Joined in 2023 
82 
63 About this deal
Sure these essays and stories are misanthropic and sometimes course, filled with crude humor and bleak holiday cheer, but they are funny. And funny is never out of season. If you don't love Sedaris you may not enjoy the rest of the collection Santaland by far outshines the rest. The elven-voiced man is best listened to rather than read, in my opinion. I always go with audiobooks narrated by himself, because he adds the oh-so-necessary inflection, as well as some humorous renditions of his family members and, one of my favorites, Billie Holiday doing Christmas and commercial jingles. But here too is an issue. Some of these shorts are not read by him, but rather by guest narrators. That's like casting Rip Torn as the evil-yet-somehow-handsome villain in your movie... The rest of the stories weren't nearly as much fun for me. "Seasons Greetings" and "Christmas Means Giving" in particular ended felt overly mean and cruel.
A collection of short stories on different holiday themes. Not really about the holidays, but observations of life around the holidays. There are more stories in this edition than in the previous version. Personally, I think the additional stories are welcome.) No matter what your favorite holiday, you won't want to miss celebrating it with the author who has been called "one of the funniest writers alive" (Economist). Le Père Martin" (1888) by Ruben Saillens and unwittingly plagiarized as " Papa Panov's Special Christmas" by Leo Tolstoy
Sedaris recalls the Christmas that he was taken on a late-night ride downtown by his sister, Lisa, to rescue a prostitute from her abusive boyfriend. This story was also published in Sedaris' 1997 book Naked. This book is seriously not funny. I suspect this may be somewhat related to the fact that it seems to be a commissioned anthology, but it fails to deliver the characteristic irony and that "we've all been there" identification so characteristic of Sedaris' work.
The bestselling holiday classic is updated and expanded, with six more stories to help spread the cheer and mortification of the season.The rest of the stories in the collection have some funny moments or humorous moments. Some of them were ok and some weren't too good. But the two stories above are enough for me to give this uproariously funny book 5 stars. I wanted to laugh and it gave me my laugh. The fluff in the middle can be read or skipped. Holidays on Ice is great right down to the cover which features an alcoholic beverage with ice in in it (adorable and much like my family's holidays). It features Christmas themed stories some his holiday experiences, others just featuring his talent as a writer. Santa land Diaries is the first essay and it is the star of this show. These are journal entries from when David at the age of 33 worked as an elf at Macy's Santaland...at the age of 33.
At one point in Santaland Diaries "Santa" Santa demands that David sing "Away in A Manger" at first David claims not to know but when pushed by "Santa" Santa he decides to sing it as Billie Holliday would have sung it, then we are treated to this rendition which causes my dog EverlyBrothers to start howling as if he was singing with him, urn:lcp:holidaysonice0000seda:lcpdf:73044a12-5a0e-41f9-a3dd-6cd290de545d Foldoutcount 0 Grant_report Arcadia #4281 Identifier holidaysonice0000seda Identifier-ark ark:/13960/t86j6q61h Invoice 2089 Isbn 0316779237 Ocr tesseract 5.0.0-alpha-20201231-10-g1236 Ocr_detected_lang en Ocr_detected_lang_conf 1.0000 Ocr_detected_script Latin Ocr_detected_script_conf 1.0000 Ocr_module_version 0.0.13 Ocr_parameters -l eng Old_pallet IA17696 Openlibrary_edition I always get David Sedaris and Dave Eggers confused for some reason. Until now, I've never read anything by either of them, but I can't remember who it is that everyone seems to hate. Sedaris? Eggers? Both? I had planned to read this a year ago, but forgot I had it. I thought I'd better read it now during the holidays so I wouldn't have to wait another year to get to it--I can never watch Christmas movies or read holiday stories when it's not Christmas; it's depressing. The other really good essay is Season's Greetings to Our Friends and Family!!! Sedaris nails the parody of Christmas newsletters perfectly. I would love to receive a letter like this one. Instead, I will most likely continue to receive the banal information of my friends and family: Little Billy is doing this; we redecorated our pantry; Joe sure likes college. I want something more. I want: Helen has finally beaten her meth addiction; Gary finally decided to start paying that overdue child support. I want real life. I want the details of what the year was really like. If I wanted Hallmark, I’d buy a card.
Customer reviews
I appreciate the sentiments of an earlier reviewer so I skipped the story about the visitor from Viet Nam - what little I did listen to was, plainly, awful, and not helped by the dramatic efforts of the reader. I had high hopes that the humor contained in rest of the anecdotes and episodes would compensate. But the remaining stories were a bleak disappointment. I'm wearing a green velvet costume. It doesn't get any worse than this. Who do these people think they are? I'm going to have you fired, and I want to lean over, and say I'm going to have you killed." If you follow my reading, you’re probably wondering what the hell could have happened to make me rate a Sedaris selection less than every Star. Well, lemma tell ya. http://www.audible.com/pd/Fiction/Holidays-on-Ice-Audiobook/B002V5BV9G/ref=a_search_c4_1_1_srTtl?qid=1403810922&sr=1-1 http://www.audible.com/pd/Comedy/Holidays-on-Ice-Audiobook/B002VA93HS/ref=a_search_c4_1_2_srTtl?qid=1403810922&sr=1-2
Great Deal 
New Comment