If You Like David Sedaris...

updated 4/09

Candyfreak: A Journey Through the Chocolate Underbelly of America by Steve Almond
338.4 Almond
Almond embarks on a hilarious, sugar-high tour through America's last remaining independent candy companies.

I'm a Stranger Here Myself by Bill Bryson
973.92 Bryson
After living in Britain for two decades, Bill Bryson recently moved back to the United States with his English wife and four children. I'm a Stranger Here Myself recounts his sometimes disconcerting reunion with the land of his birth.

Wacky Chicks: Life Lessons from Fearlessly Inappropriate and Fabulously Eccentric Women by Simon Doonan
305.4 Doonan
Doonan, the creative director of Barney's New York specialty store and author of Nasty: My Family and Other Glamorous Varmints, celebrates the maverick lifestyle with 20 of today's most provocative and unconventional women.

Funny in Farsi: a Memoir of Growing up Iranian in America by Firoozeh Dumas
B Dumas
In 1972, when she was seven, Firoozeh Dumas and her family moved from Iran to Southern California. In a series of deftly drawn scenes, we watch the family grapple with American English (hot dogs and hush puppies?), American traditions (Thanksgiving turkey? – it tastes like nothing), and American culture.

A Heartbreaking Work of Staggering Genius by David Eggers
B Eggers
This memoir is the story of a college senior who, in the space of five weeks, loses both of his parents to cancer and inherits his eight-year-old brother.

Kick Me: Adventures in Adolescence by Paul Feig
B Feig
The creator of the cult classic TV series, Freaks and Geeks, offers a truly hilarious and blisteringly honest look at his real-life high school experiences to which every adult can relate.

A Girl Named Zippy: Growing Up Small in Mooreland, Indiana by Haven Kimmel
B Kimmel
When Haven Kimmel was born in 1965, Mooreland, Indiana, was a sleepy little hamlet of three hundred people. Laced with fine storytelling, sharp wit, dead-on observations, and moments of sheer joy, Haven Kimmel's straight-shooting portrait of her childhood gives us a heroine who is wonderfully sweet and sly as she navigates the quirky adult world that surrounds her.

She Got Up Off the Couch by Haven Kimmel
B Kimmel
In this hilarious and heartbreaking appreciation of her mother, Kimmel takes up where she left off in A Girl Named Zippy with more stories about her family and friends and her hometown of Mooreland, Indiana, once again narrating from a child's point of view.

Operating INstructions: A Journal of My Son's First Year by Anne Lamott
B Lamott
It's not like she's the only woman to ever have a baby. At 35. On her own. But Anne Lamott makes it all fresh in her now-classic account of how she and her son and numerous friends and neighbors and some strangers survived and thrived in that all important first year.

The Broke Diaries: The Completely True and Hilarious Misadventures of a Good Girl Gone Broke by Angela Nissel
B Nissel
In 1997 University of Pennsylvania undergraduate Nissel began an online diary of her financial hardships.

The Idiot Girls' Action Adventure Club by Laurie Notaro
814 Not
Introducing Laurie Notaro, the leader of the Idiot Girls' Action Adventure Club. Every day she fearlessly rises from bed to defeat the evil machinations of dolts, dimwits and boobs – and that's before she even puts on a bra.

An Idiot Girl's Christmas: True Tales from the Top of the Naughty List by Laurie Notaro
814.6 Notaro
Humorist Laurie Notaro returns with a collection of the most hilarious stories from the most wonderful – and dreadful – time of the year.

Revenge of the Paste Eaters by Cheryl Peck
B Peck
A collection of stories for anyone who shuddered at the idea of senior prom, this book is about the way the experiences of childhood stay with us and shape us into adults.

Don't Get Too Comfortable by David Rakoff
081 Rakoff
Established as one of today's funniest and most insightful writers with his bestselling autobiographical essay collection Fraud, Rakoff now moves from the personal to the public, journeying into the land of unchecked plenty that is contemporary America.

Fraud by David Rakoff
081 Rakoff
In his first collection of essays, Rakoff single-handedly raises self-deprecation to an art form as he presents an object lesson in not taking life too seriously.

Mirth of a Nation: The Best Contemporary Humor ed. by Michael J. Rosen
817 Mir
In this first volume of a new biannual series, 45 great literary humorists trade jabs, spoofs, satire and tirades – such as John Updike on cross-dressing with J. Edgar Hoover, Fran Lebowitz on the richness of money, David Ives on being Degas for a day and Garry Trudeau on re-retranslating Madonna.

Dispatches From the Tenth Circle: The Best of The Onion ed. by Robert Siegel
081 Dispa or 081 Sie
This compilation of headlines and articles satirizes modern life and newspaper journalism. The Onion 's first book, Our Dumb Century, won the 1999 Thurber Prize for American Humor.

I Like You: Hospitality Under the Influence by Amy Sedaris
793.2 Sedar
It must run in the family...Sedaris's blisteringly funny take on entertaining, plus color photos and enlightening sidebars on everything it takes to pull off a party with extraordinary flair makes this volume an entertaining book from one of the country's most delightfully unconventional hostesses. 

Assassination Vacation by Sarah Vowell
973 Vowel
From Buffalo to Alaska, Washington to the Dry Tortugas, Sarah Vowell visits locations immortalized and influenced by the spilling of politically important blood, reporting as she goes with her trademark blend of wisecracking humor, remarkable honesty, and thought-provoking criticism.

A Supposedly Fun Thing I'll Never Do Again by David Foster Wallace
814 Wallace
This exuberantly praised – and uproariously funny – first collection of nonfiction pieces by one of the most acclaimed and adventurous writers of our time reconfirms Mr. Wallace's stature as one of h is generation's preeminent talents.