[[Category:Humour|*]]
[[Category:New Reviews|Humour]] __NOTOC__ <!-- Remove -->{{newreviewFrontpage|titleauthor=The Hitchhikers Guide To The Galaxy - The Nearly Definitive EditionJen Beagin|authortitle=Douglas AdamsBig Swiss|rating=4.5|genre=General FictionHumour |summary=There are few series that have garnered such a cult following as 'The Hitchhikers Guide I found the premise of this book totally original and addictive. Greta possesses the power to know the Galaxypopulation of Hudson, New York's darkest secrets, their intimate lives, their fetishes and fears. How? Her job is to transcribe their sex therapy sessions. Whether the fans have come from the radio seriesSure, there's a confidentiality agreement, as the (impossibly hard) computer gamesex coach who calls himself Om keeps reminding her, or the (well intentioned but not particularly good) filmthat just makes it more exciting. Like we've all probably wished for at some point in life, Greta can exist passively, placidly, they are everywhereas a fly on the wall. Ask a room That is, until Greta decides to unglue her fly-feet from the safety of people what the meaning of life wall and buzz far too close to the sun. The sun in this analogy isthe sex coach's newest patient, and you can be pretty sure a good few will pipe up with who Greta dubs '42Big Swiss' as , and who, like the sun, is bright, blonde and beautiful - and irresistible to Greta. Suddenly, the confidentiality agreement, the ethics of her professional position, her loyalties to Om, fly out of the answerwindow. She's in too deep.|amazonukisbn=<amazonuk>0434023396</amazonuk>0571378579
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{{newreviewFrontpage|titleauthor=Quick Pint After WorkDean Koontz|authortitle=Luke LewisThe Bad Weather Friend|rating=4.5|genre=HumourParanormal|summary=BuzzFeed Benny is one of the world’s best time suckshaving a terrifically bad day. He loses his job, he loses his fiancee, and I’m regularly directed to the site by links from Facebook his house gets trashed. Oh, and Twittersomeone has delivered a really weird, in between browsing the app on my phone. According disturbing coffin-sized object to the author bio on this bookhis home, BuzzFeed is 'a social news and entertainment companyit's possible that whoever or whatever was inside is the thing that has trashed his house! The thing is, which Benny is the very last person to deserve all this bad luck. He is a fancy way of describing lots of fun lists nice person. A really nice person. So fortunately for Benny it turns out that speak the delivery to the readership (20 words that have his house is a new friend, a completely different meaning in Manchesterbad weather friend called Spike, 30 Things all ex-gymnasts know who has been sent to be true, 40 Very British problems, yadda yadda yadda)help him since Benny is clearly under attack from nefarious forces for being a good person. These list work well on line when you want a quick distraction Spike is going to take care of Benny, and they’re easy to flip throughwill certainly take care of Benny's enemies, if he, looking at the attached photos or video clips. The question thenBenny, is whether or not BuzzFeed the book will have the same appealand Harper (a waitress slash Private Investigator who finds herself roped into Benny's wild adventure) can figure out who exactly they are.|amazonukisbn=<amazonuk>0751557730</amazonuk>1662500491
}}
{{newreviewFrontpage|authorisbn=Graeme Simsion1529153050|title=The Rosie EffectBritain's Best Political Cartoons 2022|author=Tim Benson
|rating=4
|genre=Humour
|summary=Following inadvertent success with Seeking some light relief from the Wife Projectcurrent political turmoil which is coming to seem more and more like an adrenaline sport, Professor Don Tillman and his new bride Rosie have moved from Australia to New York. Although DonI was nudged towards ''Britain's position on the autistic scale is subjective, he still operates on a daily basis Best Political Cartoons of structured procedures, lists and logic2022''. Rosie can generally handle Sharp eyes will have noted that but there are choppy waters ahead. With we're not yet through the patter of tiny feet imminent logic goes out year: the window as she struggles with her PhD while Don struggles cartoons run from 4 September 2021 to find his place in the baby production process31 August 2022. At least he has his drinking buddies Who can imagine what there will be to support him – an aging rock drummer and a friend whose wife has thrown him out for infidelity. What could possibly go wrongcome in the 2023 edition?|amazonuk=<amazonuk>0718179471</amazonuk>
}}
