Summer Reading, Part Eight

Still going.

And trying to catch up before the school year begins.

When You Are Engulfed In Flames - David Sedaris.

I enjoyed this more than his last collection (Dress Your Family...), as Sedaris seems to be settling into his role of a New Yorker essayist rather than, say, a writer for Esquire.

(I mean, can you see the New Yorker publishing "You Can't Kill the Rooster"?)

Not as many laugh-out-loud-in-the-middle-of-an-11th-grade-SOL-test moments as Me Talk Pretty One Day, but many more intriguing pieces than I found in Dress Your Family.

Maybe one, maybe two essays to pull out for class, but nothing on the level of "Jesus Shaves" or "A Plague of Tics" or -- of course -- "The Santaland Diaries."