Tuesday, April 8, 2008

The David Sedaris Box Set

Editorial Reviews
from Amazon.com

Star radio storyteller David Sedaris presents his collected works in one audio box set. The longest (at five hours) is his latest, Me Talk Pretty One Day, which contains two live performances from San Francisco. Welcome to a world where dogs outrank children, guitars have breasts, and Sedaris's fellow language-class students try to convey the concept of Easter to a Moroccan Muslim in their fledgling French (translated into English): "It is a party for the little boy of God," says one. "Then he be die one day on two ... morsels of ... lumber," says another. Sedaris is hilarious, and his Billie Holiday impression is amazing.

The three-hour, Christmas-themed Holidays on Ice is the gem of the collection. It has his greatest hit, "SantaLand Diaries," a chronicle of his stint as an elf at Macy's, covering everything from the preliminary group lectures ("You are not a dancer. If you were a real dancer you wouldn't be here. You're an elf and you're going to wear panties like an elf.") to the perils of inter-elf flirtation.

Other hits feature the crazed newsletter "Season's Greetings to Our Friends and Family!!!" and the prostitute coworker his sister brought home one Yuletide, giving "the phrase 'ho, ho, ho' whole different meaning." Barrel Fever contains the fulminatingly funny "Glen's Homophobia Newsletter, Vol. 3, No. 2" and "Parade," discussing the narrator's perhaps not fully plausible gay relationships with Bruce Springsteen, Mike Tyson, and Peter Jennings. Naked describes his adventures in a nudist colony, but his family tales are, as ever, nonpareil.

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Theories of Everything: Selected, Collected, and Health-Inspected Cartoons, 1978-2006

Roz Chast was born in Brooklyn, New York and now lives in Connecticut. Her cartoons have appeared in magazines galore, and she is the author of many books. Her book contains some of her best work over 18 years.

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Roz Chast is so good I'd buy the New Yorker just to see her cartoon. Her take on the things we say and do, the things we like, the things that bug us and the general craziness of modern life is, to use an overused term, unique. This book is a comprehensive collection of her best, wackiest, most neurotic, most inspired stuff. It's a well-made book as well, so reading it is a more pleasurable experience.

What could be more fun than spending the day reading Roz Chast cartoons? This book has it all: cleverness, wit, a keen eye for everyday life and laughs galore. If you're having a bad day, nothing will cheer you up more than Theories of Everything. It just puts life into perspective.

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Monday, April 7, 2008

The Speed of Trust


From Stephen R. Covey's eldest son comes a revolutionary new path towards productivity and satisfaction. Trust, says Stephen M.R. Covey, is the very basis of the new global economy, and he shows how trust—and the speed at which it is established with clients, employees and constituents—is the essential ingredient for any high-performance, successful organization.

For business leaders and public figures in any arena, The Speed of Trust offers an unprecedented and eminently practical look at exactly how trust functions in our every transaction and relationship—from the most personal to the broadest, most indirect interaction—and how to establish trust immediately so that you and your organization can forego the time-killing, bureaucratic check-and-balance processes so often deployed in lieu of actual trust.


Read customer reviews about this cutting edge book.