Dress Your Family in Corduroy and Denim

David Sedaris is widely known for his exceedingly clever, side-splitting, best-selling books, such as Naked and Me Talk Pretty One Day. His latest is yet another collection of irresistible essays and is as insightful as his previous work. This time around, though, Sedaris is also less afraid to dig into the deeper, sobering meaning of his crazy childhood in a crazy family transplanted from New York to North Carolina, his trying young adulthood dealing with his being gay, and his fairly recent life living in France with his partner Hugh. “Nuit of the Living Dead” and “Six to Eight Black Men,” an essay dealing with cultural differences in the Santa Claus myth (“Unlike the jolly, obese American Santa, Saint Nicholas is painfully thin … topping his robes with a tall hat resembling an embroidered tea cozy. The outfit, I am told, is a carryover from his former career as the bishop of Turkey…”), are flat out brilliant.