Changes

[[Category:New Reviews|Humour]]==Humour==__NOTOC__{{newreviewFrontpage|author=Jeremy ClarkeDean Koontz|title=Low Life|rating=3|genre=Humour|summary=I'm not a Spectator reader – indeed other than seeing on the shelves I'm ashamed to say that before starting to write this article I knew absolutely nothing about the magazine, its style, ethos or readership. Having (obviously) done the obligatory websearch I know understand that being its editor is considered a reasonable a route to success in the Conservative Party or other public office on a right-wing ticket. A sister publication to The Daily Telegraph, it is quoted as being Atlanticist, usually supportive of Israel, and Eurosceptic in outlook. This makes me utterly unsuitable as a candidate to review Clarke's book.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>1907595511</amazonuk>}} {{newreview|author=Guy Kennaway|title=Bird BrainBad Weather Friend

|genre=HumourParanormal|summary='It began for Basil ''Banger'' Peyton-Crumbe the Benny is having a terrifically bad day . He loses his job, he died in loses his fiancee, and his house gets trashed. Oh, and someone has delivered a pheasant shooting incident'. If you were in any doubt as really weird, disturbing coffin-sized object to the nature of the novel given the cover jacket his home, and the authorit's disclaimer to the effect possible that any similarity between the human characters and any real person whoever or whatever was inside is entirely coincidental, but he feels safe from any threats of libel action on behalf of the dead animals whose characters he thing that has mercilessly manipulated for narrative effect, then its opening sentence should put you straight.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>0224093991</amazonuk>}} {{newreview|author=Neil Forsyth|title=Why Me? trashed his house! The Very Important Emails of Bob Servant|rating=3.5|genre=General Fiction|summary=Catchy title and catchy front cover graphics. What's not thing is, Benny is the very last person to like? It takes a lot to make me laugh generally, but as I had an initial flick through deserve all this book, things looked promisingbad luck. And I was also thinking that it's He is a pleasant change to see another location (other than perhaps the predictable Glasgow and Edinburgh) get an airing.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>1780270097</amazonuk>}} {{newreview|author=Harry Thompson|title=Tintin: Herge and His Creation|rating=3.5|genre=Biography|summary=I love Tintinnice person. I love his quiff and his innocence, his plus-fours and his foreign adventures, I love Snowy the dog and most of all I love Captain Haddock and the flamboyance of his blistering barnacles languageA really nice person. So I was thrilled fortunately for Benny it turns out that the delivery to see a biography of the character and Hergé, his creator, and I picked it up with enthusiasm. |amazonuk=<amazonuk>1848546726</amazonuk>}} {{newreview|author=Joseph Heller|title=Catch 22|rating=5|genre=Literary Fiction|summary=At the heart of the very black comedy that house is ''Catch 22'' is Captain Yossariana new friend, a World War II American bombardierbad weather friend called Spike, who wants has been sent to survive the warhelp him since Benny is clearly under attack from nefarious forces for being a good person. Flying repeated combat missions Spike is undermining his sanitygoing to take care of Benny, and surely a mad man should be grounded? But will certainly take care of Benny's enemies, if he asks to be grounded, he demonstrates an absolutely sane concern for his own safety. If he is saneBenny, he and Harper (a waitress slash Private Investigator who finds herself roped into Benny's wild adventure) can't be grounded. This, his doctor tells him, is catch 22figure out who exactly they are.|amazonukisbn=<amazonuk>0099529114</amazonuk>1662500491

 {{newreviewFrontpage|authorisbn=William Giraldi1529153050|title=Busy MonstersBritain's Best Political Cartoons 2022|author=Tim Benson

|summary=Somewhere along Seeking some light relief from the line the word "vintage" stopped meaning simply the wine crop of any given year, current political turmoil which is coming to seem more and started to mean the wine of a particularly good yearmore like an adrenaline sport, and then to mean anything of a past year that I was (is) nudged towards ''Britain's Best Political Cartoons of outstanding quality2022''. Such is Sharp eyes will have noted that we're not yet through the year: the mutability of languagecartoons run from 4 September 2021 to 31 August 2022. |amazonuk=<amazonuk>0099529130</amazonuk> Who can imagine what there will be to come in the 2023 edition?

