About this item
One of the most anticipated books of 2017: Boston Globe, New York Times Book Review, New York's "Vulture", The Week, Bustle, BookRiotDavid Sedaris tells all in a book that is, literally, a lifetime in the makingIt's no coincidence that the world's best writers tend to keep diaries. If you faithfully record your life in a journal, you're writing every day-and if you write every day, you become a better writer. David Sedaris has kept a diary for forty years. This means that if you've kept a diary for a year of your life or less, Sedaris is at least forty times better at writing than you are.In his diaries, he's recorded everything that has captured 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 with them he has honed his self-deprecation and learned to craft his cunning, surprising sentences.Now, for the first time, Sedaris shares his private writings with the world in Theft By Finding: Diaries 1977-2002. This is the first-person account 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. Most diaries - even the diaries of great writers - are impossibly dull, because they generally write about their emotions, or their dreams, or their interior life. Sedaris's diaries are unique because they face outward. He doesn't tell us his feelings about the world, he shows us the world instead, and in so doing he shows us something deeper about himself.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 there's no such thing as a boring day-when you're as perceptive and curious as Sedaris, adventure waits around every corner.
About the Author
is a Grammy Award-nominated American humorist and radio contributor. Sedaris came to prominence in 1992 when National Public Radio broadcast his essay "SantaLand Diaries. " He published his first collection of essays and short stories, , in 1994. Each of his four subsequent essay collections, (2004) , and (2008) have become New York Times Best Sellers. As of 2008, his books have collectively sold seven million copies. Much of Sedaris' humor is autobiographical and self-deprecating, and it often concerns his family life, his middle class upbringing in the suburbs of Raleigh, North Carolina, Greek heritage, various jobs, education, drug use, homosexuality, and his life in France with his partner, Hugh Hamrick.
