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When You Are Engulfed in Flames | 
| Creator: David Sedaris
Publisher: Hachette Audio
Category: Book
List Price: $34.98
Buy New: $16.60
You Save: $18.38 (53%)
New (27) Used (13) from $15.49
Avg. Customer Rating:  218 reviews
Sales Rank: 3099
Format: Audiobook, Unabridged
Media: Audio CD
Edition: Unabridged
Number Of Items: 8
Shipping Weight (lbs): 0.5
Dimensions (in): 5.9 x 5.3 x 1.6
ISBN: 1600241824
Dewey Decimal Number: 814.54
EAN: 9781600241826
Publication Date: June 3, 2008
Availability: Usually ships in 1-2 business days
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Product Description
Once again, David Sedaris brings together a collection of essays so uproariously funny and profoundly moving that his legions of fans will fall for him once more. He tests the limits of love when Hugh lances a boil from his backside, and pushes the boundaries of laziness when, finding the water shut off in his house in Normandy, he looks to the water in a vase of fresh cut flowers to fill the coffee machine. From armoring the windows with LP covers to protect the house from neurotic songbirds to the awkwardness of having a lozenge fall from your mouth into the lap of a sleeping fellow passenger on a plane, David Sedaris uses life's most bizarre moments to reach new heights in understanding love and fear, family and strangers. Culminating in a brilliantly funny (and never before published) account of his venture to Tokyo in order to quit smoking, David Sedaris's sixth essay collection will be avidly anticipated.
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| Customer Reviews: Read 213 more reviews...
 Stoo, Drop and Roll September 6, 2008
When You Are Engulfed in Flames is filled with more of David Sedaris's essays on pretty much anything that crosses his mind. From his neighbor Helen to the boil on his lower back to wanting to see the dingo at the zoo. Sedaris dwells on his inadequacies to the point of sleep (the reader's). There are some humorous moments, but Sedaris focuses on the negative too much and the comic relief too little.
 interesting sense of humor, very funny September 4, 2008
1 out of 1 found this review helpful
I'm a Sedaris fan - I think his sense of humor is very intellectual and hilarious. He makes fun of himself and gives his impression of the things going on around him - just really funny. I laugh out loud with this one.
More gut grabbing laughs. September 2, 2008
0 out of 3 found this review helpful
Straight from the Van Gogh on the cover through an essay on the practicality of the colostomy bag. The book is filled with the sort of uncomfortably wonderful humor that we have come to expect from Sedaris. Whether you've read his previous five novels or are picking up your first, you'll love this book.
Still Familiar, but Still Funny September 2, 2008
1 out of 1 found this review helpful
A few years back word got around that one of Sedaris' first books (Naked) was to be made into a film. The idea seemed impossible. "Naked" is a seemingly random group of short stories. Sporadic but polished diary entrees at best. There was no real story there. Matthew Brodrick was rumored to be attacked to the project and it seemed for a short time that it was actually going to happen, then things, I guess fell apart. Since "Naked" Sedaris has written several other books, "Me Talk Pretty One Day", "Dress Your Family in Corduroy and Denim" and now "When You Are Engulfed in Flames".
The books all follow the same pattern, Sedaris takes notes and entries from his diary and/or life experience, seasons them with humor and slight exaggeration and then presents them as self-depreciating musing about his family, his world, and himself. They are like candy to read (his stories/observations often around a dozen pages or so long) and often bring forth a chuckle or two if not a full blown guffaw. The inherent problem however is that when Sedaris wrote "Naked" (fresh from the success he had with his masterpiece "Santaland Diaries) he seemed to have a gold mind of material or maybe it was that his style seemed so fresh and new; but now there seems to be few surprises. Not that familiarity breeds contempt, but perhaps it breeds a slight bit of boredom. Such excerpts from "...Flames", like "Solutions to Saturday's Puzzle" and "Of Mice and Men" are very funny and biting. Others seem to tread over to familiar territory. "The Smoking Section" (a far too long story about Sedaris quitting smoking in Japan) has us back in a classroom with our hero learning Japanese. Funny, but not unlike "Me Talk Pretty Some Day" when our hero was learning French. There are also more stories about his youth, his hard smoking colorful mother, the cranky father, his boyfriend Hugh. All are enjoyable but all are very familiar.
As I look back on this book as well as his others, the idea of a movie makes more sense now. With each book we get a little more nuance, a little more filler. As a whole the books reflect a sort of non-liner auto -biography and right now that's good enough for me; but it begs the question: Can a David Sedaris movie be made? Maybe if you mined all of his work. If Hollywood were to bite again, what's the worst that could happen? Perhaps it might give David more material for his next book.
Gimme More..................... September 1, 2008
1 out of 3 found this review helpful
As always, David Sedaris delivers an easy to read and very funny book. He never disappoints.
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