CLOSURE: Central Library will be closed Tuesday, July 21, through Saturday, July 25, while emergency repairs are made to the building’s cooling system. We expect to reopen Monday, July 27. Click for more details on holds, program schedules, and returns during the closure. 

Notice of Public Meeting: Kalamazoo Public Library Board of Trustees | July 27 | 5:30 pm | Central Library/Van Deusen Room. The packet of information for the meeting can be found on the library’s website. 

Book

When you are engulfed in flames

Call Number

  • 814 S447.2 (CEN, OSH)

Browse similar titles by call number

Edition

1st ed.

Publication Information

New York : Little, Brown and Co., 2008.

Physical Description

viii, 323 p. ; 22 cm.

Summary

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 account of his venture to Tokyo in order to quit smoking, David Sedaris's sixth essay collection will be avidly anticipated.--From publisher description.

Contents

  • It's catching
  • Keeping up
  • The understudy
  • This old house
  • Buddy, can you spare a tie?
  • Road trips
  • What I learned
  • That's amore
  • The monster mash
  • In the waiting room
  • Solution to Saturday's puzzle
  • Adult figures charging toward a concrete toadstool
  • Memento mori
  • All the beauty you will ever need
  • Town and country
  • Aerial
  • The man in the hut
  • Of mice and men
  • April in Paris
  • Crybaby
  • Old Faithful
  • The smoking section.