With his newest collection, When You Are Engulfed In Flames (Little, Brown, $25.99), David Sedaris chronicles the seemingly irrelevant minutiae of his life, twisting the most mundane situations into riotously memorable events. At a time when everyone needs a laugh, these essays are perfect. Sedaris captures the tone and rhythm of everyday dialogue so well that the reader feels a part of the scene. Sedaris has a gift for making the stories relate to each of us, whether discussing acquiring a skeleton as a gift, or the difficulties of quitting smoking. His account of sitting in a French doctor’s waiting room is so awkward and so universal, it can’t help being funny.
Open Schott’s Miscellany 2009 (Bloomsbury, $30) to any page and you’ll find something interesting. Broken up into sections that go from “The World & Gazetteer,” “Society & Health,” “Government,” to “Form & Faith,” this quirky almanac is full of random surveys, facts, figures, and even, which I thought was great, an “In Brief” section which handily sums up major stories and personalities of the last year. There seems to be a little bit of everything here (do you know what QWERTY Tummy is? Well, I sure didn’t. Or how about Globaloney? Check it out on page 196). This is a book that I will definitely keep where I can grab it for a quick, informative read.
