Stuart McLean

Selected from 15 years of radio-show archives and re-edited by the author, this wonderfully eclectic essay collection gives a glimpse into the thoughtful mind at work behind The Vinyl Cafe.

From meditations on peacekeeping to praise for the toothpick, The Vinyl Cafe Notebooks runs the gamut from considered argument to light-hearted opinion. Whether McLean is visiting a forgotten corner of the Canadian Shield, a big-city doughnut factory, or Sir John A. Macdonald's gravesite, his observations are absorbing, unexpected, and original. With thought-provoking proposals about the world we live in and introductions to the people he meets in his extensive travels across our country, The Vinyl Cafe Notebooks is informed by McLean's intimate relationship with Canada and Canadians. Yet the collection is also an intriguing look at the writer himself--his past, his present, and his vision of the future.

Sometimes funny, often wise, and always entertaining, The Vinyl Cafe Notebooks is sure to provide a wealth of reading pleasure that fans will return to again and again.

As the storytelling host of CBC Radio's The Vinyl Café, Stuart McLean has become one of Canada's best-loved broadcasters. His tales are heartwarming and brimming with real-life humour, and the Vinyl Café collections are perennial best-sellers in Canada. Home From The Vinyl Café, the second in the series of stories collected from the show and the winner of the 1999 Stephen Leacock Medal for Humour, revisits the lives of Dave, owner of a downtown Toronto record store, his wife, Morley, and their children Stephanie and Sam.

The stories take the reader through a year in the life of the quirky family, beginning with the hilarious Christmas story "Dave Cooks a Turkey." Having forgotten his promise to buy the Christmas turkey, Dave finds a frozen one at an all-night convenience store and thaws it with a hair dryer (and a glass of scotch for him). "Emil" is the touching tale of a homeless man who, much to Dave's chagrin, shows up one day in front of the Vinyl Café wearing ripped pants and slippers. When Emil wins $10,000 in the lottery and gives $500 of it to Morley, she finds a way to return the money to him with little gifts and offerings. In the end, it's Emil who enriches the lives of Dave, Morley, and the children. Other subjects include summer camp, life at the cottage, music lessons, and one fiasco of a Christmas party at which all the parents stay strangely sober while the children accidentally get drunk.

McLean's stories vibrate with warmth, laughter, and compassion. And because they had their beginnings in spoken storytelling, these slices of daily life are wonderful to read aloud with friends and family members of all generations. --Mark Frutkin --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.

In When We Were Young, bestselling author Stuart McLean has selected his favourite stories of childhood from some of Canada's most esteemed writers. The collection shows the many colours of childhood passion and imagination, humiliation and insecurity, friendship and first love, and creates a composite childhood both familiar and unexpected.