{{newreview|title=Burnt Tongues: An Anthology of Transgressive Short Stories|author=Chuck Palahniuk, Dennis Widmyer and Richard Thomas|rating=4|genre=Short StoriesFrontpage|summaryisbn=Saying certain things out loud just don’t sound right. Some things are so disturbing or politically incorrect that you are best off leaving them inside your head, or better yet not thinking of them at all. When these words are spoken they could lead to the sensation of Burnt Tongue; an aftereffect of knowing what you said was wrong. Are you prepared to enter the world of Transgressive Fiction that aims to disturb, alienate, disgust and question?|amazonuk=<amazonuk>178329552X</amazonuk>}} {{newreview|author=Sammy Looker1785633074|title=Something Nasty in the Slushpile|rating=4|genre=Humour|summary=I couldn't resist the title - a neat play on [[Cold Comfort Farm by Stella Gibbons|Cold Comfort Farm]] and I'm sure that you'll understand that I was expecting some examples of the horrors to be found amongst the mountain of unsolicited manuscripts which every publisher accumulates. I'll confess I was expecting to giggle, even to groan - unkind, I know - and I'd mentally shelved the book with the trivia, or (hopefully) the humour. There is that element to the book, but there's also something far more useful. If you're thinking about publishing a book this should be required reading ''before'' you even go near a publisher.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>1472111028</amazonuk>}} {{newreviewStaggering Hubris|author=The Queen|title=Still ReigningJosh Berry|rating=4|genre=Humour|summary=Anyone who frequents Twitter will know that it's a mixed blessing. It's a mine of wonderful information and supportive camaraderie. It's also - unfortunately - home to a lot of people who take great pleasure in causing pain to others. But in amongst all this are a few gems and one of them is [https://twitter.com/Queen_UK @Queen_UK], a delightful satire on members of the royal family, celebrities, the political classes and the state of Her Majesty's nation. Or, ''one's nation'' as Ma'am would say. ''Still Reigning'' is her second book, after ''Gin O'Clock'' and it's the sort of parody which leaves you wondering if the writer might not be someone ''very'' close to the original.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>0715649132</amazonuk>}} {{newreview|title=Last Days of the Bus Club|author=Chris Stewart|rating=45
|genre=Humour
|summary=I could well have been a near-neighbour Members of Chris Stewart. NotParliament like us to believe that the country is run by politicians, headed by the Prime minister - the ''primus inter pares'' (that's for those of course, near his current primary occupancy, an ecological farmstead just beyond you who are Eton and Oxbridge educated) but the turning off from reality is that the back end of nowhere in ''prime'' movers are the most rural of corners of southern Spain, but back when he lived in special advisers - the southSPADS -east of England, being Genesis' first ever drummer, and building bridges in who are the driving force behind the North Downsgovernment. The fact I learnt We are in the latter from this book shows up several privileged position of having access to the features memoirs of this warm-hearted 'travelogue' – Rafe Hubris, the fact that Stewart is never shy about portraying family details and history – given a good map and a prevailing wind one could find where he lives and descend on man who was behind the farm, if one wished; and that while this might be on skilful control of the travel shelves, Covid crisis which was completely contained by the narrative is so fragmented it actually moves a lot more than any end of 2020. You might not know the name now but he will certainly be the characters doman to watch.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>1908745436</amazonuk>
}}
{{newreviewFrontpage|isbn=0571365884|title=Summer HalfMy Mess is a Bit of Life: Adventures in Anxiety|author=Angela ThirkellGeorgia Pritchett
|rating=4
|genre=HumourAutobiography|summary=If one didn’t know of Angela Thirkell’s distinguished background Georgia Pritchett has always been anxious, even as a granddaughter child. She would worry about whether the monsters under the bed were comfortable: it was the sort of Sir Edward Burne-Jones life where if she had nothing to worry about she would become anxious but such occasions were few and daughter of far between. On a visit to a classicisttherapist, it would be tempting as an adult, when she was completely unable to describe speak about what was wrong with her as it was suggested that she should write it down and ''My Mess is a kind Bit of country cousin of [[a Life:Category:P G Wodehouse|P.G. Wodehouse’s]]. An unaffected and intelligent one, whose humour Adventures in Anxiety'' is less sophisticated but bubbles over with just as much glee. The middlethe result -class world she has created, where young men come from families that or so we are comfortably wealthy rather than outrageously so, offers a counterpoint given to the Mitford or Wodehouse worlds with their aristocratic characters who travel the world and mingle with more louche, bohemian onesbelieve.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>184408969X</amazonuk>
