Authors Like David Sedaris: 9 Funny Memoirs That Are Even Better When the Author Reads Them

Did you know David Sedaris has been nominated for five Grammys and has never won one? All five were for reading his own books out loud: four nominations for Best Spoken Word Album, one for Best Comedy Album, zero trophies. Calypso was also a finalist for Audiobook of the Year at the 2019 Audies.

I performed stand-up and improv four to five nights a week while living in Shanghai, so I have strong opinions about who should be allowed to read a joke out loud. The answer is the person who wrote it, because she’s the only one who knows where the pause goes. Every book on this list passes that test: the author is the narrator, no exceptions.

While I was training in comedy at the Upright Citizens Brigade, and before I wrote my own memoir, I took a class with Margot Leitman, author of Long Story Short, on how to write and tell stories in front of a crowd. In that class, she frequently had us read sections of David Sedaris’s books, because he is the masterclass on storytelling. We deep-dived into the structure of how he builds a great story: usually some kind of unique, relatable element in the introduction that makes you feel like you can completely relate to whatever the story might be, even if it’s him picking up trash on the side of the road near his home in West Sussex (that one is “Stepping Out,” in Calypso), or something else you’ve maybe never done in your life. And yet you’re completely connected and dedicated to his story the moment you jump into it.

So here’s my list of authors like David Sedaris, all of them funny memoirs or funny essay collections on audio, all of them read by the person it happened to:

The Short Version

• If you want the one where the funny essays are about working abroad, listen to Where to Nest by Kristen Van Nest: a woman quits her New York corporate job for a Fulbright year in Luxembourg and three years selling wine in Shanghai, read by the author, impressions included.
• If you want the famous one, listen to Bossypants by Tina Fey: Pennsylvania, Second City, SNL and 30 Rock, with the Sarah Palin audio, read by the author.
• If you want the one that won, listen to Born a Crime by Trevor Noah: a mixed-race childhood in apartheid South Africa, read by the author in every accent in the house.
• If you want the short one, listen to I Feel Bad About My Neck by Nora Ephron: fifteen essays on being a woman over sixty, read by the author in under four hours.

How I Picked These Listens

I came to writing through comedy. I did stand-up and improv four to five nights a week in Shanghai, in clubs that were owned by men, run by men, and predominantly promoting men, so I learned fast which jokes survive a bad room and which ones only work on the page. Here are my three criteria for a Sedaris-shaped audiobook:

1. You can hear the pause before the punchline: the author reads it, so the timing is the timing she heard in her head when she wrote it. An actor can do a perfect accent and still come in early on the joke. In a club, coming in early gets you a nod instead of a laugh, because the room hasn’t finished picturing the setup.
2. The joke is on the author first: the person reading to you is the one who messed up, and she tells you exactly how. Making fun of strangers is easy and I don’t trust anyone who only does that.
3. One essay, one bad afternoon, no life lesson: every book here is built in pieces you can finish on a commute, and the piece ends when the story ends. A moral at the end makes me feel like I was tricked into a lecture.

At a Glance

All nine below are memoirs read by the author, and two of them won Audies: Bossypants for Audiobook of the Year, Born a Crime for Trevor Noah’s narration.

Who Are the Best Authors Like David Sedaris on Audio?

I picked nine, in three groups. One to four are the essayists (Where to Nest, I Was Told There’d Be Cake, I Feel Bad About My Neck, Wow, No Thank You), where each chapter is one bad afternoon. Five to seven are the family stories (Let’s Pretend This Never Happened, Born a Crime, Vacationland), where the parents and the hometown do most of the work, the way Sedaris’s family does in his. The last two (Bossypants, You Can’t Touch My Hair) are working comedians who put the stage act on the page, Fey with the SNL audio spliced in and Robinson with her podcast voice. If you only have one credit, start with Born a Crime, because Noah does every voice himself and the 2018 Audies gave him Best Male Narrator for it.

