The Best of Me

David Sedaris

Nov 2020 · Hachette Audio · Narrated by David Sedaris

About this audiobook

“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)

Ratings and reviews

I've been reading David Sedaris material for years now... And every entry in this collection brings back memories of when I first read each one. As always, it's a joy to be able to laugh at the his situations which always strike a very personal chord, and to left saddened or introspective by some of his more mature writing. He's an amazing writer.

He has such a unique style.

About the author

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.