 {{newreviewFrontpage|authorisbn=Ludwig Bechstein, Axel Sceffler and Julia Donaldson1785633074|title=The Gloomster|rating=4.5|genre=General Fiction|summary=We've all been there. Finding fault with everything around us, and perhaps picking on one particular irritant that gets us so rattled, tetchy and narked all we can do is invoke "Hell and damnation!" down on all creation - including, of course, ourselves. After all, our lot is so bad it won't make anything much worse.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>0571274242</amazonuk>}} {{newreviewStaggering Hubris|author=Stella Gibbons|title=Conference at Cold Comfort FarmJosh Berry

|summary=There are no Starkadders at Cold Comfort Farm. To Members of Parliament 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 you whoare Eton and Oxbridge educated) but the reality is that the ''prime've not read Stella Gibbons' magnificient [[Cold Comfort Farm by Stella Gibbons|original novel]], this is hardly likely to be a major shock movers are the special advisers - the SPADS - to who are the driving force behind the Gibbons fans amongst us, though, this is chilling news indeedgovernment. And when RobertPoste's child Flora returns We are in the privileged position of having access to the farm - now a modernised monstrosity full memoirs of members of the International Thinkers' Group – sixteen years after her original visitRafe Hubris, the news get graver and graver, as man who was behind the cows Feckless, Graceless, Pointless, and Aimless have passed away skilful control of shame due to the disgrace Covid crisis which was completely contained by the end of the bull Big Business2020. With You might not know the menfolk trying to make their fortunes abroad, and name now but he will certainly be the women struggling, it's left to Flora to try man to save the day once againwatch.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>0099528681</amazonuk>

 {{newreviewFrontpage|authorisbn=Stella Gibbons0571365884|title=Cold Comfort Farm|rating=5|genre=Humour|summary=Orphaned at 19, Flora Poste – a London sophisticate – My Mess is led to retreat to deepest Sussex to live off her relatives the Starkadders at the aptly named Cold Comfort Farm, a mournful bunch who take her in as they couldn't refuse anything Bit of 'Robert Poste's child', but seem less than happy with having to do so. As she meets the preacher Amos, his over-sexed younger son Seth, his flighty sister Elphine, and the hugely memorable – if barely seen – Aunt Ada Doom, the first person in literature to see 'something nasty in the woodshed' – she resolves to take the family in hand and solve their problems.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>0141441593</amazonuk>}} {{newreview|author=Philip Jose Farmer|title=The Further Life: Adventures of Sherlock Holmes: The Peerless Peer|rating=4.5|genre=Crime (Historical)|summary=It's World War One, and Britain has got wind of some brilliant scientific research, that has created a new bacterial weapon capable of wiping out the world's supply of sauerkraut. But a dastardly German has stolen the formula. Before he can give a variant based on boiled meat, cabbage and potatoes to the kaiser, his most recent nemesis - Sherlock Holmes, no less - must be brought out of beekeeping retirement. Cue an adventure and a half, as he and Watson take to the skies for the first time in their hectic lives, end up in darkest Africa, and encounter a certain yodelling, long-haired nobleman, more than up to the name of King of the Jungle...|amazonuk=<amazonuk>0857681206</amazonuk>}} {{newreviewAnxiety|author=Tom Sharpe|title=The Wilt Inheritance|rating=3.5|genre=Humour|summary=Wilt is stuck in a job he doesn't want – teaching a subject he's not keen on to people for whom he has no affection – at one of the new Universities. We used to know them as technical colleges. But he can't afford to lose it because of the expense of keeping the quads at an expensive school and of maintaining his snobbish wife, Eva. It's Eva though who signs him up for a job in the summer holidays – tutoring the step-son of a local aristocrat in the hope of getting him into Cambridge – and particularly Porterhouse College. It's not long before Wilt discovers that the boy totes a gun and shoots at anything which moves – or even doesn't move – and that he's an idiot who would probably struggle to get a bus to Cambridge.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>0099493136</amazonuk>}} {{newreview|author=Alain Mabanckou|title=Memoirs of a PorcupineGeorgia Pritchett

