Theft by Finding: Diaries 1977-2002
Ratings23
Average rating4.1
15
Ratings23
Average rating4.1
For forty years, David Sedaris has kept a diary in which he records everything that captures his attention-overheard comments, salacious gossip, soap opera plot twists, secrets confided by total strangers. These observations are the source code for his finest work, and through them he has honed his cunning, surprising sentences.
Now, Sedaris shares his private writings with the world. Theft by Finding, the first of two volumes, is the story of how a drug-abusing dropout with a weakness for the International House of Pancakes and a chronic inability to hold down a real job became one of the funniest people on the planet.
Written with a sharp eye and ear for the bizarre, the beautiful, and the uncomfortable, and with a generosity of spirit that even a misanthropic sense of humor can't fully disguise, Theft By Finding proves that Sedaris is one of our great modern observers. It's a potent reminder that when you're as perceptive and curious as Sedaris, there's no such thing as a boring day.
Series
2 primary booksDiaries is a 2-book series with 2 primary works first released in 2017 with contributions by David Sedaris.
Reviews with the most likes.
First book I've read in a long time that kept me up way past my bedtime. Just couldn't stop reading those quirky little diary entries.
This one starts slow, and doesn't follow the traditional essay structure of Sedaris's other work, but once you get past the first few years (in which he's clearly in the early stages of finding his voice), this book is such a delight. I heard him do a reading from bits of it, or perhaps the next installment, at a theater in Boston, and I was cracking up the whole time. Sedaris has such a knack for pulling the absurd and hilarious out of the everyday; he sees the world as this cast of crazy, but still loveable, characters, and that's a fun frame in which to live one's life. It inspired to me to want to write a similar kind of diary, cataloguing less the thoughts and feelings that plague me, and more the weird joys and oddities in the world and ourselves.
Well written, interesting and funny stories and the beginning was a fun trip back to the past. On the other hand, after the first half I ended up with snark-fatigue and had to push myself to finish.
