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Showing posts from November, 2017

Theft by Finding: Diaries (book)

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Sitting down to type this piece, I had a look at the catalogue of Sedaris' work and realised that the majority of his work is now auto-biographical. In fact I haven't read a single fiction piece by Sedaris, all of my exposure has been through his auto-biographical stuff. This book contains his diary entries from 1977 to 2002 which are the nuggets of raw material that make up the vast range of his work from the late 90s. For a Sedaris fan like me, who cannot get enough of his humour and perspective of the world, it was a pure joy to read with moments of cackling out loud. The diary entries paint what it was like to live in big tough cities like Chicago and New York in the 70s and 80s: it just seems like you couldn't really walk around carrying anything of great value because there were constant threats of getting mugged. There are somber moments too like when one of the earlier entries talk about this new 'cancer' that's been found that "only kil