English Humour Unit: Book summary

What type of comedy is your book?

My humour book is Me talk pretty one day by David Sedaris, I found this book through Oprah’s website along with many other humorous novels but I chose David’s because of his title. This novel includes many different types of comedy but I enjoyed it the most when he used low comedy. Throughout the book David Sedaris gives many example of low comedy whether it’s when he lives in North Carolina or in France. One of my favourite essays that he wrote within the book would be the one about him learning guitar for the first time.  It was when he was a young boy living in North Carolina, and his mom forced him into taking unwanted guitar lessons from a midget. Throughout the essay David continuously refers back to the fact that his teacher is a midget, and makes many jokes about his physical deformities. This was one of my favourite essays because it involved low comedy, and slapstick humour. This book comprises of twenty-eight different essays, and I found almost every single one of them to be entertaining, witty, and very humorous.

Is it funny?

I found the novel to be hilarious and entertaining, but it depends on what type of comedy, and writing style you enjoy most. This particular book includes lots of low comedy, and comedy of manners, and if that’s not the type of comedy you enjoy I would not recommend this book to you. Me talk pretty one day includes multiple different essays comprised of stories, and events throughout David Sedaris’s life time and I enjoy that type of writing style so I enjoyed the book even more. His stories were full of jokes, and exaggerated sentences like when he decided to move to France and he arrived as a “spooky man-child”. While he was there he found a group of men playing soccer with a cow. He also enjoyed many translated movies since he didn’t know how to speak the language, he also found himself describing the Easter bunny to many puzzled classmates! Whether he was describing his childhood, or his manhood the book is full of comedy!