Calypso

by David Sedaris
259 pgs

Calypso is the latest collection of essays by humorist David Sedaris. I would have thought that after nine books, in which he gives merciless insight into his own and his family members' lives, he'd be out of things to say by now. Thankfully, he isn't.

Sedaris has a wry, caustic sense of humor and it's firing on all cylinders as he describes his family life as well as his interactions with the general population. I can't help but feel a little bit of a kinship with him, which is why I think I enjoy his stories as much as I do. He's a gifted story teller who holds nothing back, and is willing to share things most of us would keep deeply hidden, if there's a chance others will find some humor in it.

★ ★ ★ ★ ☆

Dress Your Family in Corduroy and Denim

by David Sedaris
257 pgs

In Dress Your Family in Corduroy and Denim, humorist David Sedaris has compiled 22 of his essays, most of which share the common theme of his family life, both the one he had growing up in his borderline neurotic family and the one he shares now with his partner Hugh.

In "Us and Them," the essay he opens with, he tells the story of the Tomkey family, who lived in his neighborhood growing up, and who didn't own a TV, a fact that fascinated him to no end. The family had other idiosyncrasies as well, like the year their children went door to door for Halloween candy on November 1st, because they were gone the night before, forcing Sedaris to preemptively stuff as much of it in his mouth as he can, rather than give any of it up.

In "Possession" he tells of touring Anne Frank's home in Amsterdam with Hugh and of being obsessed with it from a real-estate-ownership perspective, asking himself "Who do I need to knock off in order to get this apartment?"

"Six to Eight Black Men" is a hilarious comparison between the differences between the American and Dutch Christmas traditions. While the idea of Santa and his sleigh-pulling reindeer might seem bizarre to some, he points out how it pales in comparison to the Dutch's tradition of St. Nicholas and his six-to-eight black men who show up every year.

To the uninitiated in Sedaris's writing, the idea of reading essays about someone else's family life might sound boring and uninteresting. But that's definitely not the case with this collection. Sedaris never pulls his punches, especially when they're directed at those closest to him. And he spares no one--including himself--from his scathing humor and wit. The end result will make you grateful for both the family and life you had growing up, as well as the one he had. Because if he hadn't had his, there would have been nothing worth writing about.

★ ★ ★ ★ ☆

Moonglow

by Michael Chabon
430 pgs

To understand and appreciate Moonglow by Michael Chabon, it's useful to read it as a memoir written as a novel. According to the narrator, who appears to be Chabon himself, the story is based on conversations he had with his grandfather near the end of his life. His grandfather recounts the most interesting and slightly fantastical events of his life, and then instructs his writer-grandson to write it all down and "make it mean something."

The story Chabon tells describes his grandparents' marriage, two Jews who survived Nazism. It also tells of his grandfather's brilliance, which was instrumental in laying the groundwork for early rocket technology and ultimately, space flight. He also recounts his grandfather's pursuit of the Nazi rocket-builder Wernher von Braun at the end of the war.

The reason I said it's useful to read the book as a memoir...written as a novel, is because the book seems to be a combination of the two. It's hard to believe Chabon didn't take quite a bit of literary license in telling the story. And the story he tells isn't told linearly, it jumps around between different times in his grandparents' lives. But there are still aspects of the book that read very much like a memoir. It's told with a matter-of-fact style, without the buildup to a climactic ending you'd expect to have from a novel.

I'm on the fence when it comes to how I ultimately felt about the book. It's beautifully told, and die-hard Chabon fans should enjoy it for all the same reasons they're fans of his. But for me, there have only been two books that I can say I've thoroughly enjoyed: The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier & Clay and The Yiddish Policemen's Union. Beyond those two, I've found his books a little hard to get into. I always appreciate his writing style and skill, but his stories have been hit or miss.

★ ★ ★ ☆ ☆

It's All Relative

by A. J. Jacobs
337 pgs 

In A. J. Jacobs’s latest book, It’s All Relative - Adventures Up and Down the World's Family Tree, he undertakes the quest for organizing the world’s largest ever family reunion, a global family reunion. Why would a self-described “introverted misanthrope” undertake such an endeavor? The idea grew out of his desire to instill in his children an understanding of where they came from and a sense of belonging in the world. He also believed that if he could somehow get everyone to realize they were all related to each other, if you go back far enough, that people might treat each other with a little more kindness and respect.

