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What are readers saying about Me Talk Pretty One Day?
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A Reader posted a review at 2007-11-15 09:59:40.
(Language: English)
 
This is one of the few books that makes me laugh out loud every time I read it (which has been many, many times). Also, I've even cried when reading "The Youth in Asia," after we had to put one of our cats down. I love how Sedaris portrays himself and his family in their own quirky but loving way, and finds humor through the dry and the pathetic.I originally thought it was a novel until I peeked in it at Barnes and Noble. Then I had to buy it, and now my copy is rather beat up because of how often I've carried it around with me on campus or just picked it up again to read a few of my favorite essays. I love the French teacher, haha. 
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A Reader posted a review at 2011-09-12 05:16:46.
(Language: English)
Best on audio. Particularly love the stuff on performance art.
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A Reader posted a review at 2008-01-23 10:44:37.
(Language: English)
Unfortunately, I can only start off the review with a cliché: In turns side-splitting and spellbinding, Sedaris' debut marks the return of the true popular satirist. Me Talk Pretty One Day is an astoundingly funny, smart and incisive look at the life and surroundings of Sedaris' as he goes from one extreme of society, the beehive that is New York City, the tastes, fashions, and culture therein, to the rather pastoral idyll that is the French countryside, where his limited French phrase "Would you like a bottleneck?" is not understood by the locals, but he is cheerfully accepted. The distance, both ideologically and culturally, between his two homes has Sedaris' pointing out how artificial the differences are between each of us. Definitely worth a read!
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A Reader posted a review at 2008-06-11 08:17:41.
(Language: English)
Sometimes I get mad at David Sedaris for bogarting all the wit. This guy’s world view is filled with observations 90% of the population is not capable of making. I never get tired of him. I will say that I liked the second half of this book a lot more than the first, simply because the French scenes crack me up like crazy. And I think I was a little uneasy during the tales of substance fog. Not that I’m a posterchild for a Drug Free America or anything. I just have difficulty finding humor in people who are so severely fucked up on the hard shit all the time. Addicts freak me out, so those were a hard couple chapters. But overall… Hey, it’s Sedaris. He’s name brand genius.
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A Reader posted a review at 2007-09-11 04:15:09.
(Language: English)
this is pretty funny... I liked the passage in "The City of Light in the Dark," where David goes to revival theaters 5 or 6 times a week and watches American films. He writes, "My guests' decisions prove that I am a poor judge of my own character...they invariably opt for a walk through the Picasso museum or a tour of the cathedral, saying, "I didn't come all the way to Paris so I can sit in the dark..'.Yes', I say,' but this is the French dark. It's...darker than the dark we have back home" (206).I also liked the part in "See You Again Yesterday," where he discusses attributes that he looks for in a potential boyfriend which is basically a list of things that a person cannot do. "They could not consider the human scalp an appropriate palette for self-expression, could not own a rainbow-striped flag, and could not say that they had 'discovered' any shop or restaurant currently listed in the phone book...In terms of mutual interests, I figured we could spend the rest of our lives discussing how much we hated the aforementioned characterstics" (154). Lastly, in "Make that a Double" it was amusing to learn that chickens and sandwiches are masculine whereas typewriters, the word masculinty, and the New England are all feminine (188-189).
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A Reader posted a review at 2007-08-29 02:25:45.
(Language: English)
I got the feeling while I was reading this book, that I should have been laughing more….or I should have been laughing. Full stop. But I didn’t laugh that many times during this autobiographical tale. It begins with Sedaris’s struggle with a lisp in early childhood and his ruse with his speech pathologist to never say any words with the letter ‘s’ in them. He also takes us through his move to France and learning the language there. In one of his classes he manages to utter the words “me talk pretty one dayâ€. As a person interested in languages, I admire him for putting himself in such a situation where he either sinks or swims. Would love to get the courage to do that someday.
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A Reader posted a review at 2008-02-29 01:26:32.
(Language: English)
Too funny. This book and "Blue Like Jazz" have been my favorite essay collections ever. This book is more of a collections of anecdotes and the lessons learned therefrom, but it is laugh-out-loud hilarious while remaining insightful and instructive. A great read. There's one word that really describes this book well: hilarious. A collection of memoir-esque essays, Sedaris' frank honesty and unaffected stupidity make for an anecdotal collection that only hints at the plethora of forgettable adventures that he retrospectively immortalizes. Sedaris reflecs on his crazy family, his homosexuality, the pros and cons of drug abuse, life as an artist, and being an American in France in a way that keeps the reader laughing out loud throughout the book and chuckling in fond memory of its insightful hilarity long after the last page is turned.
