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| When You Are Engulfed in Flames | 
 enlarge | Creator: David Sedaris
Publisher: Hachette Audio
Category: Book
List Price: $34.98
Buy New: $14.87
You Save: $20.11 (57%)
New (40) Used (13) from $14.87
Avg. Customer Rating:  257 reviews
Sales Rank: 1979
Format: Audiobook, Unabridged
Media: Audio CD
Edition: Unabridged
Number Of Items: 8
Shipping Weight (lbs): 0.5
Dimensions (in): 5.9 x 5.3 x 1.6
ISBN: 1600241824
Dewey Decimal Number: 814.54
EAN: 9781600241826
ASIN: 1600241824
Publication Date: June 3, 2008
Availability: Usually ships in 1-2 business days
Condition: Brand New. Delivery is usually 5 - 8 working days from order, International is by Royal Mail Airmail
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Product Description
Once again, David Sedaris brings together a collection of essays so uproariously funny and profoundly moving that his legions of fans will fall for him once more. He tests the limits of love when Hugh lances a boil from his backside, and pushes the boundaries of laziness when, finding the water shut off in his house in Normandy, he looks to the water in a vase of fresh cut flowers to fill the coffee machine. From armoring the windows with LP covers to protect the house from neurotic songbirds to the awkwardness of having a lozenge fall from your mouth into the lap of a sleeping fellow passenger on a plane, David Sedaris uses life's most bizarre moments to reach new heights in understanding love and fear, family and strangers. Culminating in a brilliantly funny (and never before published) account of his venture to Tokyo in order to quit smoking, David Sedaris's sixth essay collection will be avidly anticipated.
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| Customer Reviews: Read 252 more reviews...
 More, but not really better December 1, 2008
David Sedaris is a talented writer, but his work in this tome is inconsistent. It all goes down smoothly, but never rises to the level of "Dress Your Children in Denim and Corduroy." Each of these short essays was previously published elsewhere and they don't quite come together as an anthology.
Good combination of humor, depravity and sadness November 26, 2008
1 out of 2 found this review helpful
I continue to be impressed with the breadth of Sedaris' writing. There are touching stories from early childhood that anyone who grew up with siblings will find familiar and hilarious. Those are mixed in good measure with depressing tales of addiction, and uncomfortable narratives related to homosexuality and sex. The combination works, and I enjoyed nearly all of it, even the parts that made me a bit uncomfortable.
Didn't laugh November 25, 2008
0 out of 1 found this review helpful
Me Talk Pretty and his Courderoy books were far superior. Engulfed had me wondering if he is on a downward spiral.
Self-Absorption Driven to Laughter November 19, 2008
0 out of 1 found this review helpful
Laugh at yourself and the whole world laughs with you. It's hard to write humorous essays that stand the test of time. Will Rogers realized that and just read the newspaper to audiences while adding an occasionally wry quip to get huge laughs. Put those messages into a book, and they wouldn't have lasted.
I haven't heard David Sedaris perform in person (which he does as readings), but I'm told he's marvelous. If you have had that pleasure, you will undoubtedly hear his voice, know his timing, and see his expressions as you read this witty, self-deprecating book. I suspect that such an imagined performance would easily turn this into a five-star book.
Proust waxed poetic about his memories of a madeleine (a shell-shaped cake in the France of his youth) in stream of consciousness prose. Sedaris does the same thing for a painful boil on his derriere, his horrible inability to learn new languages, and his desire to show a little more plumpness in his derriere. The results are equally memorable . . . but much more amusing in the case of Sedaris.
Sedaris likes to put together mosaics of seemingly unconnected memories that when combined show a different image and send a different message. It's a little like a Chuck Close portrait.
Like the best humorists, he takes us into her personal life . . . into the kinds of details that few of us would openly share with the public. In exchange for yielding his privacy, he helps us see ourselves in his experiences. Who hasn't struggled with a foreign language with embarrassing consequences? Who hasn't wanted to be a little more in some aspect of their lives? Who hasn't had trouble getting rid of a bad habit?
These themes and more are explored in well-written, interesting style that lacks only an overriding sense of meaning (other than that we are all a mess) to be important prose. Some of them are hilarious, breaking into images of burlesque skits in your mind. Others are more poignant than funny, using wry humor. But he mostly doesn't stretch; rather, he expresses who he is and how he sees life.
As a former smoker, former heavy drinker, former drug user, and current homosexual with a fascination for feeding spiders, some aspect of his life will intersect with yours. But at the same time, he has exotic tastes (spending a lot of time in Normandy, learning not to smoke in Tokyo, and traveling from city to city reading his essays while staying at the finest hotels) that will make his lens different than yours. You'll never see the world the same way, as Proust changed our perceptions of madeleines.
Is it worth the trip? Yes, but I advise small reading doses. It goes down more smoothly that way.
 Amazing November 19, 2008
0 out of 1 found this review helpful
I just love David Sedaris, plain and simple. Also, because I bought this book the book store owner said I had good taste and let me have half off on my purchases for the day.
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