David Sedaris
(Non-Fiction) This is the book Woody Allen has always wanted to write. With his fourth volume of autobiographical essays, Sedaris completes the transition from humorist to humanist, from a guy who writes hilarious recollections to a memoirist who reaches into some very deep places in himself and you. And he does it — pay attention, Woody — without losing his knack for making you laugh till it hurts. ("Six to Eight Black Men", about Christmas practices around the world, among other things, is one of the funniest things he's ever written.) Sedaris is still contending with the memory of his eccentric parents, with his trying siblings, with his sometimes exasperating but much needed boyfriend. And all the while he's also contending, hilariously, but very movingly, with himself, a man as eccentric, trying and exasperating as they come. But if the material is the same, in the best parts of this book he arrives at a new level of comic brilliance.