In true Jacobsian fashion, Jacobs immerses himself in the practice of genealogy for an entire year leading up to The Global Family Reunion, which took place in New York (and remotely in dozens of other locations throughout the world) in June of 2015.

Jacobs recounts countless hours of researching his own family line, along with those of his wife’s family and other relatives. He interviews experts in the field and attends conferences held throughout the country. He spends a lot of time researching other topics related to the idea of family, and discusses the various relationships formed throughout the world that form a family.

He becomes a subject-matter expert on DNA testing, and shines a light on the pros and cons of that increasingly-popular practice. He researches marriage between closely-related people, and why that has occurred throughout history, and its effects on the global family tree.

Jacobs then does what he does best, and what has garnered him thousands of fans and helped him sell so many books, he writes about his quest in such a way that is humorous, interesting, and entertaining. 

★ ★ ★ ★ ☆

Let's Explore Diabetes with Owls

by David Sedaris
275 pgs

So, I finished my first David Sedaris book and immediately started another one. I don’t usually allow myself to read back to back books by the same author, but I decided this time I’d disregard my self-imposed dogma and just go crazy. Frankly the decision might have come as a direct result of the insight his last book gave me into the life and mind of someone as rigid and compulsive as he is. It made me a little nervous about any quirks I might have, albeit minor as they may be. So, it’s two Sedaris books in a row.

With Let’s Explore Diabetes with Owls Sedaris compiles a series of his essays that serve as part travelogue and part an insight into his family—and what an insight it is. Many of the essays have liberal political or social undertones, but I doubt those who associate themselves with the far right are going to be reading his books. But that’s their loss. They’re missing out on his masterful telling of his first colonoscopy and his father’s fixation on Donny Osmond. 

★ ★ ★ ☆ ☆

When You are Engulfed in Flames

by David Sedaris
323 pgs

A few months back I attended a David Sedaris book signing. Before the event formally began, Mr. Sedaris invited those who had books they wanted signed to line up and he’d get to as many as he could before his reading. As I stood in line I listened to the conversations he was having with the people in front of me as he signed their books. With each person he would begin by asking them a random question, one you would never think to ask someone you were meeting for the first time. “How is your relationship with your father?” “Who’s your dentist?” and when I got to him, “Any chance you plan to be in Seattle this weekend?” Each question prompted a brief conversation that was friendly, entertaining, and funny. That was my first insight into the mind of a writer I’ve since grown quite fascinated by.

When You are Engulfed in Flames is the first of Sedaris’s books I’ve read. At times it’s hilarious (and not safe to be listening to while driving), like his recounting of the time he accidentally spit out his throat lozenge onto the lap of the woman sleeping next to him on the airplane, or the time he ended up sitting in the waiting room of his doctor in Paris wearing nothing but his underwear because he didn’t understand French. At other times it makes you feel sorry for the man, as he tells stories of his childhood and the upbringing which has obviously resulted in at least a few neuroses and a very successful writing career.

★ ★ ★ ☆ ☆

Tibetan Peach Pie

by Tom Robbins
362 pgs

When I first heard that a new Tom Robbins book was coming out, I was excited. When I learned that it was a memoir instead of a novel, I'll admit I was a little disappointed. Now that I've read it, I feel a little guilty for having had such doubts. His novels are the types of books that you need to experience in order to understand. It's impossible to have someone describe one of them to you and do it justice. Chances are it will sound more like an LSD-induced hallucination rather than a book. They're uncategorizable and categorically unique. Tibetan Peach Pie, even though it's not one of his novels, is no exception.

Robbins says in chapter one that Tibetan Peach Pie is not a memoir. But you know what they say about something that walks and quacks like a duck.... To his credit though, Robbins doesn't merely waste time describing his childhood and recounting funny stories from his past. Instead, each of the stories that he tells showcases his one-of-a-kind sense of imagination and curiosity that have been with him from a very early age and that have resulted in his truly imaginative life.

His curiosity has taken him all over the world. He visited Timbuktu, where he was cursed by an old crone and spent the better part of the next year suffering. He politely declined dining with the King of the Cannibals (the only time, according to him, that he turned down a culinary challenge). He was introduced to LSD many years ago and his books and his readers have reaped the benefits of its uninhibiting and mind-freeing effects ever since.

The book is worth reading, but probably only for those who've read and enjoyed his novels.

