Salutations, traveler of The Internets! Welcome to William's Bloody Hell, so named after our founder, Sir Bloody William.
He is seen in the likeness above in a rare, 19th century woodcut. This
image was rumoured to have been
commissioned after a bout of unpleasantness
in the White Chapel district of London. Do enjoy your stay and peruse our many, varied offerings, much of which cannot be found elsewhere!
:: Dress Your Family in Corduroy and Denim by David Sedaris ::
by William the Bloody
For those of you who are as yet unfamiliar with the works of David Sedaris, let me give you a brief overview of what to expect. His books are not really novels so much as a collection of essays or anecdotes about 10 pages long each concerning his life. Yes, no matter how wacky or hard to believe they might be, these tales are based on his real life. Everything from his childhood to the events of recent years are scattered about it a collection to amuse the outsider.
David speaks about his sisters Gretchen, Lisa, Amy and Tiffany, his younger brother Paul, aka, the Rooster, their parents, his boyfriend of 10 years Hugh and general occurrences in their lives. Everything from the birth of his brother's baby to life as a professional house cleaner to discussing the Christmas traditions of the Netherlands with some of the locals to looking for a new apartment are discussed openly and held up for your ridicule. The book overall contains 22 separate essays.
The Good: Sedaris' writing style has a good flow. Each essay is a lightning fast read and the whole book can probably be read by most people in a matter of hours. The writing is so easy to understand and moves very well that before you know it, one story is done and you want to start on the next. Most of the stories are pretty hilarious, with some genuine laugh out loud moments. Yes, this is a guy's life we're talking about here and you are laughing at it, but he purposefully sets it up that way for the most part. He'll present to us odd or strange things he's done or witnesses and turn it over to us almost as if to say, "see, it's not just me; it really WAS funny for somebody to say this."
The Bad: There are maybe three stories in this book which could be construed as "misleading" to a reader looking for wall to wall laughs. They start out cute and have funny moments and then tear the rug out from under you with a pretty sad ending. But then, this IS life. You might also be better off to have read a previous Sedaris book to get a little more "back story." The book does a decent job of sticking to itself and previously mentioned events within it, but occasionally I found that knowing what I knew from reading Me Talk Pretty One Day helped me understand certain things. For example, at one time someone asks him what would you do with a million dollars and his truthful internal response was probably spend it all on drugs, but the seriousness of his actual drug addiction is not really further delved into here, but made for some amusing chapters in Me Talk Pretty.
Over all, I loved it. The book kept me wanting more, more, MORE that I swallowed it up pretty fast, which of course left to the subsequent discouragement when reaching the end. Probably, yes, my main beef with this book had to be the fact that it was too short. Sedaris' writing style lends itself all too well to retelling life's events. You feel like he's right there sometimes, as though he's telling these stories to you over lunch. Yes, he's gay, but if you can get over that, you in for one great book.
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