Welp…. Sorry, Holidays on Ice and Me Talk Pretty One Day, you’ve been demoted from your shared top spot. David opening up his diaries has toppled over everything else in existence.
It’s nearly impossible to pick a favorite line but called himself a misanthrope will definitely live forever in my head. I kinda agree, you get me Mr. Sedaris.

David Sedaris is the funniest writer in print, and even funnier when his books are read out loud. Theft by Finding is an intimate look at Sedaris' life and really shows how he became the writer he is. I learned alot by reading this one, and will definitely read it again.

Contains all the quirky, human and spot-on observations we've come to expect from this writer, with liberal doses of his bravery in sharing his most intimate, personal thoughts and experiences, without a trace of spin. The diary format, compared to his normal essay format, is not quite as engaging.

As usual I enjoyed Sedaris's work, THEFT BY FINDING is certainly one of these reads that you can pick up and put down as you like and not feel as if you need to read it all in one sitting.

I was first exposed to the work of David Sedaris a few years ago, when a co-worker handed me a copy of his book, WHEN YOU ARE ENGULFED IN FLAMES. I had heard of Sedaris before, but had never been tempted to try any of his work. If my co-worker had merely told me to read the book, I would have nodded politely, and purposefully never given it a look. However, thanks to a character flaw that would do Sedaris proud, I am unable to refuse things that people physically hand to me. I accepted the book, and sadly sat down to read it that night, mourning all of the interesting books that I would miss out on while I read the loaner.


Needless to say, I loved the book, and I went out and bought all of his other books immediately, and they have sat unread amongst the thousands of other books that I hoard. In fact, I have been sitting on this review copy of THEFT BY FINDING: DIARIES, 1977-2002 for nearly two years now. (I eventually DO get to everything that I'm sent to review...I just can't promise how fast I'll get to it.)


Sedaris pretty much tells readers in the beginning of the book that this collection of diary entries is not something that he could imagine anyone just sitting and reading straight through. He recommends dipping in and out, and that was advice that I foolishly ignored. Within a few pages, I began to think "I can't take over 500 pages of this......who did they think that this would interest?" Within a few more pages, I was completely hooked, and I hated the times when I was forced to close the book.


WHEN YOU ARE ENGULFED IN FLAMES left me with the impression that David Sedaris is a non-dangerous kind of deeply disturbed mentally ill person. THEFT BY FINDING made me wonder why I thought that.....he seems completely rational. A little neurotic, maybe. Kind of introverted. But normal. But then you get the diary entries that detail things like his nurturing and feeding the massive spiders that infested his Paris home, and the hours and hours that he spent catching flies to feed to them, like a demented Renfield, tossing them into their webs and waiting patiently for them to feast on the hapless bugs. He named these spiders. Names like Clifton, Coretta Scott, and Jerry. He offered them encouragement as they built their webs and ate their prey. He mourned them when they died. This made me think that I was probably not too far off the mark initially, when I thought he was a deeply disturbed mentally ill person.


But......who wouldn't want to be friends with a person like Sedaris? Even the most mundane activity becomes engrossing and hilarious through his matter-of-fact descriptions. Aside from his world travels, Sedaris does almost nothing out of the ordinary between 1977 and 2002; His success as a writer is virtually glossed over in favor of stories about odd things that he saw or heard or experienced while walking to the store, eating out, or taking a class. I could not read this book fast enough, and it saddened me to reach the last page. This is supposed to be the first or two volumes, but the second volume is nowhere to be found. Is it forthcoming? Or is the second, and final, volume meant to cover the rest of Sedaris' life...? Please don't make me wait until you die to read more, David.


Little Brown provided a review copy a long time ago. My conscience has been eased a bit now that I've finally gotten to it.

