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When You Are Engulfed in Flames
List price: $34.98
Sale price: $23.09
You save: $11.89 (34%)
Binding: Audio CD
Creator(s): Reader David Sedaris
Dewey Decimal Number: 814.54
EAN: 9781600241826
Edition: Unabridged
Format(s): AudiobookUnabridged
ISBN: 1600241824
Label: Hachette Audio
List Price: $34.98
Manufacturer: Hachette Audio
Number Of Items: 8
Package Dimensions:
Height: 1.6"
Width: 5.3"
Length: 1.6"
Weight: 0.5 lbs.
Product Group: Book
Address: 2008-06-03
Publisher: Hachette Audio
Release Date: 2008-06-03
Studio: Hachette Audio
Editorial Reviews
Product Description:
Once again, David Sedaris brings together a collection of essays so uproariously funny and profoundly moving that his legions of fans will fall for him once more. He tests the limits of love when Hugh lances a boil from his backside, and pushes the boundaries of laziness when, finding the water shut off in his house in Normandy, he looks to the water in a vase of fresh cut flowers to fill the coffee machine. From armoring the windows with LP covers to protect the house from neurotic songbirds to the awkwardness of having a lozenge fall from your mouth into the lap of a sleeping fellow passenger on a plane, David Sedaris uses life's most bizarre moments to reach new heights in understanding love and fear, family and strangers. Culminating in a brilliantly funny (and never before published) account of his venture to Tokyo in order to quit smoking, David Sedaris's sixth essay collection will be avidly anticipated.
Customer Reviews Average rating - 4.0
Rating - 5 Date: 2008-10-04
Content: 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...
Summary: seemed somewhat different...but not worse than others.
Rating - 5 Date: 2008-10-02
Content: 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-
Summary: Fabulous!
Rating - 2 Date: 2008-10-02
Content: 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.
Summary: Huh?
Rating - 4 Date: 2008-10-01
Content: 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!
Summary: don't make assumptions
Rating - 4 Date: 2008-09-29
Content: 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.
Summary: a catharsis of resignation
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