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It's Day 8 of SaBloBoMo, but I am forging ahead with my second book post of the month. Again, it's the last book that I held in my hands: Secrets from the Vinyl Cafe, by Stuart McLean. He's one of my favourite CBC Radio personalities, and it's because of his weekly radio show that I also was introduced to his writing.

Well, that's not true, actually. It was Chris who got me started on my collection of Stuart McLean books - he has tradition of buying me a book from a Canadian writer every year. My favourite book, by far, is Welcome Home, but I quite happily have been plugging through Secrets.

What do I like about it? The style. McLean's prose has an easy to read flow, and his words work very well at drawing the reader into the story. I honestly do care about Dave, Morley, Sam, and Stephanie. I feel like we've been friends from years, silly as it sounds. I don't normally enjoy third-person narration, but when McLean does it, it's not flat. As with the rest of the Vinyl Cafe books that I've read, this is a collection of short stories. Some of them require the reader to briefly suspend reality, as McLean's fictional family is often plagued by more bad luck than what I consider normal, but more often or not, the stories are good for a laugh.

Side note: a couple of years ago, Chris and I found ourselves a few tarps down from Stuart McLean at the Edmonton Folk Music Festival. We thought that he was there with his daughter, until we noticed that he and his friend were a tad bit too touchy-feely for that sort of relationship. It was kind of weird. But he does have great taste in music :)

Comments

[Patti]

I love Stuart Mclean! I have a couple of books and a CD - your post gave me an itch so I listened to the CD while running errands today :)