Vinyl Cafe feels like home

I'm either ashamed or proud to admit that I really enjoy all 5 books in the Vinyl Cafe series. Actually I think I've only read 3.5. They read so fluidly that, despite not being about anything more exciting than every-day life, the pages cannot be turned fast enough.

There's just something about these quirky, small town Canada, slices of life. They feel real, like a number of the tales could have actually happened to you, or someone you know. And they often harken back to pleasant childhood memories, told so vividly you can smell the apple pie.

They also inspire you to live life to the fullest. For example, in the latest installment that I'm reading now, Secrets from the Vinyl Cafe, there's a chapter where Stephanie, the main character's daughter of around my age, goes tree planting for 6 weeks. Stuart McLean spares nothing when recounting how grueling and awful a job this must be. Early morning wake-ups, sleeping in tents, working in rain or snow, bleeding hands, flies flies and more flies. But Stephanie persists to the goal of planting 2500 trees a day, because that's what the "lifers" can do and she knows that she should be capable of it too. The problem is that even working hard all day, she averages about 500. Anyways she eventually succeeds, blah blah. I want to plant trees! (kind of). There's also a hilarious chapter on practical jokes of the extreme variety (think: better than Punk'd), which makes me want to put more effort into stuff like.

The funny part is that it never reads sappy or preachy. Really they're uplifting, feel good, and often laugh-out-loud funny. Highlighted passages (from the latest book, otherwise I'd obviously include the infamous turkey):

Specimen A:

If you asked either of them, neither Kenny nor Dave could tell you exactly when this April Fool's business began. But they would tell you that one April, Dave got into Kenny's cafe in the middle of the night and replaced the gravy powder Kenny uses for poutine and hot turkey sandwiches with chocolate pudding mix. No one in the kitchen noticed anything until the cook splattered some of the chocolate gravy on the rim of a plate, wiped it with his thumb and then absentmindedly brought his thumb to his mouth. That wasn't until late in the afternoon.

As soon as he could, Kenny rewound his cash-register tape and found, to his horror, that they had already sold seven hot chocolate-turkey sandwiches. The disturbing part was that no one had complained.

Specimen B (wherein Sam joins the field hockey team):

For the first half an hour they did calisthenics. Coach walked among them and shouted encouragement. "Come on, Lee... lift those legs. Faster, Pat. You can do it. That's the spirit ... Samantha."
Samantha? Sam hadn't realized this was a coed team. He tried to spot the girl, Samantha, but because everyone was wearing helmets, he found it impossible.
It took about half an hour before the truth dawned on Sam. The coach was looking directly at him every time she had something to say to Samantha. Chris was wearing a pink T-shirt. Pat's blond hair was held back in a scrunchie. And Lee seemed to be wearing a sports bra.
And it was "Erin," the coach kept calling, not "Aaron."
"Uh-oh," said Sam under his breath.
His suspicions were confirmed at the end of practice when Coach lined the team up and handed out the team uniforms.
It was Sam's first-ever skirt.