A Life In Books

I have posted before about my own pregnancy issues, and so when I was contacted to read and review Carrie Friedman’s Pregnant Pause, I thought here might be another voice in the wilderness, someone else who battles the nearly constant barrage of pregnancy and motherhood ideals that come from the media as well as friends and family. Plus, it seemed like it would be funny.

So a few days later, after coming home from what probably felt like a long day at work, my copy of Pregnant Pause was waiting for me. After fixing supper, I settled down on the couch to peruse the book, thinking I’d maybe read a chapter or so before turning on the TV. Well, the TV didn’t get turned on that night, but I did finish Friedman’s book. The cover blurbs and Amazon reviews all hailed it as a a laugh-out-loud yet insightful book, so I had high hopes. While I can’t say that I laughed through the whole book, I did find myself smiling in wry amusement at some of the people and situations she describes, or recognizing bits of myself in her own experiences. Reading Friedman’s book is like sitting down and listening to a friend (you know, the funny AND smart one) vent her frustrations and fears.

I think this would be an excellent book for a young(er) woman, perhaps recently married, who is feeling the familial and cultural pressure to procreate. Friedman gives voice to the all-too-often unspoken fears surrounding potential motherhood. Will I be good enough? Will I still be me? Am I ready? Do I really want this? Women on the verge of deciding if and when they will take the path of motherhood will appreciate knowing they aren’t alone, and that it’s OK to have doubts.

The next time I read a book on the angst surrounding the dilemma of becoming a mother, it’ll be Maybe Baby, which appears to address not only Friedman’s reluctance to delve into parenthood, but also a whole host of other reasons why people may or may not become parents.

I am offering up my copy of Pregnant Pause to my blog readers. If you’d like to win the book, make a comment in this post by Thursday, July 2nd. I’ll draw a name and announce the winner here!

As you can tell if you’ve visited my Books Read ~ 2009 page lately, I’m (once again) woefully behind in book posts. It seems I can barely fit in time to read lately, let alone write about the books, too! I am going to try and catch up with a few collective posts. Since the next two books in line are both historical fiction that feature present-past chapter shifts, they fit nicely as a joint post, even though that’s pretty much the only thing they have in common.

A former coworker (and still good friend) of mine enthusiastically recommended The Secret History of the Pink Carnation to me several times and since I trust her taste in books, I put in a request for a copy at the library. I’m a big fan of historical fiction, even the escapist variety (ala Wideacre) and in my younger days was even known to furtively read a bodice ripper or two. So, I had no qualms against this book skewing more towards the fiction end of the genre. I also used to have a bit of a crush on the Scarlet Pimpernel (yes, yes, I was/am a nerd) and eagerly dived into this fun historical romp.

Eloise Kelly, a modern-day American academic, is in London to try and solve the case that would make her career: the real identity of the Pink Carnation, who, along with his counterparts the Scarlet Pimpernel and the Purple Gentian, rescued countless souls from Madame Guillotine during the French Revolution. Eloise meets an elderly descendent of the Gentian who claims to also know the name of the Carnation, and even better, she’s willing to share the information - contained in a collection of letters belonging to the family - with Eloise. The novel goes back and forth in time, from Eloise’s life to the lives of those contained within the letters, including Amy Balcourt, a spunky young woman who has a knack for getting herself into all kinds of adventures.

The Secret History of the Pink Carnation is chick lit meets historical fiction, a frothy and fun read that doesn’t take itself too seriously - and neither should the reader. Just writing this has me in the mood to read the next book in the series, The Masque of the Black Tulip. As luck would have it, just days after finishing Carnation, I found a copy of Tulip in a bookstore bargain bin. so it’s now in a pile among the other books on my nightstand.

May’s selection for my church book club was Geraldine Brooks’ novel People of the Book, a novel I’d wanted to read ever since finishing her first novel, Year of Wonders - and it only took me a year and a book club for me to do it!

