Squirrel Seeks Chipmunk: A Modest Bestiary by David Sadaris

[Tami]

We are going to have one thread for each book as now Goodreads has made a spoiler tag that you can use to put before anything that is a spoiler. Use your discretion as to what would be a pretty big spoiler and label it. Please put up to what page the spoiler is for.

To create the tag simply do this:

< spoiler> Blah blah blah spoilery stuff < /spoiler>


*Take out the spaces in both of the spoiler tag.

It will look like this:


(view spoiler)[This is a spoiler. Spoilers should be labeled so you don't ruin books for others. (hide spoiler)]

Discuss away...

[Samantha]

Before this book, I never had the slightest interest in David Sedaris; Squirrel Seeks Chimpmunk changed that. Each of the stories are a take on the fables that all children grew up with with an adult spin. Sedaris is exploiting the nature of people and making it easier to digest by giving horrible personality traits to animals. Throughout each tale I was able to relate to the character and even know a person or two like that. Sedaris's quick read was enjoyable and thought-provoking.

The only problem I could see with this book is the illustrations. As an animal lover some of the drawings were a bit too graphic for me, but overall I was able to get through it knowing that the tales were based off of human folly.

[Ashley]

Samantha, I completely agree with your statement about the illustrations.

I'm a huge fan of David Sedaris and have read most of his other books. This one I found to be slightly jarring partially because of the illustrations and partly because I thought that the humour was even darker than normal. I found that the use of animals instead of humans emphasized these awful personality traits. Maybe because the societal norms Sedaris set up within the stories maintained an animalistic societal code instead of creating a recognizable, human set of norms?

All that having been said, I did enjoy the book. Sedaris is still one of my literary idols.