Very funny. The essay about smoking alone is worth the price of admission; while reading it, Coke came out my nose. I love his discussions of cultural differences, between the US and France, where he lives, and Japan, where he visists. He talks about watching parents with a toddler on a train in Japan. The child wanted to look out the window, so the father took off his shoes, the mother placed a cloth on the train seat, and the child stood in his sock feet on the cloth. Then, before their stop, the father put the child's father put his shoes back on, and the mother folded up the cloth and wiped off the window where the child had smudged it with his fingers. I think of myself as pretty good at cleaning up after my children in public, but I have nothing on this. Maybe I should start. Or maybe it would just make me look like a complete freak here in the US.I didn’t enjoy David Seadris’s last book, Dress Your Family in Corduroy and Denim, (too oblique and depressing) but I loved this one. So don’t stay away just because of a previous bad experience. This one is good.
When You Are Engulfed in Flames
David Sedaris
2008
Available from Amazon
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