Like Year of Wonders, in People of the Book, Brooks has taken something real, in this case the remarkable story of the Sarajevo Haggadah, and wrapped it in a rich and highly enjoyable fictional treatment. Australian Hannah Heath, a rare book conservator, has arrived in Sarajevo in 1996, at the request of the United Nations, to examine the condition of the sacred and invaluable text, which has once again reappeared after being lost for several years. While poring over the physical condition of the book, she discovers various items, like a drop of spilled wine, a white hair, and an insect wing. In the chapter following each of these discoveries, we go back in time to the period in which the item became a part of the book’s history. Each moment reveals something about the book’s journey from its origins in Spain to modern-day Sarajevo, and each is just as fascinating as the other, whether its the Inquisitor who saves the Jewish book from the fires of the Inquisition, a young girl trying to survive the horrors of World War II, or the Jewish family facing explusion from Spain at the hands of King Ferdinand and Queen Isabella. Meanwhile, Hannah is dealing with her attraction to the Sarajevan librarian who saved the book and her contentious relationship with her estranged mother. What most fascinates Hannah about the book is the drawing of an African woman, who is dressed in a saffron robe and seated with a Jewish family observing Passover Seder. Incidentally, if you go to this site, you can see this illustration (top row, center) as well as others from the Haggadah. Brooks offers a tantalizing solution to the mystery, and ultimately gives her readers the gift of this wonderful book. 

People of the Book will very likely rank as one of my favorite books this year, and has made me a certified fan of Brooks’ work. In doing some research of the book for the discussion, I discovered that Brooks had written a memoir of her pen pal experiences called Foreign Correspondence. Having had several pen pals myself, I got a copy from my library and read it on a plane ride home from visiting a friend, who I convinced to get a copy of the book, too. Watch for my post about that one soon(ish). I’m looking forward to reading March as well, but I think I’ll save that one for a winter read.

I have been a big fan of Marjane Satrapi’s work since first reading Persepolis a couple years back, and for the past few months, whenever I have visited a bookstore, I’ve checked to see if they have a copy of Embroideries, to no avail (yes, I know I could just have them order it or buy it myself online). A few weeks back, I was in a bookstore and saw a copy of Chicken with Plums, another Satrapi work, and I couldn’t resist buying it. In this slim volume, Satrapi tells the story of her great-uncle, Nasser Ali Khan, a renowned Iranian musician who succumbs to a profound depression after his beloved instrument, a tar (a form of lute), is willfully destroyed by his volatile wife. Neither the offering of another tar nor the proddings of his family will alleviate his feelings of desolation, and over the course of a week we are shown glimpses of both Nassar Ali’s past and the future he will never see himself.

A couple weeks later, I was in the same bookstore and decided on the off chance to check once more to see if they had a copy of Embroideries. And lo and behold, there it was! I took it home and read it that same night. In this work, Satrapi brings us to afternoon tea at her grandmother’s house, surrounded by her female family members and their friends. The afteroon is no staid affair; instead, the conversation is provocative and bawdy as the young Marjane learns what these women really think under their modest hejabs. The title is a double entendre, signifying both the women’s stories and relationships, as well as a much more palpable (and hilarious) meaning.

My only complaint with both of these books is that they are too short! After reading each one I wanted more. Satrapi is a consummate storyteller and artist, able to weave together the ordinary with the extraordinary, giving us a potent mix of daily life, history, folklore and poetry. As with her personal memoir, Satrapi is able to relate both the unique aspects of the Iranian culture and the universality of the human condition. Like her ancient counterpart, I hope she shares more stories with us.

I first starting reading the buzz about David Ebershoff’s novel The 19th Wife last summer, and recognized his name from another book I’ve had on my wishlist, The Danish Girl. I tucked the title away in the back of my mind as a possible future read, and that was that.

Then earlier this year I was contacted by TLC Book Tours as a possible reviewer for The 19th Wife. As with other book bloggers, I regularly get contacted by reps and authors wanting me to review their books. Typically, I don’t - I have enough books on my TBR stack to keep me going pretty much until the end of time. But The 19th Wife had intrigued me back when I first heard about it, and so I gratefully accepted. Once my review copy arrived, I spent a few moments savoring its bulk - more than 500 pages - which meant this was a story I could really immerse myself in. I was in the middle of planning library anniversary events at the time, and knew I wouldn’t be able to really enjoy the book if I had to limit myself to a few pages here and there. So I saved it for a time when I knew I would: my vacation. On the Memorial Day weekend, we flew to Virginia to spend several days with friends, and I started the book on the plane. I was immediately drawn into the story, and over the next few days, stayed up late each night reading, luxuriating in the knowledge that I didn’t have to worry about work or other mundane realities of life. Is there anything better than vacation reading?

