Review: Calypso

Calypso by David Sedaris
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

I had a drive coming up and needed to pick an audiobook to start. It wasn’t a normal drive, it was driving my daughter back to college. And while normally that’s a two and a half hour drive, there was snow forecast, so I expected a good seven hour round trip, a lot of it in icy conditions. I chose “Calypso”. A big part of that choice was that David Sedaris can tell a story, and that’s what I needed for this long and involved drive. And I thought Calypso had the ring of Caribbean beaches, which would take my mind off of the ice and snow coming down. Ends up I was incorrect – Calypso is the name of a cat mentioned in passing in the middle of the book. Sedaris mixes hilarious stories here with occasional bits of serious remembrances of his deceased mother and sister. I found his mixing of the serious and humorous to be very well conceived. The timing was good. My favorite remarks were about the effect of the use of a Fitbit device on his actions. The Fitbit story is an early one, but it comes back again and again. This audiobook has a mix of audio sources. Most stories are done by Sedaris in studio, but a few are recorded by Sedaris live in concert. I found those live ones with audiences my least favorite, but still funny. His choice of topics delves on the disgusting at times, which weren’t my favorite stories. Overall, though, a very entertaining choice.

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