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{{newreview|title=The Bojeffries SagaFrontpage|author=Alan Moore and Steve Parkhouse|rating=5|genre=Graphic Novels|summary=A very truncated history of comics will start with the idea that they should be funny strips – one jape then you're out; then that they should have more – perhaps a superhero; then that you can have so much more than just a superhero – witness the works of [[:Category:Alan Moore|Alan Moore]]. But you mustn't be too surprised to see the whole thing come around in a full cycle. Because Alan Moore has, with this volume, concluded his own funny strip japery, and whatever history or greater opinions about the canon of comix might say, it's just about his best ever book.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>0861662318</amazonuk>}} {{newreview|author=Reverend Adam SmallboneJohn Boyne|title=The Rev Diaries|rating=4.5|genre=Humour|summary=Adam Smallbone wasn’t always a vicar. He used to work for the Bristol Housing Department, enabling his father-in-law to tell everyone he worked 'in property'. From there, his initial calling was to a rural church in Suffolk which did nothing to prepare him for this, his current London inner city parish. Indeed, he's not prepared for Adoha (the Nigerian parishioner with 19 grandchildren and 'the bottom of God') or Colin, the homeless alcoholic who has adopted Adam and his wife Alex (Mrs Vicarage to Colin). But then Alex also has a lot to get used to; after all, she didn't actually marry a vicar.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>0718178394</amazonuk>}} {{newreview|title=Look Who's Back|author=Timur VermesEcho Chamber
|rating=5
|genre=General Fiction
|summary=''Hitler Youth Ronaldo! Which way to Meet George Cleverley. He is self-defined as "one of the street?'' With these words a very misguided Nazi Fuhrer asks for his first directions in few television personalities over the Berlin age of 2011fifty without a criminal record". Mistakenly believing the lad to be He starts this book a party junior member with bit worried when his own name on mistress tells him she's carrying his football shirtchild, he also thinks for a while it but then his author wife is still 1945getting her kicks with the Ukrainian partner "Strictly Come Dancing" paired her with. HeThey have three children, who are a sad-sack with absolutely no social skills whatsoever, a girl who hangs around with a virtue-signalling, keyboard warrior "wokester" who wants to save the world's soon informed homeless with out-of -date food, and a fit young lad doing the truthgay hustle thing. Add in a few other characters – therapists, but still makes some unfortunate conclusions lawyers, random transgender types – that the street kiosks selling Turkish language newspapers are a sign of a Soviet-beating alliance between the all have two countries, that people eat granola bars because the war still leads very different connections to a bread shortagehis life, and you have something that people making suggests an ironic speech bubble with their fingers in almost farcical approach to the air is all that is left of modern world. What suggests the Hitler salute. But yesfarcical approach even more, after a long hiatus neither he nor our author is particularly concerned with explaininghowever, ''that man'' is back – and if he has his way he's going to be just as popular the fact this time round…is bloody funny.|amazonukisbn=<amazonuk>0857052926</amazonuk>0857526219
}}
{{newreviewFrontpage|author=Adam RuckStephen Clarke|title=The Bluffer's Guide to Golf (Bluffer's Guides)|rating=4.5|genre=Sport|summary=The fly leaf suggests that this Bluffer's Guide is the way to instantly acquire all the knowledge which you need to pass as an expert in the ''arcane and labyrinthine'' world of golf. There's quite a bit there that I'd agree on - the rules (and to an unfortunate extent the ''attitudes'') are arcane and they seem to take a lifetime to master, but there's a surprising amount of information tucked away inside this little book. What I might quibble with is whether or not you would ''pass as an expert'' (which suggests that you're something of a con man): there's enough detail here to give you a solid grounding without needing to bluff.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>1909365327</amazonuk>}} {{newreview|title=The Collected Works of A J Fikry|author=Gabrielle ZevinSpy Who Inspired Me
|rating=4
|genre=General Fiction
