subject: Dress Your Family in Corduroy and Denim. A Review [print this page] Dress Your Family in Corduroy and Denim / by David Sedaris. Time Warner AudioBooks, 2004. Unabridged on 5 CDs. ISBN 9781586215026
Dress Your Family in Corduroy and Denim by David Sedaris quickly hit the top of the New York Times best-seller list for non-fiction after it was published in 2004. The audio version was nominated for a Grammy award for best spoken-word album.
Many of the stories first appeared in magazines or on the radio program This American Life. Any really good writing deserves repeated reading. In reading them for the audio edition, Sedaris provides exactly the right inflection to give them their greatest impact.
One of America's most original comic writers, Sedaris is a master of sarcasm and self-deprecating humor. His material comes from his own life, from growing up in a family of six children to his adulthood. Whether portraying his family as normal, dysfunctional, or some odd combination of both, he clearly loves them even as he milks all of their squabbles for laughs. Not all of the stories are intended to invoke thigh-slapping laughter. He mixes many with a certain melancholy, and some are even sad.
His stories describe very mundane, everyday events, like a family vacation, mopping a floor, giving someone directions, but he knows how to tell them to make them interesting and to cause his readers and listeners to recognize something of their own experiences and observations in his. Beneath a very ordinary surface, he finds all kinds of hidden motives and obscure desires.
After six years, Dress Your Family in Corduroy and Denim remains among Sedaris' best-loved creations. All-Purpose Guru Alert offers a different high-quality bargain book like this, in print or audio, every day. Stop by often.