The book is part historical fiction, part “ripped from the headlines” contemporary novel, and alternates back and forth between time periods and the different characters. Now, I know some people don’t like this tactic; I’ve had people say to me that they find it confusing. Personally, I quite enjoy layering a story in this manner, and seeing the parallels and connections between the two. There are actually two 19th wives in this novel: Ann Eliza Young, one of the Mormon prophet Brigham Young’s wives, and the other is a plural wife from a polygamous sect in rural Utah, accused of murdering her husband.

Ann Eliza, who did in fact exist, and in the 1870s wrote a book, Wife No. 19, exposing the Mormon practice of polygamy to the world, a practice which up to that point was mainly the stuff of rumor and suspicion, and played a part having the practice outlawed by the United States and banned by the church itself. Ebershoff delves into her life, from her youth as a devout Mormon, through her struggle with the tenet of celestial marriage, and eventual renunciation of her faith. He also shows us the greater society in which Ann Eliza lived, and the effects - both positive and negative - that early Mormonism had on its followers.

In the 21st century, Jordan Scott is a “lost boy,” a young man who several years earlier was kicked out of his community, left on the side of a lonely desert road one night by his own mother. Now living in Los Angeles, he discovers that his mother has been arrested, accused of murdering his father. Even though she abandoned him all those years ago, he goes back to Utah to see her, and find out what really happened. Along the way he befriends another “lost boy” and even manages to find a love interest. Jordan’s story is interesting, not just for the murder mystery aspect, but for the issues it alludes to for Mormonism: reconciling past practices with current beliefs, the existence of polygamous sects who claim to be the true Latter-Day Saints, the treatment of women and homosexuals in the modern church, and how the religion is viewed by society today.

The 19th Wife is a rich, layered tale, much like the history of Mormonism itself. For me, the best historical fiction blends fact and fiction together so expertly that I don’t know where one ends and the other begins, and that is just what Ebershoff has done with this novel. Reading this kind of historical fiction compels me to go out and search for the truth behind the story, which is just what I did as soon as I turned the last page of this book. There are some great resources on the book’s official website, as well as information about the author, his upcoming appearances and other books.  Also, I love that authors and publishers are now starting to do book trailers (previews are always my favorite part about going to the movies) and there’s a great one for The 19th Wife.

The lovely and well-read Iliana over at Bookgirl’s Nightstand will be reviewing this book tomorrow, so be sure to stop by and read her thoughts on the book. (I’m definitely curious!)

Oh, and one more thing: you can win your very own copy of The 19th Wife! Just leave a comment on this post by this Friday, June 5th, and I’ll draw for the winner. Good luck!  Edit: The winner has been chosen and it is Carrie K! Congrats and I hope you enjoy the book as much as I did!

I mentioned in my prior post that last week at my library was our first anniversary, and we celebrated with a week’s worth of events. The finale event featured a talk and book-signing by Mary Kay Andrews, the bestselling author of several books set in the South. I was really excited to be hosting this author, as she is very popular among our patrons and this was to be the first non-local adult fiction author event we have hosted, but I hope the first of many.

I confess that I hadn’t read anything by her, but one of my coworkers is a fan, both of her women’s fiction written under the pen name, Mary Kay Andrews, and her earlier mysteries written under her real name, Kathy Hogan Trocheck. Over the course of the week, I had several women express delight at the prospect of meeting one of their favorite authors, and as the week went on, my own anticipation continued to grow.

We arranged for our local independent bookstore, Scott’s, to come and sell books for the book-signing, and the patrons weren’t the only ones lining up to buy and get their books signed - we had several employees (myself included) eyeing the selection. We’d also made arrangements for a light reception following the event, serving petit fours and other dainty treats all served on pink polka-dotted plates. It was all very fancy and our patrons loved it.  We’ll definitely be doing something like that again in the future.

Ms. Andrews spoke with her trademark charm and humor, sharing how she’d gotten a speeding ticket on her way to the event (oops!) and how she and her husband have fixed up a beach house on Tybee Island. I visited Tybee this time last year and would love to go back - I’ll be keeping her house in mind for that! She talked about how she embarked upon her writing career, sharing that Celestine Sibley - that acclaimed and beloved Southern writer (my mother-in-law absolutely loved her) - was instrumental in helping her go from aspiring writer to published author. It was a lovely afternoon and a wonderful end to the week.

And of course, I couldn’t go without buying some books for myself. I ended up getting Savannah Blues, the first book written as Mary Kay Andrews, Savannah Breeze, since she told a funny story about it as well as naming her Tybee Beach house after the hotel in the book, and Little Bitty Lies, which takes place in Atlanta. I’ve got a vacation coming up and will be taking one of these books with me - the hard part will be deciding which one.

