Kington, Miles (How Shall I Tell the Dog?)

[An Early Reviewer copy from LibraryThing. Thanks LT!]

Two-thirds of the way through this book, Kington notes that a book that has only "the best bits" would be considered boring, supposedly because it would be exhausting to read. Unfortunately, I disagree because his book does not have only the best bits and is boring nonetheless.

Kington wrote this book as a series of humorous tales related to his growing pancreatic cancer. I applaud the effort of writing about this life event comically, since it can't have been easy or fun at times. But, there is, at its essence, nothing funny about cancer. So reading it you are wincing nearly the entire time, even when you're laughing.

The hardest laughs are at his description of his father-in-law, the yodeling bits, and the cards he wrote up to describe his cancer, in case people were looking leery. He clearly had a gift since there are laugh-out-loud parts, and maybe it's just that nothing is consistently humorous even to one individual. But... does he want to remembered by this (albeit lightweight) tome? I'm fairly sure I wouldn't.