Humour Books > D Humour Books > D

Advantages: Funny and quite interesting really
Disadvantages: A tad unbelievable in places

...would be a review of Dave Gorman's debut novel. But, like just about everyone who works from home, the comic was just too easily distracted to actually get down to the work for which he'd been handsomely paid. Unlike the rest of us, though, Gorman's displacement activities went a bit further than cleaning the oven or cataloguing his CD collection. Instead, he embarked on an adventure that took him several times around the globe, running up a five-figure ...
...that first novel written. As anyone who saw any of his sell-out stage shows knows, Gorman's imagination was sparked by the online diversion of googlewhacking - a usually harmless game in which you try to find combinations of two legitimate words that throw up just one unique webpage from the three billion or so online. And so he is challenged to meet an unbroken chain of ten people responsible such 'whacks. This book chronicles the result. While ... Read review

Advantages: Strange and funny.
Disadvantages: Maybe too strange for some.

...reading from this particular book, Dress Your Family in Corduroy and Denim, and after that I “ran” to my favourite online bookstore to place an order. David Sedaris (born 1956 in Binghampton, NY) is a talented humorist and for inspiration he often uses his family, his Greek heritage, his homosexuality and the problems that come with moving to another country as he now lives in France with his partner Hugh. However, he is also a radio commentator ...
...I soon will. Dress Your Family in Corduroy and Demin is a collection of autobiographical stories from his past and even though the “characters”, i.e. his family members, are the same throughout, they are separate stories instead of one long one. Growing up in a family with four sisters and only one brother, and being gay at that, is a good basis for many stories that might seem mundane on the surface, but told with the dry sense of humour that David ... Read review

Advantages: It's not terribly expensive
Disadvantages: It's not terribly funny

For years, a friend of mine kept going on about a book that was a parody of "The Lord of the Rings". At the time it was out of print, but he would quote one of the lines from it at every opportunity and bemoan the fact that he never had a copy of his own. Fortunately, the surge of interest in the original books when the films were being made resulted in a republication of the parody and so he was finally able to own his own copy of "Bored of the ...
...about it, so was I. Following rather loosely the plot of "The Lord of the Rings", Frito Bugger is charged with a quest to travel across the world and destroy a ring. He is accompanied on his quest by his friend Spam, the magician Goodgulf and a couple of rather annoying boggies, Moxie and Pepsi. Legolam the elf, Gimlet the dwarf, Stomper the Ranger and Bromosel complete the party. We get to follow their journey from the boggies' home in the Sty, ... Read review

Advantages: Compact - some sensible advice to pick the bones out of
Disadvantages: Avoiding alien abduction?

When the original Worst Case Scenario Survival handbook was published, it covered emergencies many of which were only the kind experienced by Ray Mears and that ilk. The issue of a Travel version or sub-section makes all kind of sense, since most of the scrapes that the Man On The Clapham Omnibus will get into are more likely to occur whilst travelling to, or actually being in , foreign climes. I think someone gave me this book as a stocking ...
...such it's lain around in the bed-side table just waiting to come to the top of the pile as a bit of 'loo-time' reading. Any book thus designated must know that if found wanting, its pages may get used for something else. In fact, since this is the Travel edition of the "W-C S S H*", it even suggests doing this in the section on lavatorial emergencies. *(If you think I'm going to type out 'Worst-Case Scenario Survival Handbook' every time, think ... Read review

Advantages: Brilliant read!
Disadvantages: None!

...really does include everything that IS shit and takes the mickey out of it until you're blue in the face laughing. I absolutely love this book and the second edition - Is It Just Me or Is Everything Shit, Vol II. for which I waited in anticipation until the day of its release. I received this book for Christmas, from my mum who thought it was right up my street. It was and within days I'd read it cover to cover, laughing so hard that it became annoying ...
...reading material. The humour is sophisticated, with obvious signs that these guys are pros...this isn't just a book written by two blokes who've just come back from the pub. This is satire, wit, a little sarcasm and a lot of intelligence, even the arrangement and formation of sentences and language used becomes funny. It's just funny through and through. It's not that easy to make me laugh out loud with books, especially the kind of books released ... Read review