I am pretty sure I've read all or most of Sedaris' books, and I can't say he has ever left me disappointed. His stories are hilarious and heartbreaking, sometimes at the same time, and tend to linger in my memory. After reading this book and noting his fondness for IHOP, I couldn't help but wonder what he would have had to say about their name change controversy. Still not sure if that was a joke or not, but either way, not a good marketing strategy. But I digress, as Sedaris often does, but much more deftly than me. Of course, this book felt more personal than the others, since it was Sedaris' diary, but it is a diary unlike any I've read, full of bits of conversation and observations that are similar in tone to his essays. Sedaris is an original, his biting humor and keen scrutiny bring life into perfect focus.

My husband gets Money magazine, which I rarely touch, but the other day I noticed the page was turned, and there was Sedaris, talking about his new book, Calypso, and how he manages his wealth. And all I have to say about that is, go on and buy culottes and overpriced shirts for everyone, David, as long as you keep on writing. Trust me, we are grateful.

I put a note about the poor image quality on the BookLikes site - they have been having issues with lack of or limited editions of books, but usually I am able to over-ride with cover images, etc. For some reason I couldn't do it here.

For Goodreads:

Why I picked it — I will read anything he writes. Plus, who wouldn't want to read his diary?
Reminded me of…His essays, but in tiny, bite-sized pieces.
For my full review — click here

It's true that Sedaris could write the copy for the back of a cereal box and I'd gladly read it every morning. This is likely the only reason I kept reading - I just wasn't nearly compelled by this diary collection as I am by (most of) the rest of his works. I did not finish until well after publication, and so only provided a 3-star "review" on goodreads.

There are some reviews that just leave you wringing your hangs in anxiousness because you don't want to say out loud what you really should say when it comes time to review a book. You don't want to utter the words you really should because of what the author's previous work has meant to you. Or an admiration you have for him or her. This is one of those times.

I had loved David Sedaris' previous works. I have visceral memories of reading a copy of Me Talk Pretty One Day while at a horrid job, substituting for an ill receptionist at the front desk of a spa I managed. A patron had left it behind, obviously by accident, and it was up at the front desk so we could give it back to them when they came in. Bored senseless from staring out the windows to the lovely fall leaves falling, I picked up the book and flipped to the first story. I was physically uncomfortable as I was hysterically laughing with tears falling down my face, trying to keep myself composed and not look insane to any guest who happened to come in. It's a memory I treasure.

I was excited to read this because I don't always enjoy essays or short stories because I tend to prefer a longer "get to know you" period with a book. Shorter works can feel too abrupt for me, sometimes. So I was biased to loving this book., from the onset. But I really didn't. I learned that a little of David Sedaris goes a long way. What is generally amusing and can elicit a snigger here or there is fun in short bursts, but any longer and I was getting weighed down by his life view which relies too heavily on snark for my taste. Too many of his observations were lacking an empathy that allows for an unflattering narration of a character to balance out into something that I was interested in. I know many who love this work, but for me, it was too sharp, too mean, and critical without nuance or depth, and so I couldn't laugh along with him on this one. But I do want to thank the publisher, Little, Brown and Company, for allowing me access to the digital advanced reader's copy in exchange for an honest review.

I started and could not finish. I am probably the only person to start a Sedaris book and stop... anyway, though it didn't capture my attention at the time, I plan to revisit, maybe this summer.

I come to any published "diaries" with some degree of suspicion. How much has the author edited his own thoughts? How much has he added to the raw material? Genre misgivings aside, David Sedaris's Theft by Finding is insightful, funny, and a pleasure to read. As readers, we'll never know for certain if it's "honest," but it does FEEL honest in the most refreshing way.

Well Hello, Bookworms!

