All About Books: Stephen Leacock Award

Sunshine Sketches of a Little Town is one of Canada’s classic works of literature, and perhaps its most complex work of satire. A series of linked stories chronicling life in the fictional community of Mariposa--modelled on Orillia, Ontario--Sunshine Sketches gently mocks Canadian small-town life in a manner that is as dead-on as it is humourous. Whether describing the sinking of the town’s ship, the Mariposa Belle, in a few feet of water in "The Marine Excursion of the Knights of Pythias" or giving an account of an old-fashioned courting that ends disastrously in "The Foreordained Attachment of Zena Pepperleigh and Peter Pupkin," Leacock's ridiculously earnest narrator presents a community torn between a desire for modernity and a nostalgia for a simpler past. The result is an absurd romp through both our social and literary values.

After 15 years, a NYC copywriter is suddenly fired, and single. But his worst trouble? Meet Earnest Hemmingway, bedeviled by moniker of famous author Ernest Hemingway. Earnest's father pressures him to come home and help run the family clothing business. As a complex familial battle plays out, Earnest's inherited name leads him in unexpected directions.

Hermann Kermit Warm is going to die: Eli and Charlie Sisters can be counted on for that. Though Eli has never shared his brother’s penchant for whiskey and killing, he’s never known anything else. On the road to Warm’s gold-mining claim outside San Francisco -- and from the back of his long-suffering one-eyed horse -- Eli struggles to make sense of his life without abandoning the job he's sworn to do. Patrick DeWitt, acclaimed author of Ablutions, doffs his hat to the classic Western, and then transforms it into a comic tour-de-force with an unforgettable narrative voice that captures all the absurdity, melancholy, and grit of the West -- and of these two brothers, bound to each other by blood and scars and love.

Offbeat, charming, and filled with humour and insight, Beyond Belfast is the story of one man’s misguided attempt at walking the Ulster Way, “the longest waymarked trail in the British Isles.” It’s a journey that takes Will Ferguson through the small towns and half-forgotten villages of Northern Ireland, along rugged coastlines and across barren moorland heights, past crumbling castles and patchwork farms. From IRA pubs to Protestant marches, from bandits and bad weather to banshees and blood sausage, he wades into the thick of things, providing an affectionate and heartfelt look at one of the most misunderstood corners of the world. As the grandson of a Belfast orphan, Will also peels back the myths and realities of his own family history—a mysterious photograph, rumours of a lost inheritance. The truth, when it comes, is both surprising and funny …

A terrific Canadian political satire. Here's the set up: A burnt-out politcal aide quits just before an election--but is forced to run a hopeless campaign on the way out. He makes a deal with a crusty old Scot, Angus McLintock--an engineering professor who will do anything, anything, to avoid teaching English to engineers--to let his name stand in the election. No need to campaign, certain to lose, and so on. Then a great scandal blows away his opponent, and to their horror, Angus is elected. He decides to see what good an honest M.P. who doesn't care about being re-elected can do in Parliament. The results are hilarious--and with chess, a hovercraft, and the love of a good woman thrown in, this very funny book has something for everyone.

Canada's number one humorist, routinely compared to our own Bill Bryson, has written a funny, idiosyncratic, and warmly humane book full of sly observations and witty stories culled from his travels among the people and places of our neighbors up north. Will Ferguson spent the past three years crisscrossing Canada. In a helicopter above the barren lands of the subarctic, in a canoe with his four-year-old son, aboard seaplanes, and along the Underground Railroad, Will's travels have taken him from Cape Spear on the coast of Newfoundland to the sun-dappled streets of old Victoria. Funny, poignant, and insightful, Beauty Tips from Moose Jaw is a provocative tribute to a land that is akin to a series of loosely connected outposts peopled with some of the most interesting folks in the world.

Edwin de Valu, an overworked editor at Panderic Press, is in trouble. The weekly editorial meeting isn't going well and he needs a hit for the upcoming fall season. In desperation he presents a previously rejected self-help manuscript, "What I Learned On The Mountain," by Tupak Soiree. Much to Edwin's chagrin, the project is accepted, and soon becomes the number-one bestseller of all time. But can this self-help book be the real thing? Dismayed by the plague of happiness that ensues, Edwin attempts to get to the bottom of the mysteries of Tupak Soiree and the book he has unleashed on our unsuspecting world.

Dave and Morley, the parents, and Sam and Stephanie, the children, lead a life of endless minor mishaps and misunderstandings. In "Odd Jobs," Dave, who owns a record store called the Vinyl Café, wants to install an outlet in his kitchen at home. Friends from the neighbourhood come over one by one to help until, by the end of the day, they have broken a window, chipped a sink, and left 15 large holes in the kitchen wall without managing to install an outlet. In "The Razor's Edge," Dave leaves for the airport at 6:15 a.m. for a 7 o'clock flight. Arriving, he enters the wrong line and then gets lost. Reaching the gate with 45 seconds to spare, he finds it deserted and soon discovers he's two hours early. When an airline staffer arrives and remarks on how early he is, he says, "I always try to be. I've never understood those people who wait until the last moment." Whether they're trying to toilet train their cat, Galway, or figure out why the air conditioning cools every room except the one they sleep in, Dave and Morley and the kids keep their endless good humour and let us in on their secret lives.

Welcome to the world of the Vinyl Cafe. Meet Dave, the proud owner of the world's smallest record store. Meet his pal, Kenny Wong, who runs Wong's Scottish Meat Pies. Meet Dave's wife and their children. Watch while they all bump and stumble through a hilarious year of mistakes, miscues, misunderstandings, and muddle. The adventures begin in December with Dave's disastrous yet inspired attempts to cook the family turkey. And they move through the seasons to the following Christmas's fiasco, when Dave accidentally spikes the kids' punch bowl at his neighbor's Christmas soiree. Home from the Vinyl Cafe also explores the tender awkwardness of first love, the challenges presented by a dying guinea pig, and the answer to the question of why a teenager would rather eat vegetables and clean his room than go on a family vacation. Whether it's the mystery of sending kids to camp, the dangers of putting up Christmas lights, or the potential for mayhem at the grocery store, in the hands of humorist and master storyteller Stuart McLean the chaotic melody of daily life is underscored by the harmonious sounds of family, friends, and neighbors. Warm, witty, and moving, these stories will walk right into your life and make themselves at home.

Before his brain began to shrink, Barney Panofsky clung to two cherished beliefs. Life was absurd, and nobody truly understood anybody else. Even his friends tend to agree that Barney is a 'wife-abuser, an intellectual fraud, a purveyor of pap, a drunk with a penchant for violence and probably a murderer'. But when his sworn enemy threatens to publish this calumny, Barney is driven to write his own memoirs, rewinding the spool of his life, editing, selecting and plagiarising, as his memory plays tricks on him - and on the reader. Ebullient and perverse, he has seen off 3 wives - the enigmatic Clara, whom he drove to suicide in Paris in 1952; the garrulous Second Mrs Panofsky; and finally Miriam who stayed married to him for decades before running off with a sober academic. Houdini-like, Barney slides from crisis to success, from lowlife to highlife in Montreal, Paris and London, his outrageous expolits culminating in the scandal he carries around like a humpback - the murder charge that he goes on denying to the end.