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Find out moreTitles to make you laugh out loud. Or just smile. Or both.
SH**GED Saturday nights out on the tiles, undying crushes, dating like it's a competitive sport, awkward tales of dating woes, one-night stands, the walk of shame, ghosting, tears and break-ups. MARRIED Finding 'the one', meeting their parents, first holidays and romantic weekends away, engagement rings, big moment proposals, wedding bells, the hen do, the stag, the much anticipated - and feared - best man speech, the honeymoon of a lifetime. ANNOYED Who stacks a dishwasher like this? Empty milk cartons placed back into the fridge, pregnancy, sleepless nights, toilet seats up, toothpaste everywhere, less and less frequent date nights, DIY weekends, divorce. Whether you're sh**ged, married, annoyed, or, all of the above, Chris and Rosie Ramsey, hosts of the number one podcast, write hilariously and with honesty about the ups and downs and ins and outs of love, sex and relationships.
Have you ever watched a man angling in the rain, building a shelter when there's a bed waiting for him at home or peeing as high as he can up a wall? In Why Men Skim Stones, Chris Windle provides an amusing and indispensable insight into why men do the things they do. Here, finally, is a guide that tackles the big questions: why do male friends express their affection by subjecting each other to casual acts of violence? Why is it common for a man to have more of an idea of what he might do in the event of a zombie apocalypse, than what he might buy his mum for Christmas? If you've ever been dumbfounded when faced with a man who would rather talk to an inanimate object than read the instruction booklet, this is the book for you.
From Ozymandias the Steve McQueen of Springers whose acrobatic sex life rivals Errol Flynn's, to terrier Ted, whose Falstaffian appetites (and over-indulgence following the loyal toast) lead to a shameful bender followed by a spell in re-hab, man's best friend comes in many guises, not all of them benign. In his latest collection of sly verse, Christopher Matthew celebrates the canine world in all its glorious diversity - and takes a sidelong glance at the human one along the way. Travelling from Camp Bastion to West Wittering via a sunlit Greek island, Matthew's compendium embraces comedy, tragedy and personalities great and small. There are exuberant, rear-fixated puppies and neglected latchkey dogs, there are dignified mongrel strays, war-heroes, a psychotic Great Dane called Cher Bebe and a top-drawer spaniel of theatrical lineage with Uggie-envy. And then there is man, with his cowardice, his commitment issues, his short attention span and his propensity for very silly names...The great question Matthew circles in this gloriously entertaining gallop through one of the world's great auld alliances, therefore, is not so much who is the master in this relationship, as who is the mutt. Touching, wicked, clever and kind, Dog Treats will bring delight and recognition to dog-lovers everywhere.
A witty compilation of entertaining literary spoofs mocking the great and good of British writing. This alternative history of English literature is a perfect Christmas gift for any book lover.
A collection of remarkable and completely made-up correspondence from the great and the good across history. Many books have collated the exceptional letters and personal writing of the famous, offering a fascinating insight into well-known figures' personal lives and hidden desires. But what of the undistinguished epistles of the renowned? Can their less auspicious musings divulge clues to their hopes and ambitions? Probably not. But they can be quite funny. 'Letters of Not' assembles the fictional jotted dross that was never before considered worthy of collection. The Post-it notes, the shopping lists, the failed limericks and the birthday card sentiments of history's most celebrated sons and daughters. Inside you will find: Werner Herzog's impassioned note to his cleaning lady Patti Smith's gym application Captain Scott's other last letter to his wife Salvador Dali's to do list Mark E. Smith's audio tour of Ripon Cathedral Harold Pinter greetings cards Pope Benedict's handover notes James Joyce's out of office Dr Heimlich's other manoeuvre A letter from the table next to the Algonquin Round Table Tweets from the 1966 Newport Folk Festival Instructions on what to do when you meet Van Morrison And many more, beautifully rendered in their original, blatantly falsified glory and hilariously transcribed for your pleasure.
The correspondence collected here may have come from Dale Shaw’s imagination but there is a rightness to some of the inclusions (Dr Heimlich’s Other Manoeuvre or A letter from the table next to the Algonquin Round Table) that makes you question if, perhaps some of these letters and notes just should have been found crumpled up in some historic waste-paper basket. ~ Sue Baker Like for Like Reading. The Lost Diaries, Craig Brown. The Novel Cure: An A-Z of Literary Remedies, Susan Elderkin & Ella Berthoud
Nowadays, the world is full of people trying to tell us things. So much so that we have taught our brains not to pay much attention. After all, click the mouse, tap the screen, flick the channel and it's on to the next thing. But Dave Gorman thinks it's time to have a closer look, to find out how much nonsense we tacitly accept. Suspicious adverts, baffling newspaper headlines, fake twitter, endless cat videos, insane TV shows where the presenters ask the same questions over and over. Can we even hear ourselves think over the rising din? Or is there just too much information?
