Wednesday, June 10, 2009

David Sedaris


It's probably a little strange to attend an author reading of someone I hadn't read before. But I've heard so much about David Sedaris' writings, I wanted to check it out- and maybe I'd actually read a book of his afterwards. For such a big name, I was surprised that they held it at such a small venue. Half of Powell's at Cedar Hills Crossing was packed and more overflowed out to the mall proper. And this was only an hour before the event was actually set to start.



Even though I was towards the back of the crowd in the sideline, I caught glimpses of the author. He was quite an entertaining fellow. I laughed out loud more than once as he read a new essay not included in the book he was promoting- "When You are Engulfed in Flames"- about the last presidential election, a short story subtitled "Just a Quick E-mail", entries from his diary, and throughout the Q&A afterwards. When one of the topics discussed was of breast milk, I would say the best way to describe his humor is irreverent. Surely there were a lot of head shaking and jaw dropping in the crowd's reaction to what was being said.



The whole thing was highly enjoyable and I'm definitely going to be reading his books.