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Loading... Laugh with Leacockby Stephen Leacock
![]() New Canadian Library (92) No current Talk conversations about this book. no reviews | add a review
Belongs to Publisher SeriesNew Canadian Library (176)
1930. An anthology of the best works of Leacock, a Canadian humorist and economist, who published a number of serious works in his field as well as in history and biography, but is best known for his collections of satirical essays and short stories. See other titles by this author available from Kessinger Publishing. No library descriptions found. |
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![]() GenresMelvil Decimal System (DDC)818.5209Literature English (North America) Authors, American and American miscellany 20th Century 1900-1945 BiographyLC ClassificationRatingAverage:![]()
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Anyway, as you would guess (if you didn't already know), Laugh with Leacock is a collection of Leacock's most favored columns. The book was originally published in 1913. My hardcover copy is a nineteenth printing, dated 1945, which will give you an idea of Leacock's staying power. Some of these stories/columns now seem dated, but most of them still supply at least a chuckle, and some even had me laughing out loud. Just for an example, here is the opening of "How My Wife and I Built Our Home for $4.90:"
"I was leaning up against the mantelpiece in a lounge suit which I had made out of old ice bags, and Beryl, my wife, was seated at my feet on a low Louis Quinze tabouret which she had made out of a Finnan Haddie fishbox, when the idea of a bungalow came to both of us at the same time. . . ."
Not a knee-slapper, but an introduction that promises a column of gentle, effective humor, a take down of "Do It Yourself For Less," which then goes on to deliver on that promise. Once the bungalow idea has been put in motion and a suitable site found and purchased (for $1.50) . . .
"Owing perhaps to my inexperience, it took me the whole of the morning to dig out a cellar forty feet long and twenty feet wide. Beryl, who had meantime cleaned up the lot, stacked the lumber, lifted away the stones and planted fifty yards of hedge, was inclined to be a little impatient. But I reminded her that a contractor working with a gang of man and two or three teams of horses would have taken a while week to do what I did in one morning. I admitted that my work was not equal to the best records as related in the weekly home journals, where I have often computed that they move 100,000 cubic feet of earth in one paragraph, but at least I was doing my best."
Well, anyway, if these excerpts seem amusing and/or charming to you, then you will understand my enjoyment of this collection. I can see, though, where this sort of thing wouldn't be everybody's cup of tea. I would say that the book is about a 50-50 split between a little obvious and dated on the one hand and still providing a happy chuckle, at least, on the other. (