[close] "One day, I put myself in the car and simply drove. I had no idea where I was going or why. I had no idea ... I would wind up, at dusk, in a lost little valley, turning up the driveway of the Bachelor Brothers' Bed and Breakfast."

The best books, as you read them, take you from wherever you are to a place where you want to be. If you're a reader of a certain type--a lover of books, cats, and absurdity of a quiet kind--then the Bachelor Brothers' Bed and Breakfast should be on your itinerary. It introduces two fraternal twins, Hector and Virgil, unmarried men who run a cozy establishment on a Canadian island. The book alternates between notes from Hector or Virgil, and "Brief Lives," culled from the B & B's guest book. This variety of perspectives gives Bill Richardson tremendous flexibility, and he weaves all the disparate characters together with an unobtrusive dexterity. The Bachelor Brothers' Bed and Breakfast is a pleasant, soothing, quietly absurd place to be.