|genre=Literary FictionAutobiography|summary=The protagonist Georgia Pritchett has always been anxious, even as a child. She would worry about whether the monsters under the bed were comfortable: it was the sort of this novel is an ordinary Congolese porcupine until Papa Kibandi performs an ancient ritual involving life where if she had nothing to worry about she would become anxious but such occasions were few and far between. On a visit to a hallucinogenic cocktail called ''mayamvumbi''therapist, and transforms him into his son's harmful double. The insecure younger Kibandi becomes more and more embittered as his life goes onan adult, when she was completely unable to speak about what was wrong with her it was suggested that she should write it down and sends his porcupine to 'eat' anybody he feels the least bit threatened by, My Mess is a Bit of a process whereby that personLife: Adventures in Anxiety''s life essence is sucked out, killing them instantly. Over one hundred victims later and following his master's death at the hands of a vengeful baby, our narrator retires result - or so we are given to the hollow of a baobab tree where he writes this confessionalbelieve.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>1846687675</amazonuk>

 {{newreviewFrontpage|author=Tom HoltJohn Boyne|title=Life, Liberty and the Pursuit of SausagesThe Echo Chamber

|genre=FantasyGeneral Fiction|summary=Imagine Meet George Cleverley. He is self-defined as "one of the few television personalities over the age of fifty without a world where pigs can do quantum mechanics, and where female solicitors turn into chickenscriminal record". Add He starts this book a dry cleaner that moves (literallybit worried when his mistress tells him she's carrying his child, from but then his author wife is getting her kicks with the roof tiles to the basement) from town to town every fortyUkrainian partner "Strictly Come Dancing" paired her with. They have three children, who are a sad-eight hourssack with absolutely no social skills whatsoever, a couple of medieval knights girl who hangs around with a virtue-signalling, keyboard warrior "wokester" whowants to save the world've fought every day for centuriess homeless with out-of-date food, and a magical ring (or pencil sharpener, depending on fit young lad doing the mood it's in)gay hustle thing. Stir Add in a bit of property developingfew other characters – therapists, lawyers, random transgender types – that all have two very different connections to his life, a thaumaturgical detective and you have something that suggests an old man who lives in a cloudalmost farcical approach to the modern world. Result? You haven't What suggests the farcical approach even begun to probe more, however, is the depths of fact this crazy, absurd, complex and hilarious bookis bloody funny.|amazonukisbn=<amazonuk>1841495077</amazonuk>0857526219

 {{newreviewFrontpage|author=Steve HelyStephen Clarke|title=How I Became a Famous NovelistThe Spy Who Inspired Me

|summary=With an uncompromising title like 'How I Became This is a Famous Novelist'spoof spy story, this clearly that isn't intended to be a subtle bookabout James Bond. Or Ian Fleming. So I can hardly complain when But it features a cynical look at man called Ian Lemming, who dresses well and 'likes the writing industry swings raw punches in every direction. It just isnladies't my sort of humourand who works for the secret service, but equally, if you rave about 'The Office' you will likely enjoy this book far in the planning side of things more than I have donethe active service. Lemming finds himself put on a mission with a female spy called Margaux, and the pair end up stranded in Normandy, with Margaux on a desperate mission to unearth traitors in the resistance network, and Lemming desperately trying to keep up with her!|amazonukisbn=<amazonuk>1849015724</amazonuk>2952163855

 {{newreviewFrontpage|author=Charles LambAfonso Cruz and Rahul Bery (translator)|title=Great Food: A Dissertation Upon Roast Pig and Other EssaysKokoschka's Doll|rating=42.5|genre=CookeryLiterary Fiction|summary=''A Dissertation Upon Roast Pig'' is Well, this looked very much like a collection of food-related essays book I could love from the early 19th centuryget-go, with a humorous bentwhich is why I picked my review copy up and flipped pages over several times before actually reading any of it. They're but a few pages I found things to potentially delight me each - time – a light read to bring weird section in the middle on darker stock paper, a smile to your facechapter whose number was in the 20,000s, letters used as narrative form, then and so on to . It intrigued with the next subterranean voice a man hears in wartorn Dresden that what little foodie treatI knew of it mentioned, too. But you've seen the star rating that comes with this review, and can tell that if love was on these pages, it was not actually caused by them. So what happened?|amazonukisbn=<amazonuk>0241951003</amazonuk>1529402697

