I have an unexplainable love of Stephen Leacock. It started when I read a short story of his when I was nine or ten, and fell in love with the way he wrote. He could write about the most banal thing, like going to the dentist and make it seem like an exciting adventure, and that’s part of the joke. That style is put to good use in Sunshine Sketches of a Little Town, where the narrator waxes rhapsodically about the goings-on in Mariposa, a small Canadian town at the start of the 20th Century. Leacock populates the town with a host of interesting characters, and then has the narrator tell their banal adventures as though they were the stuff of high drama. The result is well worth a read, and chuckles abound. But my favourite chapter was the final one, a surprisingly touching cap on the whole exercise. The humour can get a little old and hokey sometimes, but when Leacock is on there are very few who can match his wit.