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A Reader posted a review at 2011-09-14 05:00:50.
(Language: English)
Hilarious!!
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A Reader posted a review at 2011-09-29 12:18:08.
(Language: English)
Stuff of legend.
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A Reader posted a review at 2007-10-19 06:29:23.
(Language: English)
I have such mixed feelings about this book...though I think the fact that I gave it away immediately after finishing it says a lot about my ultimate opinion. Sedaris is at once both darkly witty and infuriatingly narcissistic. Some of his observations of the idiosyncratic nature of American and more specifically New York life are just downright hilarious, but always hanging in the shadows is a level of self-absorption that I know would drive me crazy if I ever met him. I got a couple moments of entertainment out of this book, but not enough to read it again or indeed to seek out any more of his writing. His sister Amy, though, sounds like a hoot.
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A Reader posted a review at 2011-09-17 10:49:24.
(Language: English)
I didn't love this one. Liked the swearing in the rooster story...but aside from that this was forgetable. One more David Sedaris book and then I'm callin' it done.
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A Reader posted a review at 2010-08-12 02:24:48.
(Language: English)
David Sedaris is a self-deprecating, homosexual humorist who is out to pull your legs along with his. How often do you hear a mouthful like that?? Its funny, witty & will bring a smile to your face more than once whilst reading. A fun book to take on holiday or to chill out with after a long tiring day.However the ending was kinda dissapointing.
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A Reader posted a review at 2007-06-29 09:02:59.
(Language: English)
David Sedaris tells the story of his life in four- or five-page vignettes that had me chuckling. Of how he was sentenced to speech therapy as a child, therapy that was forced down the lisping throats of all the budding homosexuals his elementary school had to offer. Of how his father was suddenly consumed with a the idea of a Von Trapp-style family jazz band, and so subjected his son to guitar lessons with a midget. Of deciding that he wanted to go to France, not because he felt any sort of affinity for the French, but because he felt like it would be an adventure in helplessness, and so set about winning the heart of a young man he happened to know who happened to have a small cottage in Normandy. Of how he then refused to learn any of the language except the most obscure, useless nouns. Sedaris prefers the dudes, but at no time does he force his sexual preference down your throat, as some, I don't know what you call them...minorities? Fringe societies? Oppressed peoples? Anyways, people who feel like they have something to prove, like they always have to be on the offense (I'm looking at YOU, feminists). Sedaris is just like, hey, a bunch of funny things happened to me. And then he tells you about them with wit and charm.
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A Reader posted a review at 2008-02-24 08:31:31.
(Language: English)
Hilarious, and unmemorable. This was a book that had me laughing out loud (to the annoyance of my fellow New Yorkers sharing my subway car (as expressed and publicized by much teeth-sucking), and which I retained nothing of after I turned the last page. I doubt I’ll pick up his other books.My favorite passage, occurring at a language school where students are called upon to explain Christ (dead and subsequently risen) in a language they do not quite speak:The Italian nanny was attempting to answer the teacher’s latest question when the Moroccan student interrupted, shouting, “Excuse me, but what’s an Easter?”It would seem that despite having grown up in a Muslim country, she would have heard it mentioned once or twice, but no. “I mean it,” she said. “I have no idea what you people are talking about.”The teacher called upon the rest of us to explain.The Poles led the charge to the best of their ability. “It is,” said one, “a party for the little boy of God who call his self Jesus and…oh, shit.” She faltered and her fellow countryman came to her aid.“He call his self Jesus and then he die one day on two…morsels of…lumber.”The rest of the class jumped in, offering bits of information that would have given the pope an aneurysm.“He die one day and then he go above of my head to live with your father.”“He weared of himself the long hair and after he die, the first day he come back here for to say hello to the peoples.”“He nice, the Jesus.”“He make the good things, and on the Easter we be sad because somebody makes him dead today.”
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Laurens posted a review at 2009-11-09 08:14:28.