I thought I’d catch you up on what I’ve been doing, or more accurately, what I was doing in late April. I’ve always had a soft spot for David Sedaris and his quirky essays (here’s a review from a while back.) Of course, his humor and tone aren’t for everyone (as evidenced by the friend to whom I loaned Me Talk Pretty One Day who was UNIMPRESSED by the casual drug usage.) Not every writer is for every reader, but if you are a Sedaris fan, you were probably pretty stoked to hear that he was released a new book of his diary entries called Theft by Finding: Diaries (1977-2002). *I received a complimentary copy of this book through NetGalley and have been hideously tardy in supplying a review for which I apologize. I haven’t accepted any more galleys in recent days given my sporadic (at best) blogging presence.*

Luckily, I found a kindred spirit in my neighbor/book club member/friend Catherine (remember when we threw her a bookish baby shower?) She is the sweetest, and shares my penchant for both David Sedaris and NPR. Which is why when she found out Sedaris was coming to our little corner of Illinois for a speaking engagement and to promote Theft by Finding, she texted me right away and plans were made.


Yes, we paid $40 for 2nd balcony tickets and we’d do it again!
I insisted on getting tickets in the balcony because the main floor seats in this theater have no center aisle and crawling over people whilst I was 25 or so weeks pregnant sounded AWFUL. Of course, the best laid plans were all for naught, because we still ended up having people crawl over us, but I digress. The fact that I was hauling around a sizable belly and already had swollen ankles (nope, no complications, I just retain water like WOAH) also meant that we opted out of waiting in line for the book signing. Plus, I’m totally intimidated by authors I admire and figured I’d say or do something awkward enough to land me in a future Sedaris anecdote.

The reading was mostly segments of Theft by Finding and if you’re a fan of Sedaris’s work, it’s a treat. All the weirdness you love about his essays are presented in real life snippets of diaries he’s kept for his entire adult life. The sardonic slice of life observations will delight his fans, and hearing them in his own voice is even better. If you’ve not yet indulged in Sedaris’s self-narrated audio books, I HIGHLY recommend you do so.

The long and short of it is, if you dig Sedaris, you’ll like Theft by Finding. Go out and grab yourself a copy, bonus points for the audio book. And, should you discover Sedaris is coming to your town, you won’t be disappointed by attending one of his events (if it’s in your budget.) May you be braver than I and get your book signed. He’s rather creative with his inscriptions, I’m having some regrets that I didn’t wait in that line. Of course, now that I have ankles again, it’s easy to forget how swollen I was. 7 months ago Katie has ZERO regrets.

Any of you bookworms have a signed Sedaris book? Any weird doodles or inscriptions?

I’ve been reading David Sedaris’ essays for almost ten years. I vividly remember the first time I cracked open the fresh paperback of Me Talk Pretty One Day (2000) in the fall of my eighth grade year. We’d been told to buy the book for English class that year; and although we never ended up reading it formally, it was probably, in retrospect, the most significant book I read during that school year. I remember plopping down on the scratchy blue-green carpet of my school’s gym lobby and diving straight into his off-kilter world, catching myself laughing out loud in public, and never looking back.

Having read any Sedaris at all seems to put me in the minority of most people my age, making it hard to commiserate and share my enthusiasm with my peers. After all, my generation is not the one that first met Sedaris through listening to the “Santaland Diaries” on NPR; I ended up stealing Naked (1996) and Dress Your Family in Corduroy and Denim (2004) off my parents’ bookshelves before shelling out for the rest of his books.

Having been a fan for such a large portion of my life means that getting my hands on Theft By Finding: Diaries (1977-2002) allows me to consolidate his pre-2002 essays with the real-time diary entries that formed their foundations. It’s almost like putting together one of those crime-show suspect boards in my mind as I draw the connections from kernel to finished story, filling in my mental images of his father, mother, and siblings with increasingly fine detail. Certainly, it wasn’t possible to know Sedaris only from his stories, but I felt as though I’d gleaned every last scrap of knowledge a mere reader could have gotten, and had begun to understand the man with the pen a little bit better.