 {{newreviewFrontpage|authorisbn=ClientsFromHell.netB08KKQ85FN|title=Clients From HellBut Never For Lunch|author=Sandra Aragona

|genre=HumourShort Stories|summary=Everyone who's worked as 'If a freelancer has a story of woman approaching the menopause can be likened to a client from hell - that person who asked for something that was impossibleRottweiler in lipstick, wanted it done yesterday for an Ambassador nearing retirement resembles a fraction pampered peacock about to be released into the company of carrion crows or, more to the usual pricepoint, or is just plain angry about to discover the work produced. The website [http://www.clientsfromhell.net ClientsFromHell.net] has collated a number real world of such stories over the years, bus timetables and has now published them as a bookpaying his own gas bills.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>0982473931</amazonuk>}}''

{{newreview|author=Manu Joseph|title=Serious Men|rating=4|genre=General Fiction|summary=Ayyan Mani is a DalitYou don't get many better opening sentences than that, an untouchable, stuck in a flat in Mumbaido you? We first met His Excellency and The Ambassador's slums but hoping, somehow, for a better future for his son. Working at Wife in [[Sorting the Insitute of Theory Priorities: Ambassadress and Research he uses all his cunning Beagle Survive Diplomacy by Sandra Aragona|Sorting the Priorities]] and wiles we learned what it was like to stay ahead of be moved around countries like accompanying baggage by the game amongst Italian Government but the Brahmin scientiststime has come for HE to retires and for Sandra Aragona to become The Wife of Former Ambassador... Does he They have left The Career and settled in Rome. Well 'settled' rather overstates the intelligence, situation and nervestheir dog, to convince everyone that his sonBeagle, against all oddshas no intention of slowing down any time soon, is a genius?|amazonuk=<amazonuk>1848543085</amazonuk>despite being sixteen and deaf.

 {{newreviewFrontpage|authorisbn=John SaundersB08GFSK2WZ|title=The Vernham ChroniclesKarma Trap|author=Lisette Boyd

|genre=HumourWomen's Fiction|summary=Set amidst the rolling British countryside around Vernbury Vale George Jackson is thirty-three years old, absolutely gorgeous to look at - and single. She's not had sex for eight months and she's stuck in the little village karma trap: an awful lot of Vernhambad luck is being visited on her and she has a real talent for attracting drama. Anyone who lives Her life's chaotic: she dealt with the leak from the shower by putting something down at the bottom of the stairs to absorb the water - then the shower fell through the roof whilst she was in a village will recognise it immediatelyand left her, stark naked, with its cobbled streets and Tudor buildingsstaring at the pervy postman. There was some damage during the war (which might, or might not have been down 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 a lighthouse folly constructed photo being taken by someone who shares it around the office.}} {{Frontpage|author=David C Mason|title=Pandora's Gardener|rating=3|genre=Crime|summary= John Cranston is a gardener, although what he did before he became a local landowner on his lake) but the gaps have been filled with some beautifulgardener, erhe claims, mock Tudor buildingsis classified. Almost unique and nearly beautiful That is just as the village well because he isabout to be caught up in a criminal / spy / terrorist plot, it's not where only he can save the star of The Vernham Chronicles. The stars are the people who live in Vernhamday.|amazonukisbn=<amazonuk>1907499598</amazonuk>0956180523