|summary=A J Fikry This is not having a good timespoof spy story, that isn't about James Bond. He's lost his wife to Or Ian Fleming. But it features a car crashman called Ian Lemming, who dresses well and he's not making that much moneylikes the ladies' and who works for the secret service, but in the planning side of things more than the active service. The book store he runs, stuck out on a limb Lemming finds himself put on a quiet island community, is too remote to turn mission with a profit year-roundfemale spy called Margaux, and he has just dismissed the latest publisher's rep to turn pair end up at his doorstranded in Normandy, partly because her previous counterpart, an inconsequential part of A J's life when all is said and done, had died and he didn't know about it. But his bad time is about with Margaux on a desperate mission to get a lot worse, as the one thing he owns worth unearth traitors in the most – a rare bookresistance network, more valuable than his house, his business, anything – is about and Lemming desperately trying to vanish. Which bizarrely will cause several major changes to his one-person household…keep up with her!|amazonukisbn=<amazonuk>1408704617</amazonuk>2952163855
}}
{{newreviewFrontpage|author=William HansonAfonso Cruz and Rahul Bery (translator)|title=The BlufferKokoschka's Guide to Etiquette (Bluffer's Guides)Doll|rating=2.5|genre=LifestyleLiterary Fiction|summary=If you ask people what they fear most in Well, this looked very much like a book I could love from the get-go, which is why I picked my review copy up and flipped pages over several times before actually reading any social situation most will tell you that of it's not knowing how to behave. They'll be fine about I found things to potentially delight me each time – a weird section in the middle on darker stock paper, a chapter whose number was in the basics20, but it's those little niceties - how to introduce yourself000s, what to ask for letters used as an aperitifnarrative form, how to address someoneand so on. It intrigued with the subterranean voice a man hears in wartorn Dresden that what little I knew of it mentioned, for instance which can suddenly reveal you as a parvenutoo. William Hanson gives us a quick trip through But you've seen the essentials in a book which is very readable star rating that comes with this review, and - in places - hilariously funnycan tell that if love was on these pages, it was not actually caused by them. So what happened?|amazonukisbn=<amazonuk>1909937002</amazonuk>1529402697
}}
{{Frontpage
|isbn=B08KKQ85FN
|title=But Never For Lunch
|author=Sandra Aragona
|rating=4
|genre=Short Stories
|summary=''If a woman approaching the menopause can be likened to a Rottweiler in lipstick, an Ambassador nearing retirement resembles a pampered peacock about to be released into the company of carrion crows or, more to the point, about to discover the real world of bus timetables and paying his own gas bills.''
{{newreview|title=Horrid HenryYou don't get many better opening sentences than that, do you? We first met His Excellency and The Ambassador's Biggest Wife in [[Sorting the Priorities: Ambassadress and Best Ever Joke Book - 3-in-1Beagle Survive Diplomacy by Sandra Aragona|author=Francesca Simon Sorting the Priorities]] and Tony Ross|rating=4.5|genre=Humour|summary=It is easy we learned what it was like to be moved around countries like accompanying baggage by the Italian Government but the time has come for HE to see why Horrid Henry remains such an enduring retires and well-liked children’s character. for Sandra Aragona to become The adventures Wife of this cheeky, irreverent schoolboy and a cast of extreme characters including Miss Battle Axe, Former Ambassador... They have left The Demon Dinner Lady, Rabid Rebecca Career and arch-nemesis Moody Margaret are incredibly funny settled in Rome. Well 'settled' rather overstates the situation and a perfect way to encourage reluctant young readers to cultivate a love of reading. It is no surprise thentheir dog, Beagle, that the series has spawned a set no intention of three spin-off joke booksslowing down any time soon, which have now been combined to create a single volume: ''Horrid Henry’s Biggest despite being sixteen and Best Ever Joke Book''deaf.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>144401174X</amazonuk>
}}
{{newreviewFrontpage|isbn=B08GFSK2WZ|title=Let Me Off at the Top!: My Classy Life and Other MusingsThe Karma Trap|author=Ron BurgundyLisette Boyd
|rating=4
