I make my first venture back into public blogging with a book review that will probably turn into a rant. Hooray!

Squirrel Seeks Chipmunk is the first David Sedaris book I’ve ever read. Prior to this I knew nothing about him other than many people seem to enjoy his writing and that his sister was pretty funny in Strangers with Candy. Okay, that might be incentive enough to read, right?

Boy, was I ever disappointed.

The book is a collection of short stories that simultaneously lampoon humanity and make you regret being a human. In essence, it’s like a Pixar movie met Rodney Dangerfield. Every story save the last was intended to be humorous, but I found myself getting more and more angry with them. Was that Sedaris’s intent? Probably. I suppose I’m not the target audience.

I interpreted Squirrel Seeks Chipmunk as a series of short stories about humanity, superimposed with animals as characters rather than Joe X or Jane Y off the street. In fact, I don’t think I’d even like them were they written about humans. The stories are about the kind of characters I am loathe to be interested in – self-righteous, boastful characters who only think about others when it benefits them in some way. The only story with any merit to me was “The Grieving Owl,” with likeable misfit characters that didn’t make me want to punch them in their respective faces.

tl;dr – I’m glad I took this out of the library and didn’t pay real money for it.