Vinyl Cafe Unplugged

The Vinyl Café Unplugged is the third book in Stuart McLean's Vinyl Café series, and like the one before it, Home from the Vinyl Café, it won the Stephen Leacock Medal for Humour. This collection contains 14 delightful stories, many first broadcast on CBC Radio, about an idiosyncratic family of four in Toronto. 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. --Mark Frutkin