1. Where to Nest by Kristen Van Nest (2024)

Read this if: If you want the funny essays to be about working abroad: a Fulbright year in Luxembourg, a wine job in Shanghai, a comedy stage where the sexism is the opening act. If you want the author doing the impressions herself, Russian co-worker included.

What you’re getting: Where to Nest is a comedic travel memoir, read by the author, about Kristen Van Nest living abroad in her 20s after quitting a New York corporate job: a Fulbright year in Luxembourg, three years in the Shanghai wine business, and plenty of dating misadventures in between. The audiobook runs 9 hours and 17 minutes, and it’s free with an Audible trial. She’s in Greece during Grexit, Thailand during a coup, and China while working in the wine industry, and she reads every chapter herself, impressions included.

Why Sedaris fans will like it: The Sedaris essays people quote at parties are the ones where he lives in France and attempts to learn the language. I moved to Shanghai with no Mandarin and no job, and then I decided the sensible next step was stand-up comedy. Here is how my first set was introduced:

“Speaking of boobs, here’s Kristen Van Nest!” a white male comedian introduced me. I walked on stage and grabbed the mic. I stared out at an audience, my first stand-up audience ever, that had just been instructed to think about my private parts.

Where to Nest, Chapter 18

I won the room anyway, and then I kept going back, four to five nights a week, which is the part of the book where the clubs “owned by men, run by men, and predominantly promoting men” get their own pages. On the audiobook, the Russian co-worker who complimented my hair is in there too, and one listener rewound that part three times.

What readers say:

“I listened to it on Audible and really enjoyed hearing it come from the author’s voice” — heydudemeg, Amazon Reviewer

“Where to even begin? This book is such a hilarious treat.” — Laura Donovan, Goodreads Reviewer

“This book was wonderfully written by Kristen Van Nest, who manages to find humour in everything and narrates the many adventures of her twenties with wit, wisdom and honesty.” — Anna, Amazon Reviewer

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2. I Was Told There’d Be Cake by Sloane Crosley (2008)

Read this if: you’ve locked yourself out of your apartment twice in one day and told the story at a party by the weekend.

What you’re getting: From Penguin Audio, 6 hours 8 minutes, read by Sloane Crosley. Essays about her struggles and misadventures as a twentysomething in New York, including the day she locked herself out of her apartment twice. According to Publishers Weekly, “She never hams it up or overdoes it, telling her stories in an understated but arch tone (the aural equivalent of a raised eyebrow), and her timing and delivery are unerringly on-target, making humorous lines even funnier.”

Why Sedaris fans will like it: Kirkus put the comparison in print: her essays “display the same exacting attention to detail as those of David Sedaris.” The lockout essay is the one to start with, because Publishers Weekly says “one can hear the horrified realization in her voice as the door closes and the lock ominously clicks,” and you don’t get the click in the paperback.

Fair warning: it’s the oldest book here after Ephron’s, from 2008, so the New York in it is nearly twenty years old.

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3. I Feel Bad About My Neck by Nora Ephron (2006)

Read this if: you want the whole thing finished on one long flight, read by the woman who wrote When Harry Met Sally.

What you’re getting: From Random House Audio, 3 hours 51 minutes, read by Nora Ephron. Fifteen essays on being a woman over sixty: her neck, her purse, hair dye, skin cream, manicures and New York apartments. According to Kirkus, “Ephron reads the way she writes—with a wry, witty candor that is engaging.”

Why Sedaris fans will like it: Sedaris and Ephron both make the body the joke: his Calypso is, per Kirkus, “a meditation on aging,” and hers ends, in Kirkus’s words, with the admission that “Trying to stop the clock simply doesn’t work.” The same review says listening to her is “a little like talking to a friend who won’t let you lie to yourself about your aging body and the forces of gravity,” and the recording was named an AudioFile Best Audiobook of 2007.

Fair warning: it’s the shortest listen here, an hour and a half shorter than the next one up (Vacationland), so your credit buys one afternoon.

