it. As I've previously said, I finished half of Me Talk Pretty sitting in a bookstore one afternoon. Dress Your Family in Corduroy and Denim was my commuter and bedtime reading material for a little over a week.

It's a fast read: he's funny, and he makes the most mundane topics special. Whether he's arguing with his boyfriend, looking for a new apartment, or just scrubbing his sister's floors, you'd have chuckling moments. Although with this one, you get the sense that Sedaris wants to be more than funny, an I-can-also-feel-pain-and-be-insightful-dammit! feel to it. He talks about being cast out of his parents' house not for boozing or for dropping out of college but for being gay, about an all-boys sleep over that feels a bit strange in the end, or about befriending the nine-year-old girl next door who could cuss like a sailor and steal the pants off you. And somehow there's that feel. I'd say that Me Talk Pretty was funnier, but this one had its moments too. And it makes you feel like his family is your family, only that they don't really know you. But who can really claim that their families know them, as in really really know them anyhow?