Title: When You Are Engulfed in Flames
First published: 2008
Description: "David Sedaris's ability to transform the mortification of everyday life into wildly entertaining art," (The Christian Science Monitor) is elevated to wilder and more entertaining heights than ever in this remarkable new book. Trying to make coffee when the water is shut off, David considers using the water in a vase of flowers and his chain of associations takes him from the French countryside to a hilariously uncomfortable memory of buying drugs in a mobile home in rural North Carolina. In essay after essay, Sedaris proceeds from bizarre conundrums of daily life-having a lozenge fall from your mouth into the lap of a fellow passenger on a plane or armoring the windows with LP covers to protect the house from neurotic songbirds-to the most deeply resonant human truths.  Culminating in a brilliant account of his venture to Tokyo   in order to quit smoking, David Sedaris's sixth essay collection is a new masterpiece of comic writing from "a writer worth treasuring" *(Seattle Times).* 

Table of Contents:

It’s Catching
Keeping Up
The Understudy
This Old House
Buddy, Can You Spare a Tie?
Road Trips
What I Learned
That’s Amore
The Monster Mash
In the Waiting Room
Solutions to Saturday’s Puzzle
Adult Figures Charging Toward a Concrete Toadstool
Memento Mori
All the Beauty You Will Ever Need
Town and Country
Aerial
The Man in the Hut
Of Mice and Men
April in Paris
Crybaby
Old Faithful
The Smoking Section
Subjects: social life and customs, Manners and customs, essays, Nonfiction, American essays, Humor (Nonfiction), American Humorous stories, Wit and Humor as Topic, American wit and humor, Humor, form, essays, nyt:hardcover-nonfiction=2008-06-22, New York Times bestseller, New York Times reviewed, Humor, Récits humoristiques américains, Essais américains, Humorismo estadounidense, Traducciones al español, Ensayos, Cuentos humorísticos estadounidenses, Cuentos cómicos
Places: United States, Paris, France, North Carolina, Princeton, Japan
People: David Sedaris, Patsy, Hugh, Helen
Time periods: 21st century
LC classification: PS3569.E314 W48 2008