Read Sunshine Sketches of a Little Town by Stephen Leacock for Book Club. I thought I'd read it long ago, in school; turns out I hadn't. It must have been another one of his books.
It was fun. Remarkable how some things haven't changed. I liked the political parts: I only know that it was a huge election and that on it turned issues of the most tremendous importance, such as whether or not Mariposa should become part of the United States, and whether the flag that had waved over the school house at Tecumseh Township for ten centuries should be trampled under the hoof of an alien invader, and whether Britons should be slaves, and whether Canadians should be Britons, and whether the farming class would prove themselves Canadians, and tremendous questions of that kind.... We can see,--it's plain enough now,--that in the great election Canada saved the British Empire, and that Missinaba saved Canada and that the vote of the Third Concession of Tecumseh Township saved Missinaba County, and that those of us who carried the third concession, -- well, there's no need to push it further. We prefer to be modest about it. If we still speak of it, it is only quietly and simply and not more than three or four times a day. And of course the Liberals and the Conservatives, who were close friends all the rest of the time, stopped talking to each other at election time.
The style sometimes reminded me of P.G. Wodehouse, sometimes of Dickens, sometimes of Mark Twain... in a 'what if those authors were Canadian' sort of way.
Then Book Club was cancelled, mostly due to weather. Just as well. I slept half the evening away for no obvious reason whatsoever.
I'm not sure what to get an eighteen year old for Christmas. She's in university, majoring in English and drama. That ought to be easy. I know she likes musicals... maybe a CD.