How Shall I Tell the Dog? and Other Final Musings by Miles Kington (Newmarket Press, $19.95, 9781557048417/155704841X, July 7, 2009)

Miles Kington--Punch literary editor, London Times writer and jazz reviewer, one of England's most popular humorists--died in January 2008 of pancreatic cancer. His response to his diagnosis was to do what he had always done every day for decades: write. In a series of letters to his longtime friend and agent, Gill, he proposes endless ideas for a book that, well, cashes in on cancer, ending most missives with "Am I on to something?" He'd already asked his doctor how many chapter headings he has before the End, so floats ideas like "A Hundred Things to Do Before You Die" (like how to make children at adjacent tables burst into tears for no apparent reason or how to pronounce "chorizo" properly); "Weight Loss through Cancer"; "Lunch in Barcelona for One"; a self-help book about self-pity ("Tap the Inner Energy of Apathy"); a board game called Necropoly.

He also thinks he might make a good assassin, offering his services as his last useful act on earth: "People who look at my hangdog expression and my air of lingering malady would never dream that underneath it all simmers a potential killer." And he's after big game, too--Robert Mugabe or a "public nuisance" like Jeffrey Archer or Victorla Beckham ("any thoughts so far?" he asks Gill).

Kington meanders delightfully. He wonders if the British are the only people in the world who think that Germans get up at dawn to put their bathing towels on good bits at the poolside; he says that George VI died of cancer--was there a link between that and his hobby of philately? And did the king actually lick his own stamp hinges?; thinking of past famous death-bed pronouncements, he proposes a registry for final last words, since being swaddled in painkillers at the end precludes a dying utterance of value; he writes of training pekes for survival in the African bush. In one long letter, he goes on about trying to pierce new holes in his belts after losing weight, which leads to abandoned tools all over the house, which leads to buying a belt in Ireland, which leads to a cobbler with a cleft palate, which leads to deciding a cobbler's shop would be a bad place for a power struggle to break out. He effortlessly takes the reader from sadness to laughter.

Miles Kington tells Gill that he hates reading books about pain and joy-through-suffering and most definitely does not want to write a cheery book about cancer. Instead, he has written a very funny book. He asks, if you are a cheery sort who has been told you have cancer and carry on regardless, is that denial? Or reckless bravery? No denial in this book, but certainly bravery from a brilliant, funny man who lived to write.--Marilyn Dahl

Shelf Talker: An epistolary book from one of England's most popular columnists, with truly amusing observations about his cancer diagnosis and inevitable demise.