Everybody Into the Pool (2005)

Beth Lisick's fizzy and delightful collection of autobiographical sketches Everybody Into the Pool comes from the David Sedaris school of drollery. ''The stories in this book are about turning out too weird to fit into the mainstream world, the one I came from,'' Lisick announces, ''but being too normal for the fringe world I found later.'' Raised in a happy suburban family, Lisick writes about her high school forays into ''extreme tanning,'' her dogged (but unsuccessful) attempts to unearth her latent bisexuality, daily life in a slummy San Francisco warehouse during the 1990s, and, in the last chapters, adjusting to motherhood. The tales veer from razor sharp to hilarious, and it's a voice — both offbeat and upbeat, wised-up yet curiously wholesome — that you're going to want to hear a lot more of.