New for 2009:

"Me Talk Pretty One Day"

by David Sedaris

“There are, I have noticed, two basic types of French spoken by Americans vacationing in Paris: the Hard Kind and the Easy Kind. The Hard Kind involves the conjugation of wily verbs and the science of placing them alongside various other words in order to form such sentences as “I go him say good afternoon” and “No, not to him I no go it him say now.” The second, less complicated form of French amounts to screaming English at the top of your lungs, much the same way you’d shout at a deaf person or the dog you thought could train to stay off the sofa. Doubt and hesitation are completely unnecessary, as Easy French is rooted in the premise that, if properly packed, the rest of the world could fit within the confines of Reno, Nevada. The speaker carries no pocket dictionary and never suffers the humiliation that inevitably comes with pointing to the menu and ordering the day of the week. With Easy French, eating out involves a simple “BRING ME A STEAK.” (187-188, “Make That a Double”).

One Book/One College

The goal of One Book/One College is to get the entire campus — students, faculty and staff — to read the same book and to promote discussion and reflection inspired by a shared literary experience.

This is the second year for One Book/One College at RCC, and Moreno Valley is the first RCCD campus to start such an program. We look forward to Me Talk Pretty One Day being the first of many books to promote learning and lively discussion among everyone at our college!

About the author

David Sedaris is the author of seven books; he has also written or co-written a number of plays. He has been a frequent contributor to The New Yorker and to “This American Life” on Public Radio International, and he has produced several comedy albums.