David Sedaris has made his life’s work by writing about the random stuff that happens to him. Most reviews of his books will laud the way in which he makes the mundane so hilarious. This blows my mind, because there is rarely anything mundane that happens in a David Sedaris book. Working as one of Santa’s elves? Having OCD? Trying to quit smoking by vacationing in Japan? Moving to France and trying to learn the language? Sitting in a doctor’s waiting room in nothing but underwear? Hitchhiking and being asked by a trucker perform sexual favors? Dealing with the death of a darkly hilarious, chain-smoking mother?

Maybe I lead an exceptionally boring life, but none of that stuff sounds the slightest bit mundane to me.

And yet, I see where that particular bit of praise originates from. The events in Sedaris’ books are themselves quite fantastical and off the wall. But his delivery is so deadpan that the reader is, in effect, duped into thinking of them as mundane, everyday occurrences, viewed through a particularly sharp and witty lens. And maybe it’s just me, but that lens is so sharp that it results in books that make me laugh out loud. That’s pretty rare.

Sedaris’ latest book, When You Are Engulfed in Flames ($26, Little, Brown and Company) follows the same basic formula as his past collections: Several essays of varying weight that self-deprecatingly chronicle his life and the people around him, spanning his entire lifetime. It’s a great read, and a quick one, especially if you skip the bits you might have already read (the story about his being on a plane seated next to a Polish man who wouldn’t stop crying ran in The New Yorker earlier this year) or heard (the bit about the Stadium Pal and shopping with his sister Amy were included on a recording of him reading at Carnegie Hall several years ago).

It’s easy to pick favorites in Sedaris’ books. My favorites in this collection have to include “Keeping Up,” a short and sweet little diatribe-turned-love-note about how it feels to be the messy, not-quite-put-together half of a couple:

Most of Hugh’s and my travel arguments have to do with pace. I’m a fast walker, but he has longer legs and likes to maintain a good twenty-foot lead. To the casual observer, he would appear to be running from me, darting around corners, intentionally trying to lose himself. When asked about my latest vacation, the answer is always the same. In Bangkok, in Ljubljana, in Budapest and Bonn: What did I see? Hugh’s back, just briefly, as he disappeared into a crowd. I’m convinced that before we go anywhere he calls the board of tourism and asks what style and color of coat is the most popular among the locals.

Other standouts include “That’s Amore,” in which Sedaris describes a nutty neighbor he and his boyfriend had while living in New York City, as well as “Old Faithful,” the disgustingly lovely story of a painful boil that Hugh lances for Sedaris.

Sedaris is a sighing mess of a person, quirky and neurotic and exasperated with yet fascinated by most everything. To view the world through his eyes — a world that, over the course of his writing career, has expanded to include places he never could have traveled had his writing not become immensely popular — is to get a glimpse at the world in its dressing gown. Or maybe the world in its wife’s cocktail dress and pantyhose. It’s just a little … off.

Which makes it all the more deliciously hilarious.