Theft by Finding: Diaries 1977-2002

In the preface, he says he doesn't expect anyone to read this straight through, but just flip through it more like a coffee table book. I read it straight through, though, and...well, I maybe would recommend his suggestion of treating it more like a coffee table book? I do love David Sedaris, and I've been to some of his readings and always love his diary excerpts. And it was cool to see some diary entries that I recognized had been later turned into full fledged essays or stories–especially all the stuff about his French teacher.

There is a fair amount of stuff in here, especially in the earlier years, that's a little jarring to read now–there are many entries where he just copies down verbatim very offensive conversations he's overheard without much comment, and I understand that he's presenting them like, “Wow I can't believe these people said this out loud!!” and it's the kind of thing that he can maybe pull off in a story or essay, but here it's kind of like “wow I just read the n-word a bunch of times.”

IDK, I think I'd have enjoyed it more if it were annotated in some way? But it is what it is, and there are some definite gems in here, but I'd probably only recommend it to die-hard Sedaris fans.