Home from the Vinyl Cafe: A Year of Stories - Stuart McLean

Advantages: It'll make you chuckle & warm the cockles in equal measure!
Disadvantages: It helps if you're a CBC fan

...strike the right note! Home from the Vinyl Cafe is a compendium of some of the stories first told on the radio and make the translation to printed form pretty well. Each story is pretty much self-contained, which is perfect for reading on the train. They feature Dave, who owns the Vinyl Cafe (motto - "We may not be big, but we're small"), his wife Morley, their children, and various pets, including a balding guinea pig and a neurotic dog. The style ...
...it justice. Strangely, I want to compare it to TV shows rather than anything literary - this may be related to the fact that I listened to the radio shows it before reading the book. There are certainly hints of nostagia for a rose-tinted childhood a la 'The Wonder Years' and off-beat yarns, reminiscent of 'Northern Exposure'. It answers those questions you always wanted to ask, like how do you unstick your tongue from a frozen TV aerial, and what ... Read review