Characters

I guess I picked a pretty hard book to do these blog assignments on because it is so different.  The stories are all different, including a lot of the characters that fall into these stories, but the one thing they have in common is they are revolved around David Sedaris himself.  We, the readers, get to know and understand Sedaris a little better with each story and each chapter through the book.  It is easier to get a grip on his type of humor through the tales that he tells.  What makes these stories worth being told is that they are so relatable to normal people.  David Sedaris is really just an average guy with a really good sense of humor, therefore people can relate to his stories, such as his very last chapter called The Smoking Section.  That chapter is dedicated to his tough journey trying to quit smoking.  Many people have this same exact issue that they are dealing with in their life, David Sedaris's humor helps lighten the mood with the people who are also dealing with this problem.  As much as I hate to admit it, because this character drives me up the wall with his complaining, Holden Caulfield from The Catcher in the Rye reminds me a little bit of Sedaris with his strong sarcastic tone.

If it were a movie...

My book is not exactly the easiest book to make a movie of, but it could also be because I have not finished it yet.  Each chapter is a different story coming from the authors life and past experiences.  This book is nonfiction, therefore these are all true stories.  I was thinking if I were to make a movie out of this novel I would make the story line more choppy, showing different parts of the authors life on and off from past and present.  Now I would not be able to make this movie strictly off of this novel since, so far, most of the stories do not have relevance to one another.  Therefore I think it would be good to find, or possibly even make up a connection, between each story to lead to an over all theme or message.  Again, I could not go exactly by the novel.  David Sedaris is a pretty funny guy, so an actor that would play his part would have to be funny, such as Jim Carrey, Ben Stiller, or Will Ferrell.  There are many other characters throughout his story, I do not know these characters personalities as well yet so I can not exactly name people who could play the roles of people such as his mother, and friend's mother, Patsy, ect.

When You Are Engulfed In Flames

The book that I chose is called When You Are Engulfed In Flames by David Sedaris.  This is a nonfiction book that is about the author's past experiences; each chapter is a short story or essay.  The reason why I chose this book is because people have hyped up this author as being hilarious.  I saw an story of him on Sunday Morning where they talk about his novels and his type of humor.  Since I have always thought that it is nearly impossible for a novel to make me laugh, I was curious to read some of his work.  He has quite a few books out, but this one was the one that fit all the requirements. I hope I end up liking it!