Exploring the Humor and Humanity of Diabetes with David Sedaris' Let's Explore Diabetes with Owls

coot veal: David Sedaris is merciless on himself mainly, but the whole world and it’s idiocy. By turns laugh out loud funny and then suddenly serious and even tragic, he has perfected a writing style and persona that always is refreshing and thought provoking. I recommend any and all of his books.

United States on Dec 05, 2023

P N G: This was my third book by David Sedaris. I like the way he writes, his style, and his deadpan humor. This book was good, but not great. "Me
talk pretty one day" was notches above this one in delivering humor.

India on Dec 11, 2021

Zoya D: This is the first David Sedaris book I've read and considering I'm not really a fan of non-fiction, biography, memoir type books, I'm so glad I read this one. Each chapter is written in the form of a short essay, each one a little insight into different aspects of his life - his relationship with his father, his writing, his travels. There are skits in the midst of his musings about his own life written from the point of view of completely random characters - an American teenager who talks like a Brit, a very racist middle aged woman, and a father. While this book drips with sarcasm and cynicism and has lots of solid laugh out loud moments, there is a much darker undertone to it, one that talks about the lack of his father's attention, dead baby turtles, his drug riddled years and his time as a "starving artist". I did find myself cringe at a few parts - the horrors of Chinese food and the description of the Indian call center worker (this felt kind of racist and very stereotypical) - but all in all I quite enjoyed this book and I'm definitely going to get my hands on some of his other, better rated work.

India on Oct 03, 2020

Liketocamp: I love this author, but this book is a bit weird - some of the stories are written like he is someone else. I like all his other books much more. The quality of the book physically is great - thank you, Amazon!

Canada on Sep 28, 2020

babsbabs65: I'm always amazed by the honesty of David Sederis. His writing is funny and illuminating, but the most important message I take from his books is his ability to reflect on his life without trying to hide any of the unsavoury bits or justify his inappropriate outbursts. He has an unnerving desire to say the most inappropriate things to family and complete strangers alike and clearly revels in the drama he creates. As someone who strangles every sentence with attempts to avoid offence, I love him for this. The book ends on a high note with a blow by blow account of his colonoscopy.

United Kingdom on Dec 01, 2018

Miss S E Doran: This is a non fiction text which is essentially a series of short essays/recollections of periods in the author's life. As such it reads sort of like an autobiography, but the author focuses on a series of incidents and memories in isolation, rather than as part of an overall coherent narrative of a particular period in his life. The book reads as though it is definitely aiming to be a humourous read. There are parts of this book which are definitely funny quirky or interesting, but unfortunately I felt that there were not enough of them. While I did not find it a chore to read I did not recommend it to others, and I did not want to read the author's other books (of which there are several in the same vein, I believe). I don't read a lot of non fiction and memoirs, but I don't think this was the reason for not enjoying this book, as I did really like other books in the same genre such as Tina Fey's 'Bossypants' and Caitlin Moran's 'How to be a Woman'. Ultimately I just thought that the book was good in parts, but just not consistently entertaining.

United Kingdom on Aug 15, 2013

David Seaman: Who am I to write any sort of critique on the work of David Sedaris? It's akin to reviewing "The Confessions of Nat Turner" or " Huckleberry Finn." Perhaps I am cocky enough to write about Mark Twain or E.B. White, but from "Stuart Little" and "Charlotte's Web" to "One Man's Meat" and "The Second Tree From The Corner" there is no one in the Western World who does not already know and love Edwin Bains White. David Sedaris is in the same category; what am I to say now? Who am I to say anything? In the early 1990's I could have pulled this off because he was not as widely known then and the review of "Barrel Fever" or "Naked" would simply say, "You've never read anything like this; I promise you will laugh." To write about him now takes a lot of gall.

So why am I doing it? In part it's because there's a small part of me that hopes that Mr. Sedaris will actually read this either in The Boston Tab or on Amazon, where the VINE program sends me an endless line of books, DVD's and small electronics about which I must write a minimum of 200 words (this is barely an introduction) and cover as much about the product to touch on every type of person who may find themselves curious...

United States on May 19, 2013

Larry Hoffer: I'd rate this 4.5, maybe even 4.75 stars.

There were times when reading Let's Explore Diabetes with Owls, David Sedaris' new, occasionally laugh-out-loud-funny collection of essays and fictional humorous pieces, that I thought, "David Sedaris and I share a brain," because in his rants about overly permissive parents in stores, people who talk too long with customer service representatives at the expense of others in line behind them, the way people dress in the airport, etc., I felt he and I were on the same wavelength.

And then, as he waxed on about food safety and other cleanliness issues in China, his obsession with picking up trash near his home in the United Kingdom, the eating habits of the Australian kookaburra, and his childhood acts (unintentional and otherwise) of animal cruelty, I thought, "Well, maybe we just share a tiny piece of a brain," because in addition to being so insightful, Sedaris is more than a little bit crazy. But we like him that way!

I've always been a huge Sedaris fan, although the last collection of his I read, When You Are Engulfed in Flames, underwhelmed me a bit. Not so with this collection. I literally laughed out loud a...

United States on Apr 30, 2013