2016 Reading Challenge: A book you've been meaning to read

Sometime over a year ago, I found out that Colin Mochrie had written a book.  Being a lifelong fan of Whose Line is it Anyway?, I was immediately interested.  Then I read the description - a collection of short stories in which Mochrie takes the first and last sentences of several famous books/stories and makes up his own story in between.  Absolutely brilliant, I thought.  I need to read it.

Well, no libraries around me have this book.  The bookstore at which I used to eat lunch every day when I had a job didn't have it, either - even though they have plenty of fiction, and plenty of books written by celebrities!  My Mom actually captured my unhappiness at this lack of fiction by Mr. Mochrie when she visited me last fall:

 

She thought she was just getting me happy to be in my favorite bookstore, but nope, I was scowling because they didn't have Not Quite The Classics by Colin Mochrie.

Anyway, Christmas 2015 came and went, and my Mom got me an Amazon gift card!  So I finally decided to buy the book, especially since it meant fulfilling another check on the 2016 reading challenge.

Oh my gosh.  I super enjoyed this book.  The short stories were even less related than the ones in Haunting Experiences, so it was even easier for me to put the book down for a few hours (or days) to do other stuff.  This proved to be both good and bad: I never felt even a little taste of a cliffhanger, but I also went a whole week without reading this month.  I know, not horrible, but that was about 5 more days of TV binges in a row than I'd like!  After all, I'm trying to wean myself back in to reading, not off of it.

There are 13 short stories in Not Quite the Classics.  Inspiration comes from all walks of life: Sherlock Holmes, The Cat in the Hat, The Great Gatsby, Slaughterhouse Five, etc.  While I haven't read every book behind Mochrie's stories, I think he did a great job of capturing each individual author's voice/style.  The few I have read include T'was The Night Before Christmas, The Great Gatsby, and 1984.  Each of Mochrie's stories were written in a style that reflects the style of the original author.  His Holmes in A Study in Ha-Ha was particularly convincing - I couldn't help but imagine Benedict Cumberbatch and Martin Freeman acting out the absurd plot!  (Two things on that - one, I say absurd in the most loving of ways, it being Derek's and my word of choice to describe anything silly, hard to believe, cartoonish, or amusing lately.  And two, I have never read any of the original Sir Arthur Conan Doyle novels, but I watch BBC's Sherlock religiously.  BBC, if you're reading this, please secure the rights from Mr. Mochrie and produce a special acting out "A Study In Ha-Ha"!!!)

I can't even pick my favorite of these stories.  Is it his version of Ernest Thayer's "Casey at the Bat," of the same name,  in which the narrator quickly divulges into an epic tale about Casey the hockey player of NHL fame?  Or perhaps Mochrie's version of Orwell's famous "1984," "The Nineteen Hundred and Eighty-Fourth," a hilarious tale that takes place in a magical land filled with the most convoluted and twisted history I have ever read?  Or maybe it's "Re: Becker," which draws its first and last lines from Daphne du Maurier's "Rebecca," detailing the journey of a man set out to fulfill his late friend's last request regarding his ashes.  Each of the thirteen short stories in this book had me laughing out loud at least twice, if not more.  I even snorted at one of them.

I'm so, so glad that I read this.  I'm so, so glad that Colin Mochrie wrote this.  Colin, I know you say in your introduction that you dislike work and that writing is a lot of work; still, should you ever feel inclined to write another collection like this one, I beg that you do not shy away from that urge.