Holidays on Ice: With Six New Stories

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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. 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.

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. Christmas Eve" ( Noch pered Rozhdestvom, 1832) by Nikolai Gogol (from Evenings on a Farm Near Dikanka) If you're not ready for Department Store Christmas Carolers or Mall Santas, plug Holidays On Ice into your ears. Sedaris generally does an excellent job of pointing toward the madness of the holidays, without feeling like a Grinch. http://www.audible.com/pd/Fiction/Holidays-on-Ice-Audiobook/B002V5BV9G/ref=a_search_c4_1_1_srTtl?qid=1403810922&sr=1-1

Customer reviews

Access-restricted-item true Addeddate 2021-08-09 10:01:02 Boxid IA40203403 Camera USB PTP Class Camera Collection_set printdisabled External-identifier The Cow and the Turkey” is another wonderfully funny essay, slightly reminiscent of James Thurber’s wild fables. There’s no way to convey its humor adequately. Just think of a barnyard, the problems being a Secret Santa might pose for the animals, and a very sinister cow. My mother was that cow, and yes, Moira, I know this has Faulknerian echoes: 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. Although I was aware that this is a collection of items pulled from other Sedaris books, many may not so it will appear to be a money grab . . . which it totally is. I don’t really care, though, since (1) I got it from the library so it cost me zero dollars and (2) David Sedaris could take a dump on paper, bind it up, and I’d still buy a copy so I could really give a rip whether this was material I was already familiar with.

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.There are more stories in this edition than in the previous version. Personally, I think the additional stories are welcome.) 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. 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." I listen to the audio version which features Sedaris himself reading, I enjoy listening to him so much more then reading it,he brings that extra something. So it might be a little cruel of me to review a book about Christmas when Christmas is off most of our radars, but, hey, there's still snow on the ground where I live so I'm allowing myself this review.

The bestselling holiday classic is updated and expanded, with six more stories to help spread the cheer and mortification of the season. Holidays on Ice is a 1997 collection of essays and stories about Christmas, some new and some previously published, by David Sedaris.It chronicles the insane parents, the unfortunate children, an interesting and multi-cultural array of Santa's and the policies Macy's enforces with regard to Santaland. There is so much gold here it is unreal, a Santa who never breaks character ( he is called Santa Santa) there is a gay elf (snowball) who leads all the other gay elves and a Santa on, there is a designated corner for children to vomit in, I could go on.

I never thought I could get through a David Sedaris book without over-working my abdominals from laughing too hard, but with this book I seem to have achieved that milestone. A Christmas letter from the Dunbar clan detailing matriarch Mrs. Dunbar's slow descent into insanity during the holiday season—belied by her insistently cheerful tone—as she is forced to cope with the discovery of her husband's infidelity, the resultant prostitute stepdaughter left in their care, and her drug-addict daughter's premature pregnancy. Also first published in Barrel Fever. 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 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.Twas the Night Before Christmas: Edited by Santa Claus for the Benefit of Children of the 21st Century" (2012) being Pamela McColl "smoke-free" edit of Clement Clarke Moore's poem http://www.audible.com/pd/Comedy/Holidays-on-Ice-Audiobook/B002VA93HS/ref=a_search_c4_1_2_srTtl?qid=1403810922&sr=1-2 The opening story "The SantaLand Diaries" is about Sedaris working in a Department Store as an elf, and if you've ever experienced a certain frustration (along with Charlie Brown) about the commercialization of Christmas, or Christmas being pushed on you, this story is a can't miss. 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).