|genre=HumourWomen's Fiction|summary=''This book George Jackson is a testament thirty-three years old, absolutely gorgeous to my giant ballslook at - and single. She'' But its not had sex for eight months and she's also a stuck in the karma trap: an awful lot more. The story we've never been able to discern from either of the ''Anchorman'' films bad luck is one of surprising hardship, unsurprising hardness, being visited on her and great hairshe has a real talent for attracting drama. ItHer life's a rags-to-riches tale, as Ron Burgundy comes chaotic: she dealt with the leak from a Hicksville town in the middle of shower by putting something down at the outskirts bottom of somewhere the arse end of nowhere (a town perpetually on fire due stairs to absorb the accidents water - then the shower fell through the roof whilst she was in the mines underneath) it and struggles against all left her, stark naked, staring at the odds – pervy postman. She only has to take her mother's dog out for a walk for her to end up with dog poo spattered across her face - and many of a photo being taken by someone who shares it around the evens in the shape of womenoffice.}} {{Frontpage|author=David C Mason|title=Pandora's legs – Gardener|rating=3|genre=Crime|summary= John Cranston is a gardener, although what he did before he became a gardener, he claims, is classified. That is just as well because he is about to get be caught up in a criminal / spy / terrorist plot, where only he is today, thrusting himself and his news at us nightlycan save the day.|amazonukisbn=<amazonuk>1780892241</amazonuk>0956180523
}}
{{newreviewFrontpage|isbn=Jester_Forever|title=Outraged of Tunbridge WellsForever After: Original Complaints from Middle Englanda dark comedy|author=Nigel CawthorneDavid Jester
|rating=4
|genre=Horror
|summary=Michael Holland is a cocky and brash young man who dies and gets made the offer of his lifetime; immortality. We follow Michael, a grim reaper and his friends, Chip (a stoner tooth fairy) and Naff (a stoner in the records department) as they grapple with their long lives and finding a clean surface to sit on in their flat.
}}
{{Frontpage
|isbn=1683691172
|title=William Shakespeare's Much Ado About Mean Girls
|author=Ian Doescher
|rating=2.5
|genre=Humour
|summary=It was ever thus… cyclists go too fastA long time ago, in a galaxy far away, all the Star Wars films were crunched up against Shakespeare, without using and the marriage seemed a hooter or lights; there are hoodlums everywhere perfectly suitable one looks. So much so – so easily did the plots and characters converse in Shakespearean dialogue, and no public conveniences; people pretend to have qualifications and degrees they haven't rightfully earned; buses are too busy behave with shopping women who should be indoors alreadyShakespearean stage directions – that the producers tried again, cooking for their working menfolk… Itwith [[William Shakespeare's a very clever idea Get Thee Back to the Future! by Ian Doescher|Back to show exactly what is behind the Future]] no less. And that worked. But simultaneously they put a real test out. A film I can'disgusted of Tunbridge Wells' tag, and as a book to be shelved alongside those with t even really remember seeing was transcribed into the wackier letters sent to original Elizabethan lingo. A cult following I had never followed whatsoever was given the ''Daily Telegraph''brand new, yet oh so ancient, these selections from dressing. Here was the Royal town's press itself make a great eye-opener true challenge – would I manage to enjoy this, based on little foreknowledge? Oh damn those shiny gold stars for letting the complaints and complainants of Kent.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>1908096918</amazonuk>game away…
}}
{{newreviewFrontpage|authorisbn=Charlie Hill168369094X|title=BooksWilliam Shakespeare's Get Thee Back to the Future!|author=Ian Doescher
|rating=4.5
|genre=Humour
|summary=Neurology professor Lauren Furrows witnesses A long time ago, in a publishing house far away, [[:Category:Ian Doescher|someone]] thought it wonderfully wacky to rewrite the sudden untimelydeath story of Star Wars in Shakespearean pentameter, colliding two tourists entirely different genres and styles in such a bar while on holidayclever way they seemed perfectly suited. Birmingham bookshop ownerRichard Anger happens to be It was then duly repeated for all the other films in the same bar so together our single holidaymakers decide to team up as an investigatory force to be reckoned with.(Wellmain Star Wars cycle, Lauren teams up and clearly someone's buffing their quills ready for thatEpisode Nine, the title of which became public knowledge the day before I write. Richard's reasons are more physical thanintellectual In the hiatus, however, the effort has been made to begin see if the same shtick works with.) The murders seem to emanate from author GarySaylesother texts, a legend in his own mind and, apparently, fatal to readriff on other seemingly unlikely source materials in iambs. Elsewherehippy exhibitionists (in an overAnd could we have anything more suitably unsuitable-18 way) Zeke and Pippaseeming than Back to the Future, are planning theart installation to end all art installations andwith its tales of time travel, are determined to makeGary the centrepiecebullying, whether he realises it or not.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>1781251630<and parent/amazonuk>child strife like no other?
