Books Read Week of December 31st

Back to reality!  The decorations have been put away, the kids are back in school, the adults are back at work, and I'm managing to spend time with my family AND fly through books.  Life is good.

Last week I finished two memoir-like books, both hilarious, but one on the naughtier side and one much holier than I had anticipated.

The Naughty:

Calypso by David Sedaris
My sister has been encouraging me to read Sedaris for years, so I finally bit the bullet and grabbed his most recent memoir (which is more or less in essay form - much less boring than standard memoirs!)  While he does tackle some tougher subjects, I still laughed all the way through it.  I laughed so hard at the part where he was feeding bits of his tumor to a snapping turtle that I'm pretty sure I ticked off everyone in the house.  (People get ticked off when you're laughing while reading but won't share what's funny.  But to provide enough context to help illustrate exactly how funny it all is, I'd basically have to read them half of the book.  Right?)
Now I'm going to go back and read all of his other stuff.  Goals!

(Oh, and this isn't TOO naughty.  But it can get vulgar for sure.)
Pair with:  Chunks of a tumor you had removed by an attendee at your book-signing event!  Haha!  OMG, I can't even think about it.
​

---

The Nice:

The Wondering Years:  How Pop Culture Helped Me Answer Life's Biggest Questions by Knox McCoy
Sounds pretty good, right?  It was!  But - I didn't realize that primarily the big question that Knox tackles in this book is God.  The Father, the Son, and the Holy Ghost.......in pretty much every chapter.
Which is all good with me, but I wasn't prepared for it - so consider this my heads up to you.  However, I'm so glad I read it, because it was genuinely super funny AND helped me ponder God with Knox. 
He's poignant, and I appreciated how he poked fun at how Christians can really miss the mark within pop culture.  He points out that movies billed as "Christian" are without fail 1000 times worse than any other movie, and attributes this to the thought that since the MESSAGE is so great, none of the other elements of the movie matter so much.  These and other musings were certainly worth the read, and the laughs, to me.
Points taken off for the feeling that some laughs were just stuck in for no reason, like he's been holding on to that one-liner since 6th grade and if he doesn't get it in his awesome book, when else will he have the chance?

Pair with:  A six pack of Mike's Hard Lemonade

Next up: I'm finishing up both an incredible science fiction book penned in the late 1950's as well as a book about an unlikely stripper.  So my mind is really all over the place right now and I'm going to be needing a safe space.

---