I first fell in love with David Sedaris around age 12, when, in NPR's annual playing of his story "Santaland Diaries," he "sang 'Away In a Manger' the way Billy Holiday might have if she'd released an album of Christmas songs.'"

His wit and often cynical brand humor is so sharp and bordering on acerbic, and yet so endearing. Calypso touches on many dark subjects - the suicide of his sister Tiffany, Trump's election, his mother's alcoholism and subsequent death, and familial clashes. But his dry and self-deprecating storytelling carries the listener (because what other way is there to read David than listening to him) through the darkness, snorting with laughter as he feeds his own fatty tumor to a snapping turtle, or names a backyard fox Carol. He is irreverent, he is misanthropic, and he is ridiculous. But he is wonderful.