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4. Wow, No Thank You by Samantha Irby (2020)

Read this if: you want the essays to sound like a friend telling you the story at your kitchen table, volume included.

What you’re getting: From Random House Audio, 10 hours 4 minutes, read by Samantha Irby. Her third essay collection, about the messy realities of living in a body, being a Black, queer woman in small-town Michigan, stepparenting, and her general distaste for socializing. According to Kirkus, “Stretching out words for emphasis, frequently modulating her volume, extending pauses, and adding sarcastic asides are just a few of the ways she turns this audiobook into what feels like live storytelling.”

Why Sedaris fans will like it: Sedaris recorded most of Me Talk Pretty One Day in a Paris studio and spliced in live performances, with the audience laughing on the track. Irby gets the live-show feeling without an audience, and the recording was a 2021 Audies finalist. Kirkus’s verdict: “This book is meant to be read aloud; Irby infuses every word with her wit, delight, and no-nonsense attitude.”

Fair warning: at just over ten hours it’s the longest listen here, and the essays about her body are frank enough that you’ll want headphones on the train.

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5. Let’s Pretend This Never Happened by Jenny Lawson (2012)

Read this if: your family stories get bigger every Thanksgiving and nobody at the table objects.

What you’re getting: From Penguin Audio, 8 hours 41 minutes, read by Jenny Lawson, the blogger behind The Bloggess. An offbeat memoir, by her own account not entirely true. According to Kirkus, “Not everything here is true, so listeners may find themselves rewinding in rubbernecking curiosity, trying to detect whether she actually forgot she mailed herself a cobra or to understand how exactly one holds a zombie apocalypse drill.”

Why Sedaris fans will like it: According to Kirkus, Sedaris is at his best “when he’s describing the absurdity of childhood,” and Lawson’s book has a cobra in the mail. The same reviewer who heard the cobra story wrote that “The magic is making it all sound unrehearsed, not just the ending outtakes,” and closed with four words: “The next Tina Fey has arrived.” The 2013 Audies made her a finalist, and Tina Fey is three entries down.

Fair warning: the print review of Jenny Lawson’s book found the disclaimers, editorial notes and strike-thrus left the book “feeling oddly unfinished,” and the audio keeps the outtakes at the end.

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6. Born a Crime by Trevor Noah (2016)

Read this if: you want the childhood stories told by a comedian who does his own mother’s voice.

What you’re getting: 8 hours 45 minutes, read by Trevor Noah. Stories of a mixed-race childhood in South Africa before and after apartheid, by a boy who, in the reviewer’s words, “constantly struggled to find where he belonged.” According to Kirkus, “The bonus of audio is that listeners get to HEAR Noah tell these stories in his South African-accented English, as well as hear him speak snippets of various other South African languages.”

Why Sedaris fans will like it: Sedaris does a Billie Holiday impression on the Me Talk Pretty One Day recording, and Kirkus calls the renditions pitch-perfect. Noah does his mother, his friends and his younger self, and the 2018 Audies named him Best Male Narrator for it. Kirkus calls him “a natural storyteller—skilled, engaging, and relatable.”

Fair warning: Trevor Noah’s stories are, in Kirkus’s words, “vivid, sometimes harrowing,” and the print review found the humor “frequently hits an awkward note” against the apartheid material, so this is the heaviest listen on the list.

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7. Vacationland by John Hodgman (2017)

Read this if: you want a man with two summer homes to know exactly how that sounds.

What you’re getting: From Penguin Audio, 5 hours 24 minutes, read by John Hodgman. Essays about middle age and two unglamorous vacation houses, one in rural Massachusetts and one in Maine, where he struggles with critters and their waste, ordering propane, and getting along with the locals. According to Kirkus, “He brings the expected dose of sardonic humor to his narration but is also a gifted storyteller.”

