Barrel Fever, by David Sedaris

I am currently reading Barrel Fever by David Sedaris. While I'm usually delighted in Sedaris' whimsical and disturbing (only a true master can get away with this) tales, I find some of the stories in Barrel Fever a bit difficult to endure. The absurd recalling of twenty celebrity names, some living, some not so living, while the narrator fails to reason... at... all... is cute, but not really all that cohesive. Really, it's a dip into the sad pool that is dysfunction.While Sedaris is no stranger to dysfunction, Barrel Fever explores its murky depths in first person point of view, and to the point where the humor fades, leaving the reader gasping for the surface of sanity. Thanks, David, for the tour. But no thanks. I'm still waiting for a Sedaris line to reach out and grab me, as he did in Holidays on Ice with the phrase, "If you stand on the star, you can see Cher."

What are you reading? (title and author), and what's it about? What do you like about it?

I am currently reading The Bar Code Tattoo by Suzanne Weyn. It's a science fiction story about a girl who has issues with conforming to her society and giving up her independence. I like that this could really happen. People might someday soon have tattoos that can be scanned so that their information might be processed. I think it's weird that we would change our bodies for the convenience of shopping, medical communication, driver's license information, etc. I think we rush into giving away too much personal information these days, and I wonder if it's bad for us.