This is such a good collection of short stories! Immediately upon finishing the book, I went back and reread my favorites. I spent most of the book almost-but-not-quite crying. So many feelings!

A friend gave me this, as we are both Sedaris fans. None of this is his work (save the introduction, which was on par with most of his better essays), but I decided to trust his judgment and try something new. As with most collections, the stories were of varying quality.Where the Door is Always Open and the Welcome Mat is Out by Patricia Highsmith, read by Cherry Jones: Mildred is rushing around frantically to prepare for her sister Edith’s visit. The reader was great, but the story itself was

Because I'm contrarian by nature, I once came up with a theory as to why you can judge a book by its cover. The theory is this: if I like a cover, I will probably like the book. The reasoning behind it is: someone had to design a cover and to do that they had to at least know something about the book. They then distilled that feeling about the book into an image, and they liked the image (or they wouldn't have created it). If I like the image, I am at least somewhat likely to like the thinking b...

I made the assumption that David Sedaris wrote these stories. While reading this story, I kept thinking something is wrong. This doesn't feel like David. It turns out that David Sedaris is the editior of all these other short stories. They are stories that he leaves. I didn't laugh at these. They are more drama stories. They weren't bad stories, but they were not very memorable. They are simply stories. I much prefer David's stories. I'm a little disappointed in this one. Oh well. The stories in...

I am very happy that I borrowed this book. Although the proceeds go to 826nyc, and that is good, the book itself is a waste of time. The stories within are either ones I have read many times before (i.e."Revelation" Flannery O'Connor*) or are stories that made my eyes contort from boredom (i.e. "The Garden Party" Katherine Mansfield).Sarah Vowell's epilogue explaining 826nyc is so poorly constructed I closed the book after 3 sentences. *I really like O'Connor, but I was hoping for authors who ar...

They put David Sedaris's name all over this thing. It wasn't until after I had checked it out that I realized it was not just Sedaris and it was not his usual non-fiction storytelling. This is not necessarily a bad thing, but it is kind of like that feeling when you pick up a glass expecting it to be full and it is actually empty; a bit disorienting at first, but I eventually realized what I was dealing with and settled in.The stories were okay. Basically just low motivation, day to day kind of

As a big fan of David Sedaris, let me just say that I am very very glad he has not been able to better emulate his writing heroes. Because for a very talented storyteller, the man has appalling taste in stories.Children Playing Before a Statue of Hercules is a Sedaris-edited short story collection. Sedaris makes clear in the book's introduction that these are stories by authors he particularly loves, and that he aims to be as great as he thinks they are. Oh dear.The version I listened to is abri...

I just can't connect to these stories. Review to come.Audiobook CommentsRead by the author - love it when this happens!!YouTube | Blog | Instagram | Twitter | Facebook | Snapchat @miranda_reads

A really fabulous collection of stories from masters of the craft; Hempel, Baxter and Wolff's are my favorite. The audio version is extremely well done - Sedaris reading "Gryphon" was the best of the bunch. Highly recommended.

This is a compilation of David Sedaris' favorite short stories by literary greats such as Alice Munro, Flannery O'Connor and Dororthy Parker, just to name a few. With a crowd like this, you can expect stories that will leave you ever so slightly unsettled, such as Tobias Wolff's "Bullet in the Brain" and Lorrie Moore's troubling tromp through a pediatric cancer ward in "People Like That Are the Only People Here: Canonical Babbling in Peed Onk." The stories seem to gather eccentric value as the b...

A few weeks ago, I was lucky enough to see David Sedaris speak at UCLA. In my haste to make sure that I had read all of Sedaris' books, I bought " Children Playing Before a Statue of Hercules" on my Kindle. It turns out, that this a collection of Sedaris' favorite short stories and he edited the compilation.I am not the slightest bit disappointed that this wasn't a collection of Sedaris stories, because the selections he picked are fantastic. In fact, this is probably the best collection of shor...

I'm not a regular reader of fiction, but when I find an author I enjoy, I tend to read the entire collection of his/her work. I love David Sedaris's humor and writing, so purchased this along with several of his other books. When I learned that this was "just" a collection of his favorite short stories instead of his own words, I was disappointed. That feeling of disappointment continued through about half of the stories in Hercules, some of which I had to force myself to finish, and one of whic...

David Sedaris, who I think is quite funny, put these stories together from his list of favorites and I agree with the reviewer who said he has some strange taste in stories. Actually she said appalling but I did at least like the first one, maybe only because it came from Patricia Highsmith. Through the rest, my mind wandered.

Checked this collection out in audiobook form from the library for the 5 hr drive up to my family cottage at the end of July. I'd seen it listed in the library newsletter as a New Arrival and since I enjoy Sedaris' work so much, I thought I'd give it a try. Note that the audiobook version is abridged & contains only 5 of the stories from the print edition. I now own a paperback copy as a pass-along from my Mom. With this book, Sedaris selected examples of writing he has been astounded by, in an

I gave this book to a friend for her birthday a few years ago and she mentioned that while she loved the book, it was proving to be life threatening. She was reading while walking, while eating, while riding her bike...it was an accident waiting to happen.The thing about this collection of short stories (chosen, not authored, by David Sedaris) is that every time I finished a story I would think, "Oh definitely. That is my favorite short story EVER." Then, I would read the next story and find tha...

A challenging collection of short stories selected by David Sedaris. It may defy expectations, if one expects light humour or satire. There are some classics in here, such as "The Garden Party" as well as new writers I had not previously encountered. The Alice Munro story, "Half A Grapefruit" I had recently read in the original collection, but somehow it read differently in this volume. One or two of these pieces I basically skimmed/skipped — but let's not get into that. Any good strong collecti...

I'm not a short story fan, so you might be justified in wondering why I read this one. I blame George Eliot. I kept trying various things to pull me out of the Grand Canyon sized reading slump that Middlemarch abandoned me in; I could clearly see the rim but seemed unable to get up there.I'm a Sedaris fan, and his writing almost always makes me smile, so why not try this collection of short stories curated by him? I read somewhere that this audiobook is an abridged collection - it only has 5 of

Don't get freaked out when you see two stars next to David Sedaris' name...he didn't write the book, he just edited it. But, that's why I was so surprised. It's an interesting collection and not at all what you might assume Sedaris would pick as his favorite short stories. Actually, a lot of them were about death, so not his usual fun topics like midget guitar teachers or christmas whores. But death, or almost dying. So yeah, this is actually a pretty morbid collection of stories. If I could ind...

I've listened to a lot of David Sedaris over the years, and I think he writes fantastic prose and memoirs. We are of the same mind when it comes to what short stories we like. I honestly loved almost every single story he chose for this collection, and those I didn't love I certainly respect. Since he is so open about so many aspects of his life, it's not a stretch to see what drew him to each of these stories, and they are by turns terribly shocking, mysterious, happy, and always great prose. I...

One of the reasons that I love David Sedaris is that he shares my love of reading and books. In his introduction, Sedaris reflected about books and wrote that, in his opinion, "a good one would take me out of myself and then stuff me back in, outsized, now, and uneasy with the fit. This led to a kind of trance that made the dullest work, the dullest life, bearable." And he claimed that "I believed, and still do, that stories can save you." Exactly! David Sedaris wrote the introduction to this bo...