A nearly sold-out crowd gathered at the Michigan Theater on Wednesday evening to listen to best-selling author and radio satirist David Sedaris — who surprised several attendees by casually sitting at a table in the lobby before the show to sign books. (The show was the last 1 scheduled in the Ann Arbor Conversations series, presented by Michigan Radio, and photos and video were prohibited.)

Wearing a white collared shirt and a pale pink tie with gray and white stripes, Sedaris, at the top of the show, stood center stage at a lectern and asked if anyone in the crowd had seen him at recent appearances in East Lansing or Detroit (they had), and then explained that he carefully notes what material he reads in each place in order to avoid duplication.

"But then people drive," Sedaris said, a sense of wonder in his voice.

Sedaris described his next book, "Squirrel Seeks Chipmunk: A Modest Bestiary" — which will be released in October and will feature illustrations by Ian Falconer ("Olivia") — and read 2 stories from it: "The Sick Rat and the Healthy Rat," about a smug, healthy white rat who tells her ill cage-mate that his negative attitude is to blame for his sickness; and "The Faithful Setter," about a dog whose wife cheats on him with a neighbor's dog.

The crowd laughed through both pieces, but the evening's high point was an essay about Sedaris' experience in an airport. By way of an introduction, Sedaris said, "I owe a great deal of it to a woman (flight attendant) who I met here in Michigan … a couple of years ago, who gave me some beautiful information."

From the essay, Sedaris read, "When asked how she dealt with a plane full of belligerent passengers, she said only, 'We have our ways. The next time you're flying, and it comes time to land, listen carefully as we make our last pass down the aisle."

The end of the essay — which described a lineup of angry, delayed passengers who passed judgment on each other, the airlines and the government to pass the time — ponders whether airports bring out the worst in us, or merely expose our truest selves, as may be subtly suggested when flight attendants make that final pass before landing while saying to each row, "Your trash?"

Next up were 2 pages from an unfinished essay that Sedaris is writing for the BBC, which discussed the casual attitude of Sedaris' doctors in France, and began: "One thing I'll miss about the American health care debate is all the talk about socialized medicine, and how ineffective it's supposed to be. The Canadian plan's been categorized as genocide, but even worse are the ones in Europe, a place where patients lie in filthy cellars, waiting for aspirin to be invented."

Sedaris also read several excerpts from his diary, which touched on differing attitudes toward children and dogs in America and Germany; right-wing anger; a television documentary that featured a 12-year-old girl who suffered from a disorder commonly known as "werewolfism"; London supermarket mysteries about what "crumbled ham dummy" and "lightly dusted river cobbler" might be; an overheard discussion between 2 men about parenting; a "certified therapy horse" that schoolchildren read to in Florida; and a British group's bus campaign, with signs that read, "There is probably no God. Now stop worrying and enjoy your life." (Sedaris, finding fault with the sloppy wording, countered, "If there is 'probably' no God, then there is 'possibly' a heaven, and 'maybe' a hell, where you just might 'burn for an eternity.' Thus, we are back to square 1.")

One diary entry focused on a seemingly gay man named Connor who, along with a female colleague, provided Sedaris with a ride from the airport. The woman — shocked at Sedaris' assumption about Connor's sexuality — later told Sedaris that Connor was in fact married with 2 kids, and that he led a very busy life besides. "She said this as if being a homosexual took hours and hours. Not just at the start, but every day of your life. Keeping your walk up, maintaining your little outfits. People think it's easy, but it's not."

When the woman points out that her colleague worked with the drama department, the glee club, and an additional chorus group on weekends, Sedaris explained, "To her, this made sense. A perfect defense of his heterosexuality. To me, it was like saying, 'How can he be a vampire when he's shut up in that coffin all day?'"

The last thing Sedaris read was an excerpt from a short-story collection that he deeply admires, Tim Johnston's "Irish Girl" ("This book is available in the lobby, and I would buy this book before I'd buy anything that I have written. It's a much better book").

When the crowd got to ask questions, Sedaris 1st addressed what it was like to work with an illustrator on his new book. "His questions were interesting to me," said Sedaris. "Like, he said, 'Do you see all these animals standing up?' And it was a good question, because some of them, I do."

He also fielded questions about how audiences in other countries respond to readings of his work — In Athens, for example, "it wasn't like they answered phone (calls), they made phone calls during my reading" — and how much material in his stories is true.

In response, near the end of the almost-2-hour program, Sedaris talked about how he compressed time, excluded characters and used composites in the airport essay in order to keep the story moving efficiently.

"Hugh (Sedaris' longtime partner) would tell you the story exactly how it happened, in the order it happened," said Sedaris. "And when you woke up, you would say, 'What did I miss?'"

Certainly no one at the Michigan Theater on Wednesday night would deny Sedaris' storytelling expertise; and the long book-signing line that quickly formed up the Theater's grand staircase after the lights came up would seem to support this notion.

Jenn McKee is the entertainment digital journalist for AnnArbor.com. Reach her at jennmckee@annarbor.com or 734-623-2546, and follow her on Twitter @jennmckee.