}}
{{newreviewFrontpage|isbn=1473669065|title=The Facebook Diet: 50 Funny Signs of Facebook Addiction and Ways to Unplug With a Digital DetoxQueenie Malone's Paradise Hotel|author=Gemini AdamsRuth Hogan|rating=3.5
|genre=Humour
|summary=Everywhere you look and question this bookTilda returns to Brighton, it is a success – more or lessto tidy away the remains of her mother's life after her death. Does it do what it purports Whilst there, she returns to – show evidence of the Paradise hotel, a Facebook addiction haven for eccentrics and misfits. A place where people can be themselves, and provide let go of thoughts that torment them elsewhere. Little wonder that Tilda cannot forgive her mother for banishing her as a dietary way out? Yeschild, more or lessfrom this place of wonder. Does it engage with its combination With the help of cartoon images Queenie Malone, caring, and captions? Yesgregarious, more or less. Does it have some cult Internet pedigree Tilda begins to make it a hit gift book for pick apart the techie? Yes, more or less – it might not have been borne from a webpage somewhere online, but the Kindle version was launched several months before the paperback. Is it then a worthwhile addition to your comedy book shelves? Yes – more or lesstricky and uncertain relationship she had with her sometimes cruel and distant mother.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>095546563X</amazonuk>
}}
{{newreviewFrontpage|isbn=1683690346|title=Sad MonstersThe Con Artist|author=Frank LesserFred Van Lente
|rating=4
|genre=Humour
|summary=If you thought you had it bad… Here is the chupacabra writing to the newspapers Comic-Cons are a place of wonder and sanctuary for better press – notices that don't universally mention his goat-sucking habits before his chessmany people, and when Comic book artist Mike Mason arrives at San Diego Comic-playingCon, dancing or debating record. Here is a banshee struggling he's looking for both that and sanctuary with high school lifeother fans and creators, knowing plus the end chance of everyone that comes across her pathmaybe, just maybe reuniting with his ex. Here However, when his rival is King Kongfound dead, being defended Mike is forced to navigate every dark corner of the con in court by a lawyer with a revelation order to the jury about clear his bipolarity name – from cosplay flash mobs and how wrong it was intrusive fans to get zombie obstacle courses – Mike must prove his hopes up with innocence and, in doing so, may just unravel a Broadway show in dark secret behind a strange citylegendary industry creator. Did you honestly think Godzilla enjoyed the way his life ended up?|amazonuk=<amazonuk>0285642324</amazonuk>
}}
{{newreviewFrontpage|authorisbn=Michael Cameron1473669588|title=The BrinkmeyersFalling Short|author=Lex Coulton|rating=54
|genre=Humour
|summary=Hymie Brinkmeyer, New Yorker transplanted in the UK Lex Coulton's debut novel is 50 years old ''on a good day''. He lives with his wife Maggie and teenage children Kevin story about mistakes, failures, and Karrierelationships. Hymie thinks Kevin is greatThe main protagonist, while given thatFrances Pilgrim, if he gets picked up for drug possession once more, Hymie will have to admit that Kevin may have is a problem. Karriesixth form English teacher who has recently fallen out with her best friend Jackson, a burgeoning poet, is also wonderful in her dad's eyes work colleague and is about to give birth to grappling with the increasingly eccentric behaviour of her second child outside a relationshipmother. ItThis relationship is complicated by the fact that Frances's her body so father disappeared at sea when she has the right... hasn't she? Everything is fine and life is great. Ok, Kevin's plotting to kill his mother and Hymie's leather-clad secretary seems to have a crush on her boss and Hymie seems to have a lump somewhere delicately crucial but everything's just finewas five years old.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>0957319134</amazonuk>