Reading Alex Heard’s 2007 The New Republic article “This American Lie” in 2013 came as a nasty shock. I’d assumed for years that, with the exception of the first half of Barrel Fever (1994), Squirrel Seeks Chipmunk: A Modest Bestiary (2010), and parts of Holidays on Ice (1997), Sedaris was writing nonfiction -- perhaps fudging some dialogue from his childhood here and there for literary purposes, or due to simply not remembering things verbatim, but nonfiction nonetheless. Briefly mentioning writers like James Frey and Stephen Glass, who had attempted to pass off fabrications as facts, yet pointedly refusing to equate Sedaris with their ilk, Heard recounts his research on classic Sedaris essays, speaking with members of his family and other characters mentioned or referenced in previous works. Heard ultimately writes, quite damningly: “most of his crimes are petty, making him a nonfiction juvenile delinquent rather than a frogwalk-worthy felon. Still, his work is marketed as nonfiction, and there's a simple rule associated with that: Don’t make things up.”

It seems unlikely, though, that Sedaris felt the need to release Theft By Finding as a kind of rebuke to the people who have begun to doubt the veracity of his accounts. After all, it’s been ten years since “This American Lie”, during which time Sedaris not only released several books but also has continued to consolidate his fame and popularity on an international scale. Whether a few critics here and there don’t believe Sedaris is telling the truth seems rather immaterial to the millions of readers, like me, who love him anyway. Releasing a collection of his diaries to the public, which he’s been keeping faithfully for decades, then serves as a kind of test, both to himself and to his audience, and it’s one that he’s under no obligation to provide. For people like Heard, who wrote definitively that “Sedaris exaggerates too much for a writer using the nonfiction label”, the way Sedaris describes situations we’ve read about in previous essays serves to confirm their suspicions.

The most obvious and surprising example in Theft By Finding takes place during Sedaris’ legendary Parisian sojourn, where he and his French class faced a wholly frightening witch of an instructor. When reading about this teacher in Me Talk Pretty One Day, her stabbing people in the eye with pencils and throwing chalk seemed extreme to me, but sometimes people really are unsuited to be teachers. Yet the David Sedaris writing about this teacher while he’s taking her class describes her in a much softer and friendlier way -- more mercurial and insecure than uniformly monstrous.

To a reader like me, who took the French instructor’s behavior from Me Talk Pretty One Day as a representation of the truth, it does feel like a betrayal to know that with this woman, Sedaris has done what Heard castigated him for in “This American Lie”: exaggerated yet another character in his life to the point of being completely unrecognizable. Why would Sedaris provide this kind of opportunity to prove him wrong on paper after so many years of blithely writing off, or downplaying, his fictionalization of the real?

Yet there are indeed indirect challenges to Heard’s claims in Theft By Finding. When I read through these entries the second time, I took care to note his quotidian accounts that were clearly expanded into larger essays. Assuming Sedaris was reporting his own process accurately in “Day In, Day Out” (Let’s Explore Diabetes With Owls, 2013), we can see that there is often some very large grain of truth to even the wildest of his stories. In that sense, Sedaris has been rather lucky to have been blessed with a distinctively colorful family and a penchant for running into some very odd people.

Maybe the French instructor wasn’t all that bad in reality, but Helen, his colorfully offensive neighbor described in “That’s Amore”, (When You Are Engulfed in Flames, 2008), certainly hasn’t changed much from his original diary entries to the final product. His experience as a pathetically unprepared substitute writing instructor at the Art Institute of Chicago; the ankle-button pants he wore while hitchhiking in the late '70s; his eventual success at quitting drinking -- these events in his life are all present and accounted for, even if they’re dressed up a little bit.

When you’ve been reading the works of an author for a significant amount of time, you begin to develop what honestly does feel an acquaintanceship with them -- or at least, a disturbing familiarity with the author’s life. So tracing Sedaris’ life over the course of Theft By Finding, can become oddly poignant and heartbreaking at times, because we know to a large extent future events diary-David doesn’t. In particular, the way Sedaris describes the downward spiral of his troubled youngest sister Tiffany, who committed suicide in 2013 at age 49, invokes a sickening feeling because we know what happens to her in the end, courtesy of Sedaris' New Yorker essay "Now We Are Five".

