Ditched by Dr. Right (2005)

If David Sedaris had been born a Protestant white girl from Philadelphia's Main Line, he might have written a little book like this one, Ditched by Dr. Right — only not nearly as funny. Like Sedaris' work, Elizabeth Warner's essays riff on all things personal and cultural, from the odd jobs she's performed over the years (playing a witch at Madison ''Scare'' Garden's Halloween show) to her even odder friends and relatives (like her ''pathologically elegant'' mother) to such seemingly mundane misadventures as purchasing her first dishwasher at an appliance store in L.A. (where she runs into, of all people, U.N. Secretary-General Kofi Annan). Almost every piece in this collection is brimming with biting wit, but even more impressive is that every one of them is also coiled with genuine warmth.