The Best of Me

“Genius… It is miraculous to read these pieces… You must read The Best of Me.” —Andrew Sean Greer, New York Times Book Review David Sedaris’s best stories and essays, spanning his remarkable career—as selected and read by the author himself. Featuring fresh and classic recordings, including a new essay and an interview exclusive to the audiobook. A New York Times Book Review Editors’ Choice A CNN and Christian Science Monitor Best Book of the Month​ For more than twenty-five years, David Sedaris has been carving out a unique literary space, virtually creating his own genre. A Sedaris story may seem confessional, but is also highly attuned to the world outside. It opens our eyes to what is at absurd and moving about our daily existence. And it is almost impossible to listen without laughing.   Now, for the first time collected in one volume, the author brings us his funniest and most memorable work. In these stories, Sedaris shops for rare taxidermy, hitchhikes with a lady quadriplegic, and spits a lozenge into a fellow traveler’s lap. He drowns a mouse in a bucket, struggles to say “give it to me” in five languages, and hand-feeds a carnivorous bird.   But if all you expect to find in Sedaris’s work is the deft and sharply observed comedy for which he became renowned, you may be surprised to discover that his words bring more warmth than mockery, more fellow-feeling than derision. Nowhere is this clearer than in his writing about his loved ones. In these essays, Sedaris explores falling in love and staying together, recognizing his own aging not in the mirror but in the faces of his siblings, losing one parent and coming to terms—at long last—with the other.   Taken together, the performances in TheBest of Me reveal the wonder and delight Sedaris takes in the surprises life brings him. No experience, he sees, is quite as he expected—it’s often harder, more fraught, and certainly weirder—but sometimes it is also much richer and more wonderful.   Full of joy, generosity, and the incisive humor that has led David Sedaris to be called “the funniest man alive” (Time Out New York), The Best of Me spans a career spent watching and learning and laughing—quite often at himself—and invites listeners deep into the world of one of the most brilliant and original writers of our time. The Best of Me AUDIOBOOK TRACK LISTING Introduction (new recording)   From Barrel Fever 1994          Glen’s Homophobia Newsletter Vol. 3, No. 2.    From Holidays on Ice 1994       Front Row Center with Thaddeus Bristol  (new recording) Christmas Means Giving  (new recording)   From Naked 1997 the incomplete quad  (new recording)   From the New Yorker  Girl Crazy  (new recording) Card Wired  (new recording) How to Spend the Budget Surplus  (new recording)   From Me Talk Pretty One Day 2000 You Can’t Kill the Rooster (new recording) Me Talk Pretty One Day  (new recording) Jesus Shaves  (new recording)   From the New Yorker Dog Days    (new recording) From Dress Your Family in Corduroy and Demin 2004            Us and Them  Let It Snow  The Ship Shape  The Girl Next Door  Repeat After Me    Six to Eight Black Men (live recording) Possession  Nuit of the Living Dead    From When You Are Engulfed in Flames 2008                       Solution to Saturday’s Puzzle  (live recording) The Understudy Town and Country    (live recording) In the Waiting Room  (live recording)   From The New Yorker Undecided    From Squirrel Seeks Chipmunk 2010 The Cat and the Baboon    (live recording) The Motherless Bear  (new recording) The Faithful Setter  (new recording)   From Let’s Explore Diabetes with Owls 2013 Dentists Without Borders  (live recording) Memory Laps  Think Differenter   (new recording) Loggerheads  If I Ruled the World  Easy, Tiger  Laugh, Kookaburra  (live recording) Just a Quick e-Mail A Guy Walks into a Bar Car Standing By  (live recording) Understanding Understanding Owls    From Calypso 2019                                           Now We Are Five  A House Divided  The Perfect Fit  Leviathan  A Modest Proposal Why Aren’t You Laughing?  The Spirit World    From The New Yorker: Unbuttoned  (new recording)   Audio Exclusive Interview with Paul Constant (new recording)

David Sedaris is the author of eleven previous books, including, most recently, The Best of Me, Calypso and Theft by Finding. He is a regular contributor to The New Yorker and BBC Radio 4. In 2019, he was inducted into the American Academy of Arts and Letters. He is the recipient of the Thurber Prize for American Humor, Jonathan Swift International Literature Prize for Satire and Humor, and the Terry Southern Prize for Humor.