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- All You Need Is Enough Rope:
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- The Canadian Children's Annual (eleven editions)
- The 1980 Comics Annual
Fiction
- James Parsons and His Magnificent Mouth of Adventure
- Susan Super Sleuth
Nonfiction
- Canada's Monsters
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- The Lovesickness Diet; or, These Flames in Which I Fry
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Illustrated Prose Works
- All You Need Is Enough Rope: a light-hearted look at cottage life
- Duffer Golf: or How to Break 100
- The Lovesickness Diet; or, These Flames in Which I Fry
- Breeding As A Sport: 101 Student Howlers
- When's the Last Time You Cleaned Your Navel?
Illustrated Prose Works
- All You Need Is Enough Rope: a light-hearted look at cottage life
- Duffer Golf: or How to Break 100
- The Lovesickness Diet; or, These Flames in Which I Fry
MEDICINE & MENTAL HEALTH
MYTHOLOGY? OR BIOLOGY?
NEWFOUNDLAND
"NOVELTY BOOK" SERIES
NOVEL
PARANORMAL
- Love From Above: Heidi Gardiner's Encounter With The Afterlife
- Mysterious Moments In The Paranormal
- Mysterious Moments In The Paranormal
POETRY
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WAR
Book Summary
by Robert Nielsen
Cover painting by Katherine MacDonald
Finalist - Stephen Leacock Medal for Humour
192 pages, trade paperback, $19.95
ISBN 0-919676-53-7
Divided into three sections - "The Wretched Rookie", "The Jaded Journeyman", and "The Vulnerable Veteran" - here is the autobiography of a hopeless "athlete" trying to achieve stardom (He knew The Law of the Canadian Male: "If you don't play in the NHL, you're a failure"). Set in western and eastern Canada - and even England - the story reveals that no matter what sport our hero tries, disaster strikes: fishing, he catches his lure in his friend's face; deer hunting, he is caught reading Shakespeare; tackling in football, he is knocked cold; golfing in a tournament, he quits after five holes; experimenting with karate, his teeth are crushed by a black belt. In England he tries cricket (bowled out by the first ball) and rugger (toenails fall off). The author wrote the book "because the market is flooded with the exploits of famous athletes. It's time an unsuccessful sportsperson had a say, someone with whom the hopeless masses - both men and women - can identify."
About the Author
Robert Nielsen, President of Potlatch Publications, is the author and editor of several Potlatch books, including Garney Henley: A Gentleman and a Tiger; Canadian Children's Anual; and, Breeding as a Sport: 101 Student Howlers. His "institutional biography" of an Ontario hospital, Total Encounters: The Life and Times of the Mental Health Centre Penetanguishene won the "Award for Best Non-fiction Book" from the Hamilton & Region Arts Council.
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Reviews
"Here is a book to bring tears and laughter to any man or woman who has spent a lifetime attempting and failing at sport - any sport, any age."
Patricia Burgess
Citation. Stephen Leacock Association.
"Where Nielsen excels is in the sudden reversal at the end of each chapter that brings us face to face with something important, haunting if you like. That touches us all."
Judy Rapson
Stephen Leacock Association
The Flamborough Review.