We’ve gotten to know Tiffany in bits and pieces in his other books. “Put a Lid on it” (Dress Your Family in Corduroy and Denim), details Sedaris’ attempts to nag Tiffany into taking better care of her own life, and was the closest he -- and she -- likely ever allowed the public to be. We know she had a life of extreme lows and highs, living in an abusive youth facility as a child to becoming a successful baker then having to scavenge through the garbage to make rent, and so it’s the worst kind of tragedy seeing Sedaris write cheerfully about getting high with her in 1981, chalking Tiffany getting beaten up to her having “an adventurous life” in 1986, and then passionlessly writing about her calling him “sobbing[…] saying she can’t leave the house” in 1997. The Tiffany of Sedaris’ essays was isolated from the rest of her family and loath to accept their help, and seeing her fall deeper and deeper into helplessness and despair in real time is horrifying.

Theft By Finding is like reading the first few Sedaris books in miniature. The more caustic descriptions and accounts of the people he meets while hitchhiking in Chicago or in New York will all be recognizable usual suspects. The decision to end this volume in 2002, after Me Talk Pretty but before Dress Your Family is key, though, because it's at this point that we as readers can observe Sedaris having grown up.

The Sedaris who visited a nudist colony in Naked is not the same Sedaris who picks trash off rural English roads decades later in Let’s Explore Diabetes With Owls; the Sedaris struggling to pay his rent and control his addictions to crystal meth, alcohol, and later cigarettes is not the Sedaris who flies first-class and owns houses in at least two countries, and his writing reflects this transformation both in content and in form. I do hope that Theft By Finding will have a sequel where we can fully examine this development in Sedaris’ life --and soon, because four to five years between substantial essay collections is far too long to wait.

A must-read for all Sedaris fans. As the book progresses, so does his writing, and it becomes devourable.

I've thoroughly enjoyed this book and mentioned it in the videos linked below.

Sedaris looks life straight in the eye. If there's humor to be found in the tragic, he doesn't hesitate to point that out, but he doesn't shy away from tragedy.

Wonderful, as I've come to expect from Sedaris! Witty, honest, and charming in its own way.

I like to think that if I were as an accomplished diarist as Sedaris, I too would release my diaries. But first, I should have written them. A long look into someone else's life is always fascinating to me, much like a type of voyeurism, but socially acceptable. I find I have much to relate to in Sedaris' diaries. Not all of it of course, but enough that I can empathize with his conflicts with family, money problems, self doubt and small successes. I enjoy that he can see the funny sides of absurd situations, perhaps faster than I ever can. It makes one's life lighter. Laughing at the absurdities of one's life makes everything more bearable.

Who doesn't love David Sedaris?! I was lucky enough to see him just before the book was released here in Victoria and he read some entries from this latest book. As usual he was funny, shocking, and then had us all crying. Love him, love this volume, and looking forward to part 2 of his diaries.

First Line: Not long after deciding to release a book of diary entries, I came upon a five-pound note.

Summary: This is a collection of diary entries from the author. He describes life as a young man working attending college, teaching and falling in love.

Highlights: David! He is hilarious. I love listening to his books because I can hear him read them. When I was first introduced to him I wasn't sure he was for me but I've come to love him and his writing. It was great to see more into his life. Meeting Hugh. Writing. He touched on some of my favorite stories like Santaland. I felt so sad reading of his moms passing. Laughed at the jokes and bumper stickers interspersed in the book. This was very enjoyable and worth every minute!

Lowlights: Nothing.

FYI: Be prepared to laugh!

I am generally I huge David Sedaris fan and usually devour his books and his writing in the New Yorker. This just felt lazy and disjointed. I have to admit that I didn't finish it -- a rare occurrence for me.