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| When You Are Engulfed in Flames | 
 enlarge | Author: David Sedaris
Publisher: Little, Brown and Company
Category: Book
List Price: $25.99
Buy New: $13.03
You Save: $12.96 (50%)
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Avg. Customer Rating:  201 reviews
Sales Rank: 37
Media: Hardcover
Number Of Items: 1
Pages: 336
Shipping Weight (lbs): 1
Dimensions (in): 8.3 x 5.7 x 1.2
ISBN: 0316143472
Dewey Decimal Number: 814.54
EAN: 9780316143479
ASIN: 0316143472
Publication Date: June 3, 2008
Availability: Usually ships in 1-2 business days
Condition: Brand new item. Over 3.5 million customers served. Order now. Selling online since 1995. Few left in stock - order soon. Code: H20080806224027T
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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: Read 196 more reviews...
 Quirky, original, true June 9, 2008
162 out of 176 found this review helpful
Reading a David Sedaris short story is like watching the author think. Each one is told as a stream of consciousness that somehow ties together beautifully in the end. This collection includes some laugh-out-loud essays, and others that are touching and poignant. All are thoughtful and so original they are obviously taken from real life.
If you're not familiar with him, Sedaris is the Dave Barry of the National Public Radio set. I've been a Sedaris fan for a long time through NPR's "This American Life." This book is like a collection of the best of those quirky radio essays. (I also have the audio CD set, a 9-hour, 8-disc marathon that plays like an NPR fundraising marathon without those annoying pleas for cash.)
The stories are filled with memorable characters. Irritated Becky, who sits next to Sedaris on a plane flight and inspires incorrect answers in Solution to Saturday's Puzzle. Gravel-voiced Helen, who lives next door to Sedaris and is the unlikely heroine of That's Amore. Sedaris' sister Amy, the owner of a magazine called New Animal Orgy in Town and Country. Woven throughout the essays is the fast-walking Hugh, Sedaris boyfriend, who demonstrates true love by lancing a boil in Old Faithful.
Not all the essays are mass appeal (my husband, who is not a big NPR listener, hated the first one but loved the third) but I think there's plenty of good stuff in here to please just about any thoughful adult reader. There is plenty of sex and language, however, so it's not for your pre-teen or Aunt Betsy. But for most anyone else who wants a good laugh, it's a must-read.
Everyone but my mom should read this book! June 5, 2008
69 out of 80 found this review helpful
I have been waiting for a new David Sedaris book for a long time. I read the entire book yesterday afternoon and I could not stop laughing. His descriptions, dialogue, and demented details are uniquely Sedaris. This book did not disappoint; I knew what I was getting into the moment I read through the table of contents. Some critics are saying that there is nothing new here, blah, blah, blah. What do they want from a David Sedaris book? Romance? Epic Adventure? YA Fiction? I am a huge fan of Mr. Sedaris (David, not Lou), and his essays on his life leave me laughing. The section on smoking was not only funny, but very truthful. I could taste the menthol while reading. Very descriptive-very hilarious! Thank you David Sedaris.
Bracing and funny....like a cold martini thrown in your ex's face June 5, 2008
65 out of 87 found this review helpful
A very enjoyable read, with a couple of pieces that may be among Sedaris' very best. It does however, feel like there are couple of essays that should have been left out of this collection-pieces that did not add to the book as a whole, or seemed too similar to each other. I do think that "Solution to Saturday's Puzzle" is one of the great pieces of humorous writing, up on a level with Wodehouse's "Clicking of Cuthbert," which it resembles in almost no way. Frankly, the book is worth it for the giggles and guffaws to be found in that story alone, the rest of the collection is icing on the literary cake (though perhaps occasionally spread a bit too thick).
Buy this book and enjoy the sharp hilarity of our dreary lives...and if you like it, you might want to try Marc Acito's new novel. He's another one of our wittiest writers.