}}
{{newreviewFrontpage|titleisbn=Dedicated to...: The Forgotten Friendships, Hidden Stories and Lost Loves found in Second-hand Books1683690133|author=W B Gooderham|rating=4.5|genretitle=Entertainment|summary=I have found many strange and unusual things in second-hand bookshops. I have done one or two strange and unusual things in them as well, but that's a different story. Twice now I have managed to find a second-hand book, completely signed and dedicated by the author, yet discarded by the recipient, and have been able to present the author with the edition at hand and get it re-dedicated. (If I'm not mistaken, the discarders were a neighbouring babysitter, and a teacher of the author's children.) I'll admit thatMy Lady's rarefied, however, and on the whole the scribble you find in second-hand books is from the person who bought it, and gave it as a gift, not the person who wrote it. But even so, the dedication of the donor can be immensely fascinating and open to all kinds of interpretation, as these examples show perfectly clear.Choosing|amazonukauthor=<amazonuk>0593072847</amazonuk>}} {{newreview|title=Wallace Kitty Curran and Gromit - The Complete Newspaper Strips - Volume 1|author=Nick ParkLarissa Zageris
|rating=4
|genre=Humour
|summary=One man You are a lass of twenty-eight. Plucky, penniless and his dog never had such in Regency-era London the race is on to find a famous theme tunesuitable suitor - or else doom yourself to life as an eternal spinster. Along your journey, you''One Man ll be accompanied by Lady Evangeline Youngblood - a fiesty noble eager to save you from a life alone, and His Dog'' had fired by a piddly little melodyrogueish sense for adventure. When it comes to suitors though, but you'll have to make the triumphalultimate decision between witty, pretty and wealthy Sir Benedict Granville, old-fashioned wholesome, rugged and charming parp of caring Captain Angus MacTaggart, or the theme tune to Wallace mad, bad and Gromit has resounded out for decades nowterrifyingly sexy Lord Garraway Craven. While Aardman moved away from the near-silent classic animations the series first gave usWith orphans, werewolves, long lost lovers and ancient Egyptian artefacts along the plasticine creations mutated into incredibly popular charactersway, which included a daily strip in the nationit's biggest-selling tabloidclear this isn't going to be an easy decision.. Here is the first lump of them, 312 daily doses of tomfoolery, collected for everyone to enjoy. Even if you thought the franchise had travelled its course a long time ago…|amazonuk=<amazonuk>1782760326</amazonuk>
}}
{{newreviewFrontpage|isbn=Stibbe_Xmas|title=Demon DentistAn Almost Perfect Christmas|author=David WalliamsNina Stibbe
|rating=4.5
|genre=Confident Readers
|summary=He ought to have realised she was evil from the start. After all, how many dentists do you know who love — yes, really love — rotten teeth? Brown, yellow, cracked, full of cavities, diseased, covered in plaque . . . you get the picture. And for Alfie, a boy who loathes dentists from the bottom of his heart and whose teeth are so rotten they ought to be a tourist attraction, danger definitely looms. You can practically hear the background music when the two meet at a school assembly: dum-dum-DUUUUMMMMMM!!!!
|amazonuk=<amazonuk>0007453566</amazonuk>
}}
{{newreview
|title=Peas and Queues: The Minefield of Modern Manners
|author=Sandi Toksvig
|rating=5
|genre=Politics and Society
|summary=Dear Sandi
You are my all time favourite celebrity lesbadyke, and one of the reasons I’m so very excited to be heading to Denmark this coming weekend (are all people there like you? Please say yes). For this alone, I had to get my mitts on your latest offering. I wasn’t that fussed about obtaining a book on manners previously, having always thought mine were quite ok, but I knew your take on the matter would be suitably hilarious and well worth a read. I was not wrong.