So, if you aren’t already a fan of Mary Kay Andrews, may I suggest you go to your nearest library or bookstore and find out for yourself how great her books are. These books seem like the perfect summer read, the mint in your julep, if you will!

I had seen E. Lockhart’s YA novel The Disreputable History of Frankie Landau-Banks at the library but really hadn’t given it much thought until I saw it show up on this year’s Tournament of Books and thought, hmmm, maybe this one is worth a second glance. I admit, I have a soft spot for books about boarding schools. Growing up, I had this weird fascination with them. I daydreamed about being able to attend one, and always felt more than mildly jealous when I’d read about girls who got to live that existence. Of course, I completely overlooked the fact that in most of the stories I read, said girls were typically tormented, miserable, and trying their damnedest to escape, and that were I to somehow find myself living that alternate life, chances are it would be miserable for me as well.

So anyway, that was the emotional baggage I brought to my reading of this book, and once again I was swept up into the WASPy world of New England prep schools. Frankie Landau-Banks attends Alabaster Prep, a private school for the entitled few. She gets involved with one of the school’s popular boys, joining his entourage and trying to fit in. But she’s a smart girl, and she uses her wits and intrinsic boldness to beat the boys at their own game. Frankie infiltrates their secret club, becoming the mastermind behind its greatest antics and proving that you don’t have to be a boy to have the power.

I think I’ve aged too much to be able to fully indulge my school fantasies, and so while I enjoyed the book, it isn’t one that I will rave about to my adult friends. Besides Frankie’s subversive escapades, there wasn’t a lot more to it, unlike Libba Bray’s A Great and Terrible Beauty or A Northern Light, two YA books featuring strong female characters, that I continually recommend to other mature readers. I will recommend Disreptuable History to my 17-year-old niece and other teenage girls who need a strong antidote to the lovesick, self-deprecating Bella from the Twilight series, which is still going strong, by the way - we haven’t had a copy on our shelves since we opened last May.

Speaking of which, my library is celebrating its first anniversary next week with a bunch of special events. If you’re in the area, be sure to stop by and check us out!

As I mentioned in an earlier post, I recently read Fannie Flagg’s novel Can’t Wait to Get to Heaven for my library book club. Although I read Fried Green Tomatoes at the Whistle Stop Cafe a few years back and enjoyed it, I had no desire to read anything further by her, suspecting that her other books would be a bit overly-sentimental for my taste. And boy, was I right - at least about this one. I’d put off reading it til just a few days before the book club (my usual modus operandi for book club books) and was able to breeze through it in about a day and a half. Admittedly, this was because I didn’t care enough about the characters or what was happening to them to slow down and absorb the story.  Elner Shimfissle is an elderly woman living on her own in Missouri, who one day falls from a ladder while out picking figs in her garden, dies, and goes on a visit to heaven. Back home, her family and friends are grieving her loss as they contemplate how Elner affected their lives and the way she lived her own. Elner, meanwhile, is having a conversation with God over some heavenly pie.

Some critical reviews have claimed the book to contain “laugh-out-loud hilarity” but I can’t say it tickled my funny bone. Elner and the rest - even God - are cookie-cutter figures rather than full-dimensional characters who live in a happily-ever-after existence, untroubled by the realities of life. Can’t Wait to Get to Heaven is saccharine and simplistic, as though Miss Julia paid a visit to The Shack . I’m sure there are people who love this book (as evidenced by some of my book club members), but I’m not one of them.

I’m a little sad that I’ve now read Carnet de Voyage since it was the last of the trio of published works by Craig Thompson that I hadn’t read. (Blankets and Goodbye, Chunky Rice being the other two.)

In 2004, Thompson traveled to Europe for the promotion of his graphic memoir, Blankets, and included in his travels an excursion to Morocco. Carnet de Voyage, which translates literally as “travel book”, contains Thompson’s sketches and commentary on his time abroad. Melancholic, playful, and honest, he conveys the loneliness he feels as a solitary traveler (compounded by his heartbreak over a recent breakup), the sometimes claustrophic feeling of being surrounded by the unfamiliar, and the joy of finding yourself right where you’re supposed to be in your life at that particular moment. Throughout the book, Thompson’s intricate drawings are suffused with life and lend his words a greater depth and flavor. This compact book is a must-read for any armchair traveler.