(Language: English)
It takes guts and a degree of honesty bordering on masochism to open your cupboard and expose your skeletons for everyone to see, and it takes something special to translate these into prose. Like David Sedaris has done in 'Me Talk Pretty One Day', a collection of autobiographical vignettes that recount his formative years in North Carolina up to his days as an American expat in France. Sedaris has a keen eye for the absurd and these little things in every day life that, if dismissed and allowed to pass by and float away, are mundane, but if captured and preserved on paper, will reveal kernels of truth of whatever subject you happen to take in. Through well picked accounts, we get to know Sedaris, his mom and dad, and some of his siblings, intimately. These complete strangers become individuals you'd have the feeling you know or at least recognize the type of by the time you've read the book through. You’d grin and give a knowing nod should you chance upon Sedaris in the street. Everybody has a scrape with fear of being left behind and made an outcast like what Sedaris as a fifth-grader experienced when he had to enrol in his school's speech therapy program to cure his lisp, unsuccessfully though, which made him worry that other students in the program might succeed, "turn their lives around, and leave me stranded." Most of us, as a kid, has probably dealt with dad trying to push his unrealized dream upon you. It's his dream, not yours, but he's dad, after all, and so you give in and give it a go. Sedaris did. Against his will he took guitar lessons, only to freak out his midget guitar teacher. David Sedaris's dad, Lou, to whom he dedicates his book to, is a (now retired) IBM engineer, a jazz aficionado, a closet painter, and, like in most families, at a loss when it comes to communicating with his offspring. As offspring, you're probably just as stumped. Unless you're a last born and refers to him as "b**ch" and "motherf**ker". It worked for Paul, "my father's best ally and worst nightmare" Sedaris writes about his youngest sibling. Lou is as upright as they come and I can only imagine his prudish embarrassment when being around Paul. But then, unlike his older brother and sisters whom have all moved away and maintain contact through the telephone, Paul is always there for Lou, come hell or high water, either to offer a F**k-It Bucket (a bucket filled with candy) or just some words of consolation ("B**ch, I'm here to tell you that it's going to be all right."). Paul was there for his dad when their mother died, a free spirit who would trick her Great Dane into falsely thinking that she was being attacked by Sedaris and then take pictures of him lying on the floor with the dog ripping holes in his sweater. She would also organize the family's annual Miss Emollient Pageant, in which Sedaris would participate in earnest. Before moving to France, Sedaris lived in New York and got by as a personal assistant to a rich Colombian woman who likes to feign poverty before moving on as part of a moving outfit run by Patrick, an Irish "card-carrying communist", and trucking furniture around with Richie, a six-foot-four convicted murderer, and Ivan, a Russian diagnosed with residual schizophrenia. Through Bonnie, Sedaris, and you and I the reader, get to experience New York as a tourist. An American tourist. "I expect to be treated like an American," Bonnie, a first-timer in the Big Apple and convinced that everyone is out to get her and her hard earned money, proclaims. And experience Americans outside America. In a train in Paris, to be precise, and involving a couple, Martin and Carol, who are convinced that Sedaris is a pickpocket. Sedaris, who moved to France after having made Hugh, a successful fellow New Yorker who owns a house in Normandy, his own ("You will be mine" writes Sedaris) describes Americans as a "loud" people. David Sedaris is the real deal, hoss, just you see.
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A Reader posted a review at 2007-08-29 10:04:00.
(Language: English)
You would know if a book is extremely good if it affects you emotionally. Me Talk Pretty One Day by David Sedaris did just that for me, and in spades. I was truly moved to tears with his story of life, love, and alienation, though these tears were caused by peals of laughter. Sedaris writes funny fantastic stories and he has a way of making the hilarity of his essays subtly creep up on you. One thing I noticed, though, in this scathingly hilarious memoir, is that the key to getting through life's difficult challenges is probably by just learning not to take ourselves too seriously because, true enough, we all turn out dead in the end. Come to think of it, I guess all that "don't sweat the small stuff" malarkey, that's been almost everyone's catchphrase these days, might just as well be true.
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A Reader posted a review at 2011-03-12 09:49:41.
(Language: English)
There are some funny moments in this book. But you already know this. But I'm afraid that's really all there is. I would love to see Mr. Sedaris include more development of himself and those in his essays. The closest thing to an epiphany that Sedaris comes to is found at the end of "I Almost Saw This Girl Get Killed": "Anyway, it had been the young blond woman who'd wound up with the most disturbing story. We might have watched her, hanging by a strap umpteen feet in the air, but, even worse, she had been forced to watch us. Squinting down at our hideous, expectant faces, she probably saw no real reason to return to earth and reclaim her life among scumbags like us." And how about leaving a metaphor for us to discover, Mr. Sedaris?