|amazonuk=<amazonuk>1781250324</amazonuk>
}}
{{newreview
|title=Deaf at Spiral Park
|author=Kieran Devaney
|rating=2.5
|genre=Humour
|summary=''Deaf at Spiral Park'' is Christmas – the time of traditional trauma. You only have to think about the turkey for that – once upon a bizarre take time it was leaving it sat on the philosophy of what downstairs loo to defrost overnight, and if that failed the hair-dryer shoved inside it treatment was your next best bet. Nowadays it's all having to make sure it's suitably free-range and organic – but not too organic that you can go and visit it, and get too friendly with it is to be humanwant to eat it. Christmas, attempted through the portrayal though, is of course also a bear who shaves time of his fur to appear as a humangreat boons. The story combines philosophy with comedy using It's cash in hand for a range lot of stock characters including a clown plump people who can hire red suits and beards, it was always a farmer godsend for postmen with all the thank-you letters to show aunties you saw twice a decade that your parents made you write out in long-hand as a child, and as for the world makers of the bear Meltis Newberry Fruits – well, did they even try and to consider how his humanity may be more than that sell them any other time of the humans themselves.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>1907773169</amazonuk>year?
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{{newreviewFrontpage|isbn=Doescher_Will|title=Very British ProblemsWilliam Shakespeare's the Force Doth Awaken: Making Life Awkward for Ourselves, One Rainy Day at a TimeStar Wars Part the Seventh|author=Rob TempleIan Doescher|rating=34.5
|genre=Humour
|summary=Are you compelled A long time ago, in a galaxy far away, there was a man called William Shakespeare, who was able to apologise multiple times create a day – even when you are series of dramatic histories full of machinations most foul, rulers most evil and rebellious heroes and heroines most sturdy. You may or may not have noticed the cinematic version of his original stage play for ''The Force Doth Awaken'', but here at faultlast we get the actual script, or even complete with annoying-in-different-ways-to inanimate objects? Would you subject yourself to great inconvenience rather than confront someone who is sitting -before droids anew, returning heroes from elsewhere in your reserved seat on a train? Have you been known to commit desperate acts his oeuvre, and people keeping it in the search for your next cup family til it hurts. And if you need further encouragement, don't forget his audience only demanded three parts of tea? If Henry VI – here the series is so, you may be suffering from Very British Problems.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>0751552593</amazonuk>popular we're on to part seven – surely making this over twice as good…
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{{newreview|title=The Reluctant Cannibals|author=Ian Flitcroft|rating=4|genre=General Fiction|summary=Over a truffled turkey at their college Christmas dinner in 1964, a group of Oxford dons decide to join their love of fine food and drink with their mutual appreciation for nineteenth-century French philosopher of food Jean Anthelme Brillat-Savarin (author of the 1825 classic ''La Physiologie du Goût'', or ''The Physiology of Taste'') by forming a secret dining society. Together these fellows of St Jerome's College form the Shadow Faculty of Gastronomic Science, a group that will continue meeting to share new and daring culinary experiences until Oxford agrees Move on to set up a proper gastronomic school of its own.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>1909593591</amazonuk>}} {{newreview|author=Peter Stjernstrom and Rod Bradbury (translator)|title=The Best Book in the World|rating=5|genre=Literary [[Newest LGBT Fiction|summary=Titus Jensen may not have written many great novels for a while (if ever) but his festival readings of others' works are renowned. Why, his rendition of ''The Diseases of the Swedish Monarchs from Gustavas Vasa to Gustav V'' has been compared favourably to his offerings from ''Handbook for Volvo 245''. However, one drunken night he and romantic poet Eddie X agree that their fame on the festival circuit would be insignificant by comparison if they could write the best book in the world; a combination of all genres, appealing to all tastes and making all the best seller categories. They start work on it the next day but, rather than collaborate, each wants the lone glory. The race (or should that be battle?) to the publishing date is on!|amazonuk=<amazonuk>1843914808</amazonuk>}} {{newreview|title=The Complete and Utter History of the World According to Samuel Stewart Aged 9|author=Sarah Burton|rating=4|genre=Humour|summary=''Nobody knows where history ends'', according to the cover illustration of this little book, but if anybody knows what it involves it is nine year old Samuel Stewart. He captivatingly summarises it all on these pages, bringing us in ninety minutes from the times cavemen didn't write history down as they didn't realise it had started yet, up to the time of his birth. That of course is a time that passed most of us by, but heralded the arrival of a very individual, entertaining and amusing voice.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>1780721838</amazonuk>}}Reviews]]