REVIEW:

A Carnival of Snackery takes its name from a sampler offering on a menu David Sedaris once perused.

It’s a fitting title, because what he’s offering readers of his latest book is essentially a feast of little word snacks. Unlike his essay collections, this is 576 pages / 17 hours of short and seemingly random diary entries. Basically, if your most jaded, unfiltered self kept a journal of your daily experiences, conversations, and thoughts, it would look like this.

I always feel compelled to add the disclaimer that humor is subjective when sharing my thoughts on a book written for laughs, but never more so than when it’s for one by Sedaris. His brand of humor is unquestionably un-PC and often offensive. Sometimes it works for me, and sometimes it feels too cynical and mean-spirited.

A Carnival of Snackery DID mostly make me laugh, a lot. It has loads of jokes I felt compelled to relay to my husband, but I’d never feel okay sharing in mixed company. If off-color isn’t your color, Snackery is not for you. Also, if you voted for Trump, you’ve wandered into the wrong section of the bookstore and should redirect yourself accordingly. David Sedaris is not your people.

Like always, I chose the audiobook format since Sedaris is such an artful storyteller. While he narrates a large portion of this one, Tracy Ullman also performs large sections. His reasoning is that listeners often assume he’s a woman, so he might as well lean into that and have a little fun. It is a Carnival, after all.

PUBLISHER SYNOPSIS:

There’s no right way to keep a diary, but if there’s an entertaining way, David Sedaris seems to have mas­tered it.

If it’s navel-gazing you’re after, you’ve come to the wrong place; ditto treacly self-examination. Rather, his observations turn outward: a fight between two men on a bus, a fight between two men on the street, pedestrians being whacked over the head or gathering to watch as a man considers leap­ing to his death. There’s a dirty joke shared at a book signing, then a dirtier one told at a dinner party — lots of jokes here. Plenty of laughs.

These diaries remind you that you once really hated George W. Bush, and that not too long ago, Donald Trump was just a harm­less laughingstock, at least on French TV. Time marches on, and Sedaris, at his desk or on planes, in hotel dining rooms and odd Japanese inns, records it. The entries here reflect an ever-changing background — new administrations, new restrictions on speech and conduct. What you can say at the start of the book, you can’t by the end. At its best, A Carnival of Snackery is a sort of sampler: the bitter and the sweet. Some entries are just what you wanted. Others you might want to spit discreetly into a napkin.