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A Reader posted a review at 2009-02-22 10:22:07.
(Language: English)
This is a pretty funny collection of stories. I enjoyed the latter half more than the first. My favorites were "Jesus Shaves," and "I'll Eat What He's Wearing." In "Jesus Shaves," he is sitting in a beginning French class in Paris, and with his foreign classmates trying to explain Easter to a Morrocan student: "The Poles lead the charge to the best of their ability. 'It is,' said one, 'a party for the little boy of God who calls his self Jesus and . . . oh shit.' She faltered and her fellow countryman came to her aid. 'He calls his self Jesus and then he die one day on two . . . morsels of . . . lumber.'" In "I'll Eat What He's Wearing:" "We're in Paris, eating dinner in a nice restaurant, and my father is telling a story. 'So,' he says, 'I found this brown something-or-other in my suitcase, and I started chewing on it, thinking that maybe it was part of a cookie.' 'Had you packed any cookies?' my friend Maja asks . . . He continues his story, but aside from my sisters and me, his audience is snagged on what would strike any sane adult as a considerable stumbling block. Why would a full grown man place a foreign object into his mouth, especially if it was brown and discovered in a rarely used suitcase?" I laughed so hard at these stories that tears were streaming down my face. Some of the stories in the first half seemed a bit anti-science, ("Faced with an exciting question, science tended to provide the dullest possible answer."), anti-art ("'Honey, why flush it? Carry it into the next room and they'll put it on a goddam pedestal.'"), and anti-intellectual to me. Possibly he was being ironic, though, because one of his strategies for scoring laughs seems to be painting a picture of himself as being dumber and worse off than everyone else. The humor in such essays tends to be lowest-common-denominator (but sometimes at the end of the day when you are nearly brain dead, maybe that is ok).
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A Reader posted a review at 2009-12-12 08:01:44.
(Language: English)
It's rare when a book will make me (perhaps one of the most steadfast stoics you'd meet) laugh till my guts hurt. Sedaris' semi-random musings (er, essays) are a tad hit and miss (the entire second section is not nearly as funny as the first) but cohesiveness is not necessarily what the book's all about. Sedaris has an uncanny knack for extricating humor out of the minutiae and mundaneness of his life. There are some who'd make obvious comparison to Augusten Burroughs; I'll hazard to do so as well, but unlike Burroughs, Sedaris' vignettes aren't nearly as far-fetched as Burroughs' are, and, while snarky, Sedaris grounds his snark in warmth: You really care about him and his family (at least I did) after reading this book.
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A Reader posted a review at 2007-09-16 12:00:07.
(Language: English)
this book rocks. It blows "Naked," and "Barrel Fever" out of the water. However, "Barel Fever" has that raw talent that you hope for out of an ambitious new author - full of drug addictions, choppy, modernistic prose and sinfully dark humor. "Naked" seems to be bringing him further away from his young, erratic writing... but in my mind is just a precursor to one of the best books I have ever read. Read "Me Talk Pretty One Day," and you will set a higher standard for your taste in literature forever. If you've never heard David Sedaris' NPR debut with "Elves at Macy's," I would highly encourage it. Please note, if you're a Christmas enthusiast whose spirit is livened by crowded malls, kids on Santa's knee and incessant carolling, this is not for you. It's more of a recalcitrant's dream state during the holidays.
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Peachy posted a review at 2010-04-10 08:14:29.
(Language: English)
David Sedaris doesn’t pull any punches while introducing us to his eclectic family, and observing the entertaining and often ridiculous idiosyncrasies of common Americans, as well as the French. Me Talk Pretty One Day is laugh-out-loud funny as Sedaris has the ability to expose and turn any seemingly ordinary situation into hilarity, by picking it apart and applying a healthy dose of sarcasm and a honed wit. To think that the foundation of his extended vocabulary in elementary school was due to using a thesaurus to find s-free alternatives in order to escape his pronounced lisp and keep the loathsome school appointed speech therapist, or as he referred to her, ‘articulation coach,’ off his back. Although it is hard to pick a favourite from these 27 insightful and animated recollections, I find myself partial to the stories detailing his family and their quirky personalities. I think it would be quite the event to be a fly on the wall at one of their traditional Greek Orthodox Easter dinners. I look forward to reading more of Sedaris’ comedic moxie. Check out more of my reviews at BookSnakeReviews
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A Reader posted a review at 2010-08-01 05:18:33.