 {{newreviewFrontpage|authorisbn=Martin MillarJester_Forever|title=The Good Fairies of New YorkForever After: a dark comedy|author=David Jester

|genre=FantasyHorror|summary=In this fairytale of New York, the Cornish fairy King's children are living in exile, hiding in Central Park from Michael Holland is a nasty industrial revolution back home. They have friends from Ireland with them, cocky and brash young man who dies and all have gets made the ability to startle the local squirrelsoffer of his lifetime; immortality. Elsewhere two innocent scallywag fairies fleeing Scotland have arrivedWe follow Michael, a grim reaper and adopted a human each. Heather has joined up with Dinnie, the city's worst buskerhis friends, Chip (a fat, alcoholic stoner tooth fairy) and lonely fan of TV ads for phone sex, while Morag befriends Kerry, Naff (a dying kleptomaniac beauty, just stoner in the records department) as alone for different reasonsthey grapple with their long lives and finding a clean surface to sit on in their flat.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>0749954205</amazonuk>

 {{newreviewFrontpage|authorisbn=Gervase Phinn1683691172|title=Twinkle, Twinkle, Little StarsWilliam Shakespeare's Much Ado About Mean Girls|author=Ian Doescher|rating=42.5

|summary=I spent many of my teenage years reading James Herriot's booksA long time ago, in a galaxy far away, all the Star Wars films were crunched up against Shakespeare, and the marriage seemed a perfectly suitable one. So much so – so easily did the plots and characters converse in Shakespearean dialogue, and I found behave with Shakespearean stage directions – that this collection of anecdotes and poems the producers tried again, with [[William Shakespeare's Get Thee Back to the Future! by Gervase Phinn had Ian Doescher|Back to the Future]] no less. And that worked. But simultaneously they put a real flavour of Herriot about ittest out. Perhaps it A film I can't even really remember seeing was just transcribed into the setting, for Phinn original Elizabethan lingo. A cult following I had never followed whatsoever was a school inspector in given the Dales for many years, but I think he also has that knack of capturing a situationbrand new, and a characteryet oh so ancient, and bringing out the humour without making the person appear ridiculousdressing. Here he collates stories from his other bookswas the true challenge – would I manage to enjoy this, some Christmassy and others not, and he relates them with several of his own poems interspersed between.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>0141036435</amazonuk>based on little foreknowledge? Oh damn those shiny gold stars for letting the game away…

 [[Category:History]]{{newreviewFrontpage|authorisbn=Simon Garfield168369094X|title=Just My Type: A Book About FontsWilliam Shakespeare's Get Thee Back to the Future!|author=Ian Doescher

|summary=A quality typeface is long time ago, in a bit like a good referee at publishing house far away, [[:Category:Ian Doescher|someone]] thought it wonderfully wacky to rewrite the story of Star Wars in Shakespearean pentameter, colliding two entirely different genres and styles in such a football match in that you only really notice them if something has gone wrongclever way they seemed perfectly suited. A referee is there to facilitate It was then duly repeated for all the players on other films in the pitchmain Star Wars cycle, and clearly someone's buffing their quills ready for Episode Nine, not to be the star title of which became public knowledge the show (though watching Match of the Day these past few weeks you'd often beg to differ)day before I write. So it is with typefaces. A good type helps In the readerhiatus, however, enhances the flow and makes effort has been made to see if the viewing experience easy same shtick works with other texts, and simpleto riff on other seemingly unlikely source materials in iambs. Well sort And could we have anything more suitably unsuitable-seeming than Back to the Future, with its tales of.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>1846683017<time travel, bullying, and parent/amazonuk>child strife like no other?

 {{newreviewFrontpage|authorisbn=Bob Servant and Neil Forsyth1473669065|title=Bob Servant: Hero of DundeeQueenie Malone's Paradise Hotel|author=Ruth Hogan|rating=3.5

