Me Talk Pretty One Day - David Sedaris

Rating: ★★
07/02/14

I've said it a hundred times: I simply love humor. Life is hard enough to be reading only serious and deep classics and not being able to have a good sense of humor at the same time. And... I've said it a million times: not everybody can be funny. It's not that easy. So, when I find a writer that can be entertaining and smart at the same time, I start this weird and awkward fangirling like I'm a teenager at a (boy band name here) concert. AND when I find a writer that can be funny at describing human nature, with all its virtues and miseries, and has that twisted, ironic, witty (awful word) writing style that I like, well, I become the biggest and most annoying fan EVER.

Having said that, I must admit I'm not a Sedaris fan. Not after reading this book, anyway. Maybe there's another one much better out there (if that exists, please, let me know).

I have to be honest, there were several problems. I couldn't connect with this book that much because there were many references I didn't get. I had to search for a lot of them in order to get the joke. And that makes the reading experience too slow and dull. Not to mention it makes me feel plain stupid. I couldn't help feeling like an outsider. Not all the time, of course. Just during some passages, I felt like I was reading private jokes. And it's okay. It's normal. It happens with that kind of books in here, too. Still, I laughed hysterically with other American writers so I thought this guy wasn't going to be an exception. (It was.)

But that wasn't the main problem. Besides the outsider kind of feeling, some of his stuff just wasn't funny. For example, there are a lot of amusing ways to say you're stupid. There's ALOT of material to work with! Well, I don't think he found the material. Not even a tool. This book had a promising start, I even said "Ha! Funny", and then it kind of went downhill for me. There are funny-ish lines all over the book, but it wasn't a hilarious read, at all. I smiled, yet I couldn't laugh. I don't care if he exaggerated/invented most of his stories; I want to laugh, damn it! And if you can't make me laugh, not even with your made up anecdotes, then, what's the point?

It was okay. I liked it... I think. I don't know what else to say.

Gah. 2.5 stars.

* Photo credit: Book cover via Goodreads.