For starters, I think I'm going to read some novels that have a humorous element. At the Zoom Jane Austen group meeting, someone mentioned she was reading "Molly of the Mall" by Heidi L M. Jacobs and said it was amusing. Someone else commented that they could use a good laugh. Well, couldn't we all. There was an ebook copy at the library so I now have it on my Kobo
"She is currently the English and History Librarian at the Ontario-based University of Windsor. Molly of the Mall won the 2020 Stephen Leacock Memorial Medal for Humour."
Blurb on Amazon:
"Aspiring novelist Molly MacGregor’s life is strikingly different from a literary heroine's. Named for one of literature’s least romantic protagonists, Moll Flanders, Molly lives in Edmonton, a city she finds irredeemably unromantic, where she writes university term papers instead of novels, and sells shoes in the Largest Mall on Earth. There she seeks the other half of her young life's own matched pair. Delightfully whimsical, Heidi L.M. Jacobs’s Molly of the Mall: Literary Lass and Purveyor of Fine Footwear explores its namesake's love for the written word, love for the wrong men (and the right one), and her complicated love for her city."
I may give some of these a try. "Yiddish for Pirates" came up on some other list recently and I think I will certainly have to give the Will Ferguson "Beyond Belfast" a try. I"ve read "The Sisters Brothers" but don't remember it being particularly comic.
Past Leacock Medal Winners
| Year | Winner | Book | Publisher |
|---|---|---|---|
| 2019 | Cathal Kelly | Boy Wonders | Doubleday Canada |
| 2018 | Jennifer Craig | Gone to Pot | Second Story Press |
| 2017 | Gary Barwin | Yiddish for Pirates | Vintage Canada |
| 2016 | Susan Juby | Republic of Dirt | Harper Collins |
| 2015 | Terry Fallis | No Relation | McClelland & Stewart |
| 2014 | Bill Conall | The Promised Land: A Novel of Cape Breton | Boularderie Island Press |
| 2013 | Cassie Stocks | Dance, Gladys, Dance | NeWest Press |
| 2012 | Patrick deWitt | The Sisters Brothers | Ecco Press |
| 2011 | Trevor Cole | Practical Jean | McClelland & Stewart Canada |
| 2010 | Will Ferguson | Beyond Belfast | Penguin Books |
