David Sedaris lives an intriguing life. Now in his early 40s, he has lived all over the US, working at everything from picking apples in Oregon to moving furniture in New York. These adventures, his own family, which seems cast straight out of a sit-com, and his recent move to Paris have all given him stories to tell, and he positively boils over in the telling of them.

Others have written about these subjects before, like observations about the exotic foods served at high-end New York City restaurants, or how complicated second languages are to learn (Mark Twain went at this one with the German language a hundred years ago), but Sedaris still gives them his own fresh twist. He is insulted by a waiter in a snobby restaurant (Sedaris is given a jacket to wear during the meal, and, while taking the order, the waiter repeatedly comments "nice jacket"), and, while struggling with the French language, instead of attacking tricky grammar head on, he evades the issue by using, asking for, and ordering everything in pairs, the grammatical construction of which does not require gender.

These tales are, ostensibly, purely autobiographical, but the reader might still end up wondering how much exaggeration goes into them. Does the waiter really make snide remarks to Sedaris? Did his Parisian French teacher, who speaks impeccable English, really tell him "Every day spent with you is like having a cesarean section"? Does his brother really inform their father, shortly after the death of their mother, that in graphic termshe really just needs to get laid?

While the reader might wonder about these things, they are quietly overlooked because Sedaris seems to be a magnet for the oddities of the world. Any one of these things happening to you or me would be strange; for Sedaris, they are simply part of his life. From the reader's perspective, they make for hilarious reading.

The first half of Me Talk Pretty Some Day is about Sedaris' family and childhood, both of which seems to have come with their own laugh tracks. While he covered some of these topics and years in earlier work, the well is not yet dry. A family of eight, one or another of them is forever demonstrating idiosyncrasies and oddities that make Sid Vicious look like a member of the Religious Right. There is the sister who, to force their father's hand in his repeated criticisms of her weight, arrives home wearing part of a custom-made "fatty suit". The father is completely convinced by the ruse and extremely disturbed at his daughter's rapid weight gain. But this is no simple "Ha ha! You shoulda seen your face" prank. She continues to wear the suit for her entire Christmas visit before admitting the gag. She takes it so far, her legs are "chafed and pimpled" by the end. This is a family that, when their dog, MSdchen, dies, gets another dog and names her MSdchen Two.