If you know anything about the recovery movement, you know that in addition to being helpful to millions, it can also be saccherine, irritating, and humorless. So can most churches, so that's not a condemnation. But what if the humanity and sweetness of the movement could be captured along with a huge dose of laughter at this lumbering, self absorbed thing? You would have a really special book. Written as a series of daily affirmations, the book reminds us of Richardson's PAMELA (a very early English novel in the form of a series of letters home). In this straitjacket of a form, characters develop, personality is revealed, and we laugh at and with the Recovery world without one jot of cruelty to people's pain or their struggles. This is one of the funniest and best comic novels since Auntie Mame. So raise a non-alcoholic glass to salute Stuart Smalley, who is a little bit of a hero after all.