Karen White’s The House on Tradd Street takes place in the historic district of Charleston, South Carolina, as workaholic realtor Melanie unexpectedly inherits a crumbling mansion with a troubled history - and ghosts.

Besides being the local expert on old houses, Melanie can communicate with ghosts, albeit reluctantly.  She soon discovers that she’s been bequeathed much more than a major fixer-upper and has to delve into the house’s past to solve a mystery dating back to the Civil War. Helping her in her quest is Jack Trenholm, an author who clearly has ulterior motives. The two form an uneasy, but flirtatious, relationship - think David and Maddie from Moonlighting, for those of you old enough to remember the 1980s TV show.

As I began reading, I wasn’t quite sure I was going to like the book. Jack’s character was particularly irksome but like Melanie, I found myself succumbing to his charms. The book is light on scares and focuses more on a playful romance along with developing Melanie’s personal history and making her, for all her bristly ways, a very likable and endearing character.

The ending is somewhat unsatisfying, or rather, it’s a bit of a tease, since it leaves several things unresolved for the next book (for which an introductory chapter is included) which hasn’t been published yet. I started out the book not sure if I wanted to continue, and finished by wishing I had more to read. It will definitely be one I’ll be recommending to my patrons as a perfect summer read.

I don’t remember how it was that I came to first read a book by David Sedaris (besides some vague recollection of randomly stumbling upon his books in bookstore) but I do remember when I first read a book of his. It was in a  hotel in downtown Halifax, Nova Scotia in the summer of 2001. My husband and I had gone back to the east coast to visit family and so I could collect the things I’d put in storage in Halifax. I was luxuriating in the aptly-named heavenly bed and annoying Mike with my staccato bouts of laughter as I read Me Talk Pretty One Day. From then on, I was a fan.

Every so often I would check his appearances site to see if he was going to be in my area, whether I was living in Atlanta, Providence or Charlotte. But I was always too late (he’d been there last week) or I’d be out of town or otherwise unable to go. I consoled myself with audiobook versions and found that I enjoyed listening to Sedaris read his stories even more than I liked reading them myself. I even turned my husband into a fan. But after 8 years of  never seeing him live, I was beginning to think I was destined never to do so. Then, just a few weeks ago, I happened to visit his site again and saw he was coming to Atlanta on April 15th. “Buy Tickets Now!” the site said, and I gleefully clicked over to the Ticketmaster site, entering in my event info, only to have “no results found” come back repeatedly. Then I called Ticketmaster, who informed me that the show was sold out. Argh, not again!

But then my husband, my sweet, resourceful husband, began scouting Craigslist for some ticket-holders who were forced for whatever reason to sell their tickets. Lucky for us, we benefited from someone else’s misfortune (aka out-of-town business meeting) and scored a couple of lower mezzanine tickets for the event. Yes!

Which all leads me up to tonight, the night of the performance. I’d debated about bringing along my books, since I own them all, but foolishly thought that with an audience of approximately 2,700 people, there’s no way he’d be doing book signings. So we get there, and what do I see? A table set up for book signings, of course! No David Sedaris though, as apparently he was stuck in the ubiquitous Atlanta traffic. A Cappella Books was there, however, selling copies of his books. I figured I wasn’t going to pass up the chance to actually talk with Sedaris, so I bought a hardbound copy of Me Talk Pretty One Day, which I justified since it is my sentimental favorite and I only had  the paperback version at home. We were told that he would be signing books after the show and so we went to our seats, wondering if we’d recognize any of the essays he’d share and waiting anxiously for the lights to dim. Finally, after a brief and mostly redundant introduction, David Sedaris came on stage. He was shorter than I thought he’d be. But that could just have been a trick of the stage and our location, as we were seated just close enough so we could just barely but not quite make out his facial expressions.

He regaled us with an hour or so of stories, beginning with the pre- and post-Obama election discussions he encountered around his home in Normandy and elsewhere abroad (no one believed we’d do it), and including other ruminations such as his trip to Australia and his encounter with the strange but wonderful kookaburra (which, now that I see photos of them, don’t look nearly as intimidating as they sounded), random and hilarious diary entries, observations on people who exaggerate the pronunication of certain foreign words (his favorite was an otherwise monotonous professor who said words like “Nicaragua” like some bad Antonio Banderas impersonator), and how his father liked to walk around the house in his underwear.