(Language: English)
I was told to check out this book when I was going through a rather rough patch in my personal life and it made me laugh harder and longer than I had in ages. I also found myself highlighting passage after passage until nearly the entire book was inked. Thank you David, from the bottom of my heart, for cheering me up. This book was awesome!
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A Reader posted a review at 2007-12-04 03:25:41.
(Language: English)
A few year ago I was on a flight and I witnessed a woman laughing out loud as she read this book. I finally got my turn and finished it today. I found it OKAY--not as impressed as I'd hoped to be. There were funny lines here n' there. It's basically an excerpt of short stories from the point of view of the authors' own life. Here are the lines that impacted me in some way (I would have expected much more): Sedaris embodies the softened bite of Dorothy Parker, the highbrow sarcasm of Fran Lebowitz, and the social commentary of Oscar Wilde. –James Reed, Columbian Missourian Baking scones and cupcakes for the school janitors, watching Guiding Light with our mothers, collecting rose petals for use in a fragrant potpourri: anything worth doing turned out to be a girl thing. To be broke in New York was to feel a constant, needling sense of failure, as you were regularly confronted by people who had not only more but much, much more. …unless you had children to think about, even the homeless saw it as a step down to leave Manhattan. In other parts of the country people tried to stay together for the sake of the children. In New York they tried to work things out for the sake of the apartment. If you happen to live there, it’s always refreshing to view Manhattan from afar. Quiet and willing to do whatever anyone else wanted, she was often favorably compared to a shadow. Before leaving North Carolina she’d spoken to a travel agent who’d provided her with a list of destinations anyone in her right mind would know to avoid, especially around the holidays, when the crowds multiply to Chinese proportions. “Two more pounds and you won’t be able to cross the state lines without a trucking license.†There were two sides to every coin. It’s always darkest before the dawn. I hate e-mail, which isn’t real mail but a variation of the pointless notes people used to pass in class. According to several reliable sources, I tended to exhaust people. Living in a foreign country is one of theos things that everyone should try at least once. It completed a person…transforming you into a citizen of the world. What I found appealing in life abroad was the inevitable sense of helplessness it would inspire. Equally exciting would be the work involved in overcoming that helplessness. There would be a goal involved, and I like having goals. In order to get the things I want, it helps to pretend I’m a figure in a daytime drama, a schemer. People in New York love to tell you how exhausted they are. Then they fall apart when someone says, “Yeah, you look pretty tired.†They were limited in terms of vocabulary, and this made them appear less than, sophisticated. How often is one asked what he loves in this world? Houseboys—a word that never fails to charge my imagination. People are often frightened of Parisians, but an American in Paris will find no harsher critic than another American. Alone in my bedroom, I studied pictures of intelligent men and searched for a common denominator. There was a definite Smart Guy look, but it was difficult to get just right. If I have one saving grace, it’s that I’m lucky enough to have found someone willing to handle the ugly business of day-to-day living. Alone in my basement laboratory… Nobody likes waiting for a tree to grow—that’s why more people don’t plant them; it seems hopeless. By the time they’ve matured, you’ve either died or moved to a retirement home. There’s no cure for adolescence.
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A Reader posted a review at 2009-09-23 08:20:12.
(Language: English)
Another edition of Sedaris’ humorous vignettes. Easy, quick and light reading as Sedaris polks fun at life’s, most his own, foibles. Buried in the humor are some pearls of wisdom:”that’s what fantasies are for: they allow you to skip the degradation and head straight to the top.” My favorite story is “The Learning Curve” in which “a terrible mistake was made and [he] was offered a position teaching a writing workshop.” Read only in a location where you can laugh out loud. The title comes from a series of episodes in which Sedaris describes his futile, but hilarious efforts to master conversational French.
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A Reader posted a review at 2008-01-09 10:01:21.
(Language: English)
This book has me frustrated. after reading the comments on the back of the book who wouldn't want to read it? everyone claims that it's SOOOO funny and that you'll be laughing out loud as you read it....and i'm still waiting. there are parts that are cute but overall the book is making me sad if anything. reading about his drug abuse and the time he attempted to teach a writing class just makes me feel bad for him. it's absolutely pathetic. it's almost like watching your best friend make an absolute fool of themselves as you stand back and let it happen while turning new shades of red because you're embarassed for them. i think in reading the book i understand how his poor students felt. so far it's a big let down and i keep waiting for that to change...however at the same time i can't stop reading it so at least it's interesting
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