Why Sedaris fans will like it: Sedaris wrote Calypso around a long-hoped-for beach home. Hodgman wrote Vacationland around the two summer homes he owns, and the line Kirkus pulled from the audio is the one he says about himself: “The central conflict of my life and this audiobook is this: I OWN TWO SUMMER HOMES.” Both men are making fun of their own comfort, and Kirkus gave this one its GET IT label.

Fair warning: Kirkus calls this “more bittersweet than his comedic personas,” so if you came for the Daily Show guy, know that the same review promises “emotional depths” too.

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8. Bossypants by Tina Fey (2011)

Read this if: you want the career memoir with the Sarah Palin audio spliced in.

What you’re getting: From Hachette Audio, 5 hours 30 minutes, read by Tina Fey. According to Kirkus, “Fey gives a behind-the-scenes look at her upbringing in Pennsylvania, her days with the Second City comedy troupe, her work on ‘Saturday Night Live’ and ’30 Rock,’ and her efforts to balance motherhood with her career in an industry dominated by men.”

Why Sedaris fans will like it: Sedaris has five Grammy nominations and no wins. Fey took the 2012 Audie for Audiobook of the Year with this one, plus Biography/Memoir, for a reading Kirkus describes this way: “Her delivery and timing make it extra funny, with voices, impressions, and asides, as well as the audio from her famous depictions of Sarah Palin for SNL.” She was a finalist in Narration by the Author the same year and lost that one to Libba Bray.

Fair warning: Kirkus says of Tina Fey’s book, “The book itself is jumpy, like the sketches Fey writes for television,” and the photos live in a PDF you have to download separately.

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9. You Can’t Touch My Hair by Phoebe Robinson (2016)

Read this if: you want the stand-up’s cadence kept on the page, caps lock and all.

What you’re getting: From Penguin Audio, 7 hours 45 minutes, read by Phoebe Robinson with John Hodgman. Essays by the co-host of the 2 Dope Queens podcast about being a Black woman in America, from hair to dating to pop culture. According to Kirkus, Robinson “mixes pop culture with serious issues about contemporary feminism,” and “She delivers her essay in a conversational tone that fans of the show will appreciate.”

Why Sedaris fans will like it: Kirkus reviewed Me Talk Pretty One Day for listeners who already knew Sedaris from This American Life. Robinson’s listeners came from the 2 Dope Queens podcast, and the audiobook was a 2017 Audies finalist. Kirkus thinks it lands best with “millennial listeners and those who are nostalgic about the 1990s.”

Fair warning: the same Kirkus review says “Some listeners may find her delivery too flippant or the material irrelevant,” and the print review found the humor “forced and tiresome in places,” so sample a chapter before you spend the credit.

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Which One to Listen to Tonight

• You want the comedian abroad, with the job and the bad dates in the same chapter: Where to Nest, the only one here where the author gets fired in Shanghai.
• You want the one that won everything: Bossypants, Audiobook of the Year in 2012, and five and a half hours is one long drive.
• You want to cry a little: Born a Crime, which Kirkus calls “vivid, sometimes harrowing, and often laugh-out-loud funny.”

If none of those fits, my post on how reading reduces stress has the numbers on what thirty minutes with a book does to your heart rate.

FAQ: Authors Like David Sedaris

Who Are the Best Authors Like David Sedaris?

These are my picks for authors like David Sedaris, every one of them reading their own book: Kristen Van Nest (Where to Nest), Sloane Crosley (I Was Told There’d Be Cake), Nora Ephron (I Feel Bad About My Neck), Samantha Irby (Wow, No Thank You), Jenny Lawson (Let’s Pretend This Never Happened), Trevor Noah (Born a Crime), John Hodgman (Vacationland), Tina Fey (Bossypants) and Phoebe Robinson (You Can’t Touch My Hair).

Which David Sedaris Audiobook Should I Start With?

The David Sedaris audiobook to start with is Me Talk Pretty One Day if you want the France essays, because according to Kirkus, “David Sedaris’s deadpan delivery is the perfect foil to the bizarre in his latest collection of essays, and it’s hard to imagine another reader recounting these unlikely anecdotes.” Start with the Calypso audiobook if you want the later, sadder one: it was a 2019 Audies finalist for Audiobook of the Year and Humor, and the Kirkus audio review says “only Sedaris could balance the witty observations alongside the heartrending sadness of life.”

