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Dress Your Family in Corduroy and Denim
by David Sedaris

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<a href="http://www.goodreads.com/book/show/402129.Dress_Your_Family_in_Corduroy_and_Denim?utm_medium=api&amp;utm_source=blog_review" style="float: left; padding-right: 20px"><img alt="Dress Your Family in Corduroy and Denim" border="0" src="http://photo.goodreads.com/books/1174447597m/402129.jpg" /></a> <a href="http://www.goodreads.com/book/show/402129.Dress_Your_Family_in_Corduroy_and_Denim?utm_medium=api&utm_source=blog_review">Dress Your Family in Corduroy and Denim</a> by <a href="http://www.goodreads.com/author/show/2849.David_Sedaris">David Sedaris</a><br/><br/>
  <a href="http://www.goodreads.com/review/show/25050143?utm_medium=api&utm_source=blog_review"><h3>My review</h3></a>
  rating: 3 of 5 stars<br/>Having known little about David Sedaris before embarking upon this collection of essays, I sense that I approached them with some advantage over his avid readers. Getting a sense of his writing through these personal memoirs is almost like discovering him for myself, though I can now speak highly of him to others without actually having to have gone through the trouble of reading any of his other works. Of course, this is now my prerogative, and I suspect that before I die I will pick up "Me Talk Pretty One Day," "Naked," or "Barrel Fever." However, just a few of these short stories will leave you familiar enough with Sedaris to intuit the answer to 38-across in next Sunday’s crossword, or to sound moderately well-read and up-to-date on your American humorists.
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<br/>Plus, "Dress Your Family" is all-in-all a pleasant read. Not to say unremarkable, but it’s the kind of family-friendly, public radio raciness that allows you to chuckle out loud every couple of paragraphs and put the book down every couple of chapters feeling satisfied, but not too full. It’s the kind of humor that soothes the anxieties and fears of being a middle-class, peace-loving American by exposing them whimsically in the awkward experiences of someone else, and then leaves you free to flip on the TV and resume your own awkward but happy existence. These stories originally appeared as segments on NPR, or in established dude magazines like GQ and Esquire, and as such Sedaris' writing reads like a younger, gayer Garrison Keillor.  In other words, it tends to be everyone's cup of tea--unconfrontational, warm, and albeit at times bland--and after a while it leaves you sleepy and/or restless, and ready to switch to the hard stuff.
  <br/><br/><a href="http://www.goodreads.com/review/list/1206856?utm_medium=api&utm_source=blog_review">View all my reviews.</a>

Aaron's review
rating:
bookshelves: memoir

Having known little about David Sedaris before embarking upon this collection of essays, I sense that I approached them with some advantage over his avid readers. Getting a sense of his writing through these personal memoirs is almost like discovering him for myself, though I can now speak highly of him to others without actually having to have gone through the trouble of reading any of his other works. Of course, this is now my prerogative, and I suspect that before I die I will pick up "Me Talk Pretty One Day," "Naked," or "Barrel Fever." However, just a few of these short stories will leave you familiar enough with Sedaris to intuit the answer to 38-across in next Sunday’s crossword, or to sound moderately well-read and up-to-date on your American humorists.

Plus, "Dress Your Family" is all-in-all a pleasant read. Not to say unremarkable, but it’s the kind of family-friendly, public radio raciness that allows you to chuckle out loud eve...more

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