 I'll crash the party. June 4, 2008
49 out of 69 found this review helpful
Like someone mentioned previously, David Sedaris, is indeed going on a whirlwind tour: a twenty nine cities in twenty nine days tour and then on to perform at thirty three venues in thirty three days. With such a busy schedule one begins to ask, how does he find the time? The answer to that is simple when you just rehash published essays into a new book - so fans of Sedaris have, most likely, already read this book. Much like Sedaris' 2004 bestseller: Dress Your Family in Corduroy & Denim his new work can be heard on NPR's "This American Life" or read in the "New Yorker."
The best way to describe When You Are Engulfed in Flames would be to say David Sedaris has already used his best material. While the first time around most of his stories were very funny, the most I could muster was a smile, the second or third time - several stories were downright unappealing. All in all it's not a bad book if you are new to the humorist styles of Sedaris - most likely it'll be an entertaining read. If you've been a long time fan, nothing new here - just relive old memories. But if you are a long time fan, this book can't compete with Me Talk Pretty One Day
De' Ja' Sedaris June 9, 2008
37 out of 46 found this review helpful
Writer/humorist David Sedaris' sixth book delivers the hilarity and razor-sharp wit, social commentary, and tenderness of his previous books, but fans of Me Talk Pretty One Day, Dress Your Family in Corduroy and Denim, and Naked may be in for a bit of a disappointment. His previous smashing success has made it increasingly hard for him to top himself. Upon diving into Sedaris' latest collection of autographical essays, one can't help but feel De' Ja' Vu. Any fans will have already seen all of these essays featured in the New Yorker magazine already over the past three or four years. I was a bit disappointed to get the "Wait a minute, I've read this before!" feeling with the opening story, "It's Catching," about his mother-in-law's medical bout with a worm living under her skin. But I guess we can't really blame Mr. Sedaris for the fact that we love him so much that we've already read pretty much all of these in The New Yorker, Esquire, etc. magazines.
Fans of Augusten Burroughs will enjoy Sedaris and also recognize him as a much more believable writer of the memoir. Unlike previous collections which each focus on one part of his life, "When You Are Engulfed in Flames," covers the range of Sedaris' anecdotal life: from childhood and life at home with his mom and sisters, to his adult life, including when he first moved to Paris and dropped out of French classes and ran around telling everyone "D'accord" because of his limited vocabulary. Because this book covers such a wide Sedaris life range, it feels almost like a "best of" kind of collection.
The book manages to only give you a good quiet laugh, not the rollicking hilarity of his previous works (check out "Santaland Diaries" from 'Holidays on Ice,' where Sedaris chronicles his days working as a Macy's elf, and "Repeat after Me" from 'Dress Your Family...' and 'David Sedaris: Live at Carnegie Hall). But remember this is David Sedaris here, so a quiet laugh still far exceeds any other American humorist writing today. Some of the highlights in this collection include: "Keeping Up," a day around the zoo with Sedaris and his partner Hugh, and in the mind of Sedaris' during a lover's quarrel; "Buddy, Can You Spare a Tie?"--Sedaris chronicles his trial use of an external catheter (Window seat in a cross-country non-stop flight? Don't mind if I do!); "Memento Mori," one of the funniest stories here, chronicling Sedaris' purchase of an actual human skeleton, and the ensuing spookhouse terror of keeping it in his home; and the memorable "What I Learned," Sedaris' speech to graduates of Princeton, his alma mater.
Fans will want this book to add to their Sedaris collection, but it could also be a good, safe introduction to Sedaris newbies, as the 10-15 page essays here aren't as bizarre as previous works ('Naked' being the weirdest). Where the book is worth a read (or a purchase) is in the 60-some page "The Smoking Section" memoir. Here Sedaris chronicles his life as a smoker, from childhood when he first began to smoke (including how in school they went on field trips to the cigarette factory and were given cigarettes to "take home to your parents"), to his efforts to quit by moving to Hiroshima. (The title of the book is derived from an actual public smoking warning during his stay in Japan.)
This is so-so Sedaris, which is still a heckuva lot funnier than anyone else out there. For more laughs, check out his other books, PLUS don't be surprised if you get addicted to his audiobooks, which he and his sister Amy Sedaris read. The audiobooks themselves are gold as his readings make the essays even more hilarious.
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