Calypso by David Sedaris
(Format used for this read: Audiobook)
I listened to my best friend’s Amber advice and decided my next read should be something funny.
I listened to this over 2 1/2 days and there were points when I was literally DYING laughing out loud, even on a run!
I legit freaked some people out running around the base park with my headphones on…cackling away. 🤣
Here is a summary:
“If you’ve ever laughed your way through David Sedaris’s cheerfully misanthropic stories, you might think you know what you’re getting with Calypso. You’d be wrong.
When he buys a beach house on the Carolina coast, Sedaris envisions long, relaxing vacations spent playing board games and lounging in the sun with those he loves most. And life at the Sea Section, as he names the vacation home, is exactly as idyllic as he imagined, except for one tiny, vexing realization: it’s impossible to take a vacation from yourself.
With Calypso, Sedaris sets his formidable powers of observation toward middle age and mortality. Make no mistake: these stories are very, very funny–it’s a book that can make you laugh ’til you snort, the way only family can. Sedaris’s powers of observation have never been sharper, and his ability to shock readers into laughter unparalleled. But much of the comedy here is born out of that vertiginous moment when your own body betrays you and you realize that the story of your life is made up of more past than future.
This is beach reading for people who detest beaches, required reading for those who loathe small talk and love a good tumor joke. Calypso is simultaneously Sedaris’s darkest and warmest book yet–and it just might be his very best. “
I have never read one of David Sedaris’ books before but I had heard him various times on NPR.
(One of the funniest pieces of his I have heard was on “This American Life” and it was called “Santaland Diaries” which was about his stint as a department store elf named Crumpet…)
Sometimes he made me laugh super CRAZY hard…like the kind where you snort or almost pee your pants.
Sometimes he made me be like “okay that isn’t funny AT ALL…what kind of messed up person IS this guy?”
But this book was mostly me LAUGHING super hard.
He talks about all kinds of things in this collection of 21 essays….family relationships, aging, his career…and he talks about them in such an honest, direct, sarcastic, offbeat and sometimes dark kinda way.
And that’s my kinda humor.
(Except there was one small part that was about different vulgar expressions people use around the world when another driver makes them mad on the road that wasn’t my fave…it DID make me laugh in spite of myself in parts…but still…not my fave)
This book was entertaining but also at times heartbreaking.
But the author found a way to even make those heartbreaking times funny.
And I think that is some darn good writing.