All too quickly, he was done. But before he opened it up to a short Q&A, he said that he would do something he typically does during a performance, and that’s recommend a book. Actually, in this case, an audiobook: Alan Bennett’s Talking Heads. He then went on to play a portion of one of the monologues, A Lady of Letters with Patricia Routledge (Hyacinth Bucket from Keeping Up Appearances for my fellow Britcom fans). The audience Q&A included questions about his quitting smoking (apparently it doesn’t really bother him), whether he Twitters (no, he doesn’t) and if he still uses a typewriter to type his manuscripts (no, he finally switched to the laptop Hugh bought him several years ago).

As soon as he walked off stage, Mike and I were making our way down to the lobby to the book signing area where I was about the 20th person in line. The whole time I’m in line I’m thinking of what I’m going to say. I know he doesn’t just sign the book and wave you on; David Sedaris is nicer than that. He’ll actually engage you in a conversation and spend a few minutes talking to you. Meeting David Sedaris is like meeting a rock star, or the literary equivalent of one; I was so nervous that I’d get up there and sound like an idiot. I decided I’d thank him for the book suggestion since during my time in line I’d remembered that Alan Bennett was the author of The Uncommon Reader, a book I thoroughly enjoyed, and see where it went from there.

The two women in front of me were talking to each other and texting on their iPhones, or more accurately, Twittering on their iPhones. For the 45 minutes or so  I stood in line behind them I got to hear for about 30 minutes what one of them had been entering on Twitter during the show, what she was entering as we stood in line, and what she was planning to enter later on. Now, no offence to all you Twitter fans, but I don’t really get the appeal. Granted, this is coming from the woman who took several years to latch onto the idea of keeping a blog and only got onto Facebook last year. But I digress. When they got up to talk with David, the Twitter-happy one of course gushed about her Twittering and even typed away on her keypad as she talked to him. Now I know I can be a bit of a fuddy-duddy, but to me, that’s about as rude as talking on a cell phone while interacting with someone else in person.

Anyway, finally it’s my turn and I get up there and tell him that I don’t Twitter either, that I can just manage to keep up with blogging. He asks me what I blog about and when I tell him books, he asks me what I’m reading. Now, you’d think I’d be prepared for this question. I get asked it often enough. But no, in front of David Sedaris, my mind goes blank and I desperately try to recall what I’ve been reading lately. I could have mentioned any of the books I’m currently in the midst of: the quirky short story collection St. Lucy’s Home for Girls Raised by Wolves, Craig Thompson’s graphic travelogue Carnet de Voyage, the sci-fi novel The Sparrow, or even the fact that I’ve been slogging through Great Expectations for over a month. But no, none of those come to mind. What does? Fannie freakin’ Flagg’s Can’t Wait to Get to Heaven, which I’m trying to read by tomorrow night’s library book club. Now there’s probably nothing wrong with Can’t Wait to Get to Heaven (I’m only two chapters in) and I’m sure Fannie Flagg is a wonderful woman and writer, but I would have preferred to come off as a bit less fluffy than that. For all I know he heard the name of the book and wondered what some conservative fundamentalist was doing at one of his shows. So while he doesn’t pursue that any further, he does ask me if I’d read The Lazarus Project, which no, I haven’t, but it is on my list and I did order it for the library. He raves about it for a few moments, saying that he was a little leery of reading it, thinking that it would be over his head but that he absolutely loved it. So that book has immediately shifted from my ‘want to read’ list to ‘must read’ pile. I got my wits back about me and made the comment about Alan Bennett, and then we talked for a couple minutes about audiobooks and he made another recommendation (writing it down for me so I’d remember - yeah, I’m keeping the note) for Tom Courtney’s Pretending to Be Me, which is a piece on poet Philip Larkin. My only recollection of Larkin is that he came across to me back in my early twenties as a stodgy crankpot, but that could just have been youthful arrogance. Another recommendation to add to my list.

That was it for our conversation, which lasted all of about 3 minutes. It was an absolutely fabulous evening and I hope I don’t have to wait another 8 years to hear him perform again.

Oh, as for the title of this post? Well, I was aware that Sedaris tends to write something quirky or nonsensical in his inscription, based perhaps on some obvious characteristic or something the person says. As I make my way back to our car, I open the book to the title page and read: “To Lesley - Diabetes is for Lovers.” OK, so he didn’t call me fat, but my neurotic side kicks into overdrive and in mere nanoseconds I’ve made the connection: diabetes = fat people = me = comment. But hey, if David Sedaris calling you fat won’t make you lose weight, what will?