★ ★ ★ ☆ ☆

Never Cry Wolf

by Farley Mowatt
247 pgs

I've mentioned this before, but I don't read a lot of nonfiction, not that I don't enjoy it when I do read it. It's just that there are so many novels out there that I want to read, that I rarely take the time to read it. So why did I choose a memoir by a Canadian naturalist who studied and observed a den of wolves for several months? It's because of my dad. My dad has a whole shelf filled with books by Mowatt, and when I was about 10 years old, he had me watch the movie Never Cry Wolf which was based on his memoir. I thought it was great, and I probably rewatched the movie a dozen or so times growing up. So I finally got around to reading it.

Half a century or so ago the number of caribou in Northern Canada was declining rapidly. The Canadian government, believing the reports they were receiving from trappers and traders in the area, that the wolves were behind the decimation of the herds, sent Mowatt to live on the frozen tundra to substantiate the reports and to determine what needed to be done. Mowatt quickly found a den of wolves to observe and spent a spring, summer, and fall watching them day and night. The results of his observations might seem obvious to readers today, but they flew in the face of the common misconceptions of his time.

The wolves, as he observed, were highly intelligent and social animals. They lived in family groups with parents mating for life and spending years raising their pups. They subsisted for most of the warmer months on a diet of mice, fish, and other small animals, eating caribou primarily in the winter months only, when easier prey was unavailable. When the caribou were available, the wolves operated in accordance with the ideas of Darwin; they sought out the weak, injured, or frail from the herd and fed only on those. Instead of killing caribou indiscriminantly and out of a sense of blood thirst, as the reports were claiming, the wolves were ultimately responsible for maintaining the health of the herd through natural selection.

Never Cry Wolf is a fun, entertaining, and thoughtful book. Mowatt is a very endearing narrator who has an enjoyable sense of humor and whose affection for the wolves he spends so much time observing is evident throughout the book. His recounting of marking off his own territory based on the wolves' practices, or of using himself as the test subject for an experiment of whether a large mammal can truly live on a diet of mice alone, or of trying to explain himself to an Inuit tribe who catch him dissecting buckets full of wolf scat while wearing a gas mask are highlights of the book and explain why it's worth the short amount of time it takes to read this book.

★ ★ ★ ☆ ☆

Drop Dead Healthy - One Man's Humble Quest for Bodily Perfection

by A. J. Jacobs

A. J. Jacobs is not the type of person who takes his goals lightly. Several years ago he made a goal to improve himself mentally, spiritually, and physically. He chronicled each of those self-improvements its own book. For his mental improvement he set out to read the entire Encyclopedia Britannica in a year; which he wrote about in The Know-It-All: One Man's Humble Quest to Become the Smartest Person in the World. For his spiritual improvement he devoted a year of his life to living every commandment in the Bible; which he wrote about in The Year of Living Biblically: One Man's Humble Quest to Follow the Bible as Literally as Possible. With this book, he completes his trifecta of self-improvement and focuses on his body. For a little over two years Jacobs spends every waking moment and conscious thought on how he can achieve perfect health.

To start out, this book is not the memoir of a 600lb man who shed the weight and now walks around in a saggy suit of skin nine times larger than his body. Jacobs was not obese. He was what he called "'skinny fat’ — a body that resembled a python after swallowing a goat." So the book is not about weight loss. Instead Jacobs chooses to spend a couple weeks at a time trying to obtain optimum health for one specific part of his body at a time: heart, lungs, stomach, immune system, feet, teeth, bladder, ears, etc.

The true joy of this book, along with his previous ones, is Jacobs's self-deprecating sense of humor as he describes the various health experiments he subjects himself (and by association, his saintly wife) to. Like buying a device to be placed over the toilet bowl, which allowed him to achieve the squatting position he learns is the most ideal for the healthiest removal of waste. Or jury-rigging a treadmill into a writing desk so that he could be walking while writing the book (he walked 1,200 miles at a 2 mile/hour pace).

Jacobs tries veganism, Atkins, juice cleanses, along with dozens of other diets. He tries Cross Fit, anti-gravity yoga, and there's a very entertaining account of him attending a pole dancing workout class where he was the only man among fifty women wearing high heels, and sporting an inordinate amount of cleavage.

The book is entertaining and it's informative. It made me laugh and it made me think about the way I treat my own body. It's not a life changing book, and I don't think Jacobs meant it to be. But I challenge anyone to read it and not come away with some ideas for at least a few changes they're going to make in order to take better care of their body.

★ ★ ★ ★ ☆