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Dear Sad Goat: A Roundup of Truly Canadian Tales and Letters

Bill Richardson, host of the popular CBC Radio show "Richardson's Roundup," presents a colourful rag-bag of letters from listeners in Dear Sad Goat. The collection reads like a cross between Laughter Is the Best Medicine and Chicken Soup for the Rural Canadian Soul. Most of the letters come from places with names like Big Lots, Nova Scotia, or Lac Du Bonnet, Manitoba. Even the pieces from Toronto and Vancouver rarely describe anything approaching urban life. Richardson offers brief introductions to each chapter as well as a thoughtful opening essay. His most clever turn, however, is to sequence the letters so that they become a sort of conversation. You might start out reading about thriftiness and pages later, by way of a wood-chopping Grandma, find yourself inside a story about the history of a second-hand coat. The letters range in tone from sombre tales of a death in the family to more whimsical stories of unwelcome vacuum cleaner salesmen and delinquent pets. Julie Crucil of Comox, British Colombia, writes comically of how a botched attempt to behead a barnyard chicken traumatized her into a life-long aversion to poultry. Her mother's letter to the show follows with a parent's regret and a predictably less melodramatic version of the story. Dear Sad Goat might seem, at first glance, like the perfect gift for an older relative, but readers of all ages will be charmed by its welcome lack of cynicism. — Moe Berg

  • Format
  • paperback
  • Pages
  • 192
  • Language
  • english
  • ISBN
  • 9781550549607
  • Genres
  • canada, humor
  • Release date
  • 2002