Theft by Finding: Diaries (1977-2002) - Hardcover

David Sedaris is the author of the books Let's Explore Diabetes with Owls, Squirrel Seeks Chipmunk, When You Are Engulfed in Flames, Dress Your Family in Corduroy and Denim, Me Talk Pretty One Day, Holidays on Ice, Naked, and Barrel Fever. He is a regular contributor to The New Yorker and BBC Radio 4. He lives in England.

PRAISE FOR THEFT BY FINDING:

"Starve and Struggle. Feast. Bloat. These are the three stages that all artists - with some variation - go through in their careers...So it's encouraging to read 25 years of David Sedaris's diaries, and not just because he manages to defeat Bloat. It's helpful to see that a voice as original, hilarious and sometimes as infuriating as his was put through the same Struggle and Starve meat grinder that most of us go through...No one escapes Bloat, but many survive it. Maybe not with the grace, whining, hilarity and eye-rolling that Sedaris does. But through all 25 years of "Theft by Finding" - of soap opera addictions and spider feeding, family kookiness and language lessons - Sedaris's developing voice is the lifeline that pulls him through the murk."
―Patton Oswalt, New York Times Book Review


"If it's hard to be funny, it's an astounding feat to stay funny--wildly, wickedly, ingeniously so--for more than twenty years. Yet David Sedaris has somehow pulled it off, in exhilarating essays that zero in on the absurd and the poignant with eviscerating wit and radiant humanity....Fans will no doubt delight in the entries that will turn into Sedaris's most beloved essays...We're treated to a portrait of the artist as a young man, albeit one with an old and singular soul."
―Fiona Maazel, O, The Oprah Magazine


"A standout... Whether he's in an IHOP in Raleigh or his apartment in the 6th arrondissement of Paris, his eye for the absurd and the vulgar is infallible and his deadpan prose style inimitable...Here, the relatively artless diary entries, short and long, sequenced and non sequitur, add up to something we've never gotten before--a big, juicy narrative arc. It comprises 25 years of an essentially heartwarming success story, any potential ickiness kept in check by Sedaris's judicious minimalism."
―Marion Winik, Newsday

"Mesmerizing... Delightful... Sedaris describes the world around him... the vast and splendid array of human life that can be observed at IHOP, or the vagaries of fruit picking... Reading Theft by Finding is like watching a favorite play from behind the scenes, in the company of a friend who can identify what is absurd and heartbreaking and human about every person on stage."
―Annalisa Quinn, NPR

"Sedaris, a master of incisive and comic cultural criticism, is about to get more personal than ever...Theft by Finding reveals intimate details of this literary luminary's life and mind--all told with his singular sense of humor."
―Harper's Bazaar


"Sedaris fans will thrill to this opportunity to poke around in the writer's personal diaries, which he has faithfully kept for four decades and used as raw material for his hilarious nonfiction as well as his performances."
―Paul S. Makishima, Boston Globe


"If you've had the good fortune of seeing Sedaris on tour, you've probably heard him read from one of his snarky and hilariously solipsistic diary entries. Finally, they're collected in one place for the first time."
―Entertainment Weekly


"Randomly open to any page of Theft by Finding and you'll find a gem... Sedaris's gift is to make you stop and think one moment and laugh out loud the next."―Rob Merrill, Associated Press


"Here, in these as-it-happened accounts and jottings, is a rich chunk of the mother lode from which David Sedaris has mined his personal essays and performances. The extracts in Theft by Finding cover what may be called the disconsolate IHOP years, when he was a college dropout, rootless casual worker and aspiring artist, and those during which he became a celebrity.... The appeal of these diary entries lies in their spareness and in Sedaris's boundless relish for the absurdity of life.... The Sedaris of these diaries is, above all, a connoisseur of annoying things and of bothersome and downright dreadful people."
―Katherine A. Powers, Washington Post

"This is Sedaris, who can be wickedly funny as well as deliciously insightful about modern mores - so the nuggets are big and shiny and well worth panning for... His eccentric existence is eminently enthralling."―David Holahan, USA Today