When You Are Engulfed in Flames

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Editorial reviews

Product Description
"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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Customer reviews

review by: date: 2008-08-21 rating:
funny stuff and good writing
yeah dubbleplusgood! what a fun read, crazy, zany, and neomisanthropic. cannot say i know what this last word means but---anyway, i have read naked and found it good and this last one is superduper. hut ab! which means in german: hats off to you DS!

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review by: Randi date: 2008-08-21 rating:
Light Entertainment
This book I found entertaining. After reading a long clunker like The Story of Edgar Sawtelle...this was a breath of fresh air. I liked it.

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review by: date: 2008-08-20 rating:
My kind of humor
I just discovered David Sedaris on NPR. I was intrigued by his show, so I researched him and found that he has written several books. I picked up the most recent, When You Are Engulfed in Flames, and read it within two days. His dry wit and sarcasm made me laugh out loud. While most of the essays are very funny, there are a few that aren't as entertaining. All in all, it's a great read for anyone who can see humor in the most disturbing scenarios.

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review by: smart flower date: 2008-08-20 rating:
better, actually
I liked Barrel Fever when it came out; I was lukewarm about Sedaris' subsequent books, but this one is really very funny and much more subtle. I might even say I like it the best.


review by: date: 2008-08-19 rating:
LOL
I was calling friends to read them excerpts from this book, only I was laughing so hard usually they couldn't understand me! I immediately bought tickets to Sedaris's next reading!

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