It's hard to imagine a world where anything you could possibly want to know about - and everything you don't even know you want to know about - isn't accessible 24-hours a day, seven days a week, with just a few taps of our fingers. But that world once existed. And Dave Gorman remembers it. He remembers when there were only three channels on TV. He remembers when mobile phones were the preserve of arrogant estate agents and yuppie twonks. And he remembers when you had to unplug your phone to plug the computer into the landline in order to use the (crippling slow) internet. Nowadays of course, the world is full of people trying to tell us things. So much so that we have taught our brains not to pay much attention. After all, click the mouse, tap the screen, flick the channel and it's on to the next thing. But Dave Gorman thinks it's time to have a closer look, to find out how much nonsense we tacitly accept. Suspicious adverts, baffling newspaper headlines, fake twitter, endless cat videos, insane TV shows where the presenters ask the same questions over and over. Can we even hear ourselves think over the rising din? Or is there just too much information?
Featured in this book are such established English cultural behemoths as the Beatles, Big Ben and the Last Night of the Proms alongside less celebrated quirks such as meat pies and the working man's haven, the allotment. Here we celebrate the bell-ringers and Morris dancers, bowler hats ('the symbol of respectable Englishness') and cardigans ('symbol of staid middle-class solidarity'). We examine the brutality of Punch and Judy and our historic love of fairies, once so much a part of the English psyche that they were described as 'the British religion'.
Holy Cow by David Duchovny is a comic delight that will thrill fans of Jasper Fforde and Ben Aaronovitch. And anyone who enjoys a witty wisecrack in a novel. Elsie Bovary is a cow and a pretty happy one at that. Until one night, Elsie sneaks out of the pasture and finds herself drawn to the farmhouse. Through the window, she sees the farmer's family gathered around a bright Box God - and what the Box God reveals about something called an 'industrial meat farm' shakes Elsie's understanding of her world to its core. The only solution? To escape to a better, safer world. And so a motley crew is formed: Elsie; Shalom, a grumpy pig who's recently converted to Judaism; and Tom, a suave turkey who can't fly, but can work an iPhone with his beak. Toting stolen passports and slapdash human disguises, they head for the airport ...Elsie is a wise-cracking, slyly witty narrator; Tom dispenses psychiatric advice in a fake German accent; and Shalom ends up unexpectedly uniting Israelis and Palestinians. David Duchovny's charismatic creatures point the way toward a mutual understanding and acceptance the world desperately needs.
Life doesn't come with an instruction manual. But if it did, and if that manual was cobbled together in five minutes by a drunken idiot-genius, then it might look something like these crowd-sourced tips and ill-thought-out ideas. Covering everything from how best to turn your cat into a fearsome stegosaurus to pre-empting jellyfish stings, this book presents the wealth of knowledge gleaned from the dusty vaults of twitter's hugely popular @TwopTwips. From the profane to the ridiculous, these laugh-at-loud nuggets of advice, with absurd and informative illustrations, will change your life in a hugely insignificant way. Tips include: BORED of a friend's text messages? Reply with 'unsubscribe' and they'll get the hint; SPICE up a boring salad by replacing the vegetables with bacon and placing between two slices of bread; STOP your dog from pulling on its lead by walking a bit faster; PREPARE your children for office life by acting awkwardly around them in the kitchen; and, AVOID the hassle and expense of hair straighteners by not eating your crusts.
Michael Holland is a grim reaper working the worst beat in the worst town. Michael’s best friend is a pot-smoking tooth fairy, his boss is the angel of death, his psychiatrist can read his mind, and he counts bogeymen, demons, and clones as his acquaintances. His nine-to-five is a succession of stupidity, clearing up the remains of the latest Darwin Award winner or dealing with the detritus of some apocalyptic clerical error, and it only seems to be getting worse. Michael is as equally disillusioned with death as he was with life, but at least life made more sense. In Forever After, Michael starts to question whether his immortality is really worth having. He sees clueless souls cross over every day, and battling confused succubi, tormented psychopaths, evil henchmen, and even a demon who thinks he’s Santa Claus is getting boring. Is there something more exciting for this grim reaper to do in this sad little town? This darkly humorous novel is set in a fantasy world that exists parallel to ours?a world where anything is possible, very little makes sense, and nothing is as it seems.
Edward Estlin Cummings knew a thing or two (take a look at our Poetry Section if you don’t believe us!) and we have to agree with him. Humour is at the heart of human life and you’ll find it in fine form in this section. From favourite TV shows to quirky memoirs; hilarious novels to witty verse; books to dip into, books to devour. We know that humour is subjective and so we’ve spread the net pretty wide as we trawled the comedy oceans for the funniest fish. Un’shellfish’ly, we’ve compiled monthly lists of eclectic recommendations so that you can easily find whatever tickles your fins. There are books here to give as gifts, to savour on your own, or to enjoy with others. Books of laugh out-loud jokes and anecdotes to make you smile on the train, plane, bus or any other public place. After all, laughter is infectious. Spread it around.