What Are the Best Humorous Essays on Audio?

For humorous essays on audio, pick the collections the author reads. Wow, No Thank You is the one Kirkus said “is meant to be read aloud,” I Feel Bad About My Neck was AudioFile’s Best Audiobook of 2007, and I Was Told There’d Be Cake is, per Publishers Weekly, “even more enjoyable on audio than in print.” Funny essay collections read by an actor exist, but none of the nine here is one, on purpose.

What Are the Best Comedy Audiobooks Read by the Author?

Two of the best comedy audiobooks on this list won Audies: Bossypants took Audiobook of the Year in 2012 and Born a Crime won Trevor Noah Best Male Narrator in 2018. For funny audiobooks by a comedian who isn’t famous yet, Where to Nest by Kristen Van Nest runs 9 hours 17 minutes with the author reading every chapter and doing the impressions. As Amazon reviewer heydudemeg put it: “I rewound it three times for her hilarious impression of a Russian co-worker who told her her hair was ‘beooootiful.’”

Are There Funny Audiobooks That Aren’t by Comedians?

Yes, three of the nine memoirs read by the author here are by people who aren’t comedians. Nora Ephron was a screenwriter (Sleepless in Seattle, When Harry Met Sally) before she read I Feel Bad About My Neck; Sloane Crosley is an essayist, not a stand-up, and Kirkus still measured I Was Told There’d Be Cake against Sedaris; Jenny Lawson was a blogger, and Kirkus still called Let’s Pretend This Never Happened part stand-up. Sedaris himself is a humorist, not a stand-up; parts of Me Talk Pretty One Day were recorded live, “complete with an appreciative live audience,” but the material is essays, read.

Who Are Authors Like Bill Bryson?

For authors like Bill Bryson on audio, the catch is that The Road to Little Dribbling is read by Nathan Osgood, not Bryson, and a title Bryson does read himself, Notes from a Small Island, is abridged. If what you like is the outsider grumbling at a place he keeps going back to, Vacationland does that for Maine, with Hodgman reading, and Sedaris’s own Me Talk Pretty One Day does it for France.

Who Are Authors Like Nora Ephron?

For authors like Nora Ephron, the closest voice here is Sloane Crosley: I Was Told There’d Be Cake is New York, dry, and short, and Publishers Weekly called her narration “the aural equivalent of a raised eyebrow.” If what you liked in Ephron was the body as the subject, Wow, No Thank You covers “the messy realities of living in a body,” in Kirkus’s phrase, in a frank, friendly voice.

Who Are Authors Like Jenny Lawson?

For authors like Jenny Lawson, start with the comparison Kirkus made for you: its review of Let’s Pretend This Never Happened ends “The next Tina Fey has arrived,” so Bossypants is the obvious next credit. If it’s the family stories you like in Lawson, Born a Crime is also family stories, and the parent who drives them is Noah’s mother.

Which Funny Memoir Is Set Abroad?

Where to Nest by Kristen Van Nest is the one set almost entirely abroad: a Fulbright year in Luxembourg, three years in the Shanghai wine business, Greece during Grexit, Thailand during a coup. Born a Crime is set in South Africa, but that’s home for Noah, not abroad. As Goodreads reviewer Kelly Burke put it, “As an expat myself, there is so much to relate to the author’s adventures.”

Which Author Does Her Own Impressions?

Three of them do voices on the recording: Tina Fey in Bossypants (“voices, impressions, and asides,” per Kirkus), Trevor Noah in Born a Crime (his mother, his friends, his younger self), and Kristen Van Nest in Where to Nest, who does the Russian co-worker. As Goodreads reviewer Eleanor put it: “Absolutely recommend listening to the audiobook – especially while traveling ;)”

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