The Best of Me

David Sedaris’s best stories and essays, spanning his remarkable career—as selected by the author himself For more than twenty-five years, David Sedaris has been carving out a unique literary space, virtually creating his own genre. A Sedaris story may seem confessional, but is also highly attuned to the world outside. It opens our eyes to what is at absurd and moving about our daily existence. And it is almost impossible to read without laughing.   Now, for the first time collected in one volume, the author brings us his funniest and most memorable work. In these stories, Sedaris shops for rare taxidermy, hitchhikes with a lady quadriplegic, and spits a lozenge into a fellow traveler’s lap. He drowns a mouse in a bucket, struggles to say “give it to me” in five languages, and hand-feeds a carnivorous bird.   But if all you expect to find in Sedaris’s work is the deft and sharply observed comedy for which he became renowned, you may be surprised to discover that his words bring more warmth than mockery, more fellow-feeling than derision. Nowhere is this clearer than in his writing about his loved ones. In these pages, Sedaris explores falling in love and staying together, recognizing his own aging not in the mirror but in the faces of his siblings, losing one parent and coming to terms—at long last—with the other.   Taken together, the stories in TheBest of Me reveal the wonder and delight Sedaris takes in the surprises life brings him. No experience, he sees, is quite as he expected—it’s often harder, more fraught, and certainly weirder—but sometimes it is also much richer and more wonderful.   Full of joy, generosity, and the incisive humor that has led David Sedaris to be called “the funniest man alive” (Time Out New York), The Best of Me spans a career spent watching and learning and laughing—quite often at himself—and invites readers deep into the world of one of the most brilliant and original writers of our time.The Best of Me AUDIOBOOK TRACK LISTING CD01 Track 01:  Introduction (new recording)  From Barrel Fever 1994           CD01 Track 03:  Glen’s Homophobia Newsletter Vol. 3, No. 2.   From Holidays on Ice 1994        CD01 Track 06:  Front Row Center with Thaddeus Bristol  (new recording) CD01 Track 08:  Christmas Means Giving  (new recording)  From Naked 1997 CD01 Track 11:  the incomplete quad  (new recording)  From the New Yorker   CD01 Track 14:  Girl Crazy  (new recording) CD02 Track 01:  Card Wired  (new recording) CD02 Track 02:  How to Spend the Budget Surplus  (new recording)    From Me Talk Pretty One Day 2000  CD02 Track 03:  You Can’t Kill the Rooster (new recording) CD02 Track 05:  Me Talk Pretty One Day  (new recording) CD02 Track 07:  Jesus Shaves  (new recording)  From the New Yorker CD02 Track 09:  Dog Days    (new recording)From Dress Your Family in Corduroy and Demin 2004             CD02 Track 10:  Us and Them   CD02 Track 12:  Let It Snow   CD03 Track 01:  The Ship Shape   CD03 Track 04:  The Girl Next Door   CD03 Track 08:  Repeat After Me     CD04 Track 01:  Six to Eight Black Men (live recording) CD04 Track 04: