Me Talk Pretty One Day

David Sedaris's Me Talk Pretty One Day gathers autobiographical essays from one of America's most acclaimed humorists, split into two halves. The first section returns to Sedaris's childhood and young adulthood in Raleigh, North Carolina: sessions with a speech therapist meant to cure his lisp, his father's fixation on his children's looks and habits (including his conviction that sister Amy would "shine like a diamond" in front of a camera), an account of his brother Paul's colorful vocabulary in "You Can't Kill the Rooster," and a string of odd jobs Sedaris drifted through in New York City before his writing career took off.

The second half follows Sedaris after he relocates to Paris — and later a house in Normandy — with his partner, Hugh. Its centerpiece, the title essay, recounts a school year spent in a French class taught by a brutally sarcastic instructor who reduces her students to tears; other pieces find Sedaris puzzling over French customs, unfamiliar foods, and his own halting attempts to be understood in a language he has not remotely mastered. Told in Sedaris's dry, self-deprecating voice, the collection won the Lambda Literary Award for Humor and remains one of his most widely read books.