Sunshine Sketches of a Little Town

Stephen Leacock was apparently grown in a Canadian laboratory to be a perfect hybrid of Mark Twain and Garrison Keillor.

'Sunshine Sketches' is a series of short stories, all based in the fictional town of Mariposa, set in 1912 provincial Ontario. While that may sound exotic, nearly everything about it could be perfectly exchanged with say, a small town in Ohio - thus verifying my hypothesis that there is no such thing as exotic Canadianness.

The stories are cute, and mildly charming, and I might find the whole series more attractive later, but I read it in between a history of Paris, and a robot apocalypse. Funny small town anecdotes just aren't registering this month.

Noted on July 13, 2011