|summary=After [[Delete This at Your Peril: One Man's Fearless Exchanges with the Internet Spammers by Bob Servant|bursting into public consciousness]] as Tilda returns to Brighton, to tidy away the scourge remains of email spammers, Broughty Ferryher mother's resident polymath Bob Servant has returnedlife after her death. This timeWhilst there, he expands upon she returns to the colourful life only hinted at in his previous oeuvreParadise hotel, Delete this at Your Peril. And what a life it has beenhaven for eccentrics and misfits. He steers us from his humble beginningsA place where people can be themselves, his broken family and traumatic schooldayslet go of thoughts that torment them elsewhere. Little wonder that Tilda cannot forgive her mother for banishing her as a child, through from this place of wonder. With the rise and fall help of his window cleaning empireQueenie Malone, caring, and his role in Dundee's brutal cheeseburger wars. Along gregarious, Tilda begins to pick apart the way, we witness his struggles tricky and uncertain relationship she had with, respectively, women ('skirt'), his simpleton sidekick Frank, her sometimes cruel and the demon drinkdistant mother.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>1841589209</amazonuk>

 {{newreviewFrontpage|authorisbn=P K Munroe1683690346|title=You Can Stick ItThe Con Artist|author=Fred Van Lente|rating=3.54

|summary=Literary merit? Absolutely none! PlotComic-Cons are a place of wonder and sanctuary for many people, characterisation and all when Comic book artist Mike Mason arrives at San Diego Comic-Con, he's looking for both that and sanctuary with other stuff you usually talk about? Nope – there's none fans and creators, plus the chance of thatmaybe, eitherjust maybe reuniting with his ex. AhHowever, when his rival is found dead, Mike is forced to navigate every dark corner of the con in order to clear his name – from cosplay flash mobs and intrusive fans to zombie obstacle courses – Mike must prove his innocence and, in doing so it's non-fiction? Well, calling it ''fact'' would be stretching things may just unravel a dark secret behind a little too far... So, come on thenlegendary industry creator. What ''is'' it?|amazonuk=<amazonuk>0007362188</amazonuk>

 {{newreviewFrontpage|authorisbn=Axel Scheffler1473669588|title=How to Keep a Pet SquirrelFalling Short|author=Lex Coulton

|summary=SoLex Coulton's debut novel is a story about mistakes, how do you keep a pet squirrel? Wellfailures, the simple answer is that you don't. They're wild animals and not at all suitable for keeping in captivity, but accepted thinking didn't always run that wayrelationships. It was whilst he was dipping into ''The Children's Encyclopaedia'' of 1910 that Axel Scheffler came across a small but indispensible guide to obtaining and caring for your pet squirrel. His inventive mind came up with these beautiful illustrations to accompany the text and if you're looking for an amusing gift for an animal-loving adult then this book could well be the answer.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>0571255981</amazonuk>}} {{newreview|author=PJ Vanston|title=Crump|rating=3|genre=General Fiction|summary=It's Kevin Crump's first day as a lecturer at Thames Metropolitan University - an ex-polytechnic. It's the happiest day of his lifemain protagonist, and he can't wait to see all that it holdsFrances Pilgrim, and make is a difference to all his students. And then it hits him: the relentless pettiness of authority figures, the students sixth form English teacher who can't string two sentences together, the lowering of standards in search of higher test scores, so more money from foreign studentshas recently fallen out with her best friend Jackson, a work colleague and political correctness gone (as I believe is grappling with the saying goes) mad.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>1848762852</amazonuk>}} {{newreview|author=John Lennon|title=In His Own Write and A Spaniard in the Works|rating=3|genre=Humour|summary=During the height of Beatlemania, John Lennon used to doodle or write short poems or nonsense stories to pass the time (and there must have been a good deal increasingly eccentric behaviour of time to pass away on tour, if only waiting for screaming fans to leave them alone and go back home)her mother. Some of them were seen This relationship is complicated by Tom Maschler, literary editor the fact that Frances's father disappeared at Jonathan Cape, who encouraged him to produce more. The results were published in two very successful short books in 1964 and 1965sea when she was five years old.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>0099530422</amazonuk>

 {{newreviewFrontpage|authorisbn=John Lindsay1683690133|title=Emails From An AssholeMy Lady's Choosing|author=Kitty Curran and Larissa Zageris

|summary=Some classified ads You are crying out for trollinga lass of twenty-eight. John Lindsay replies Plucky, penniless and in Regency-era London the race is on to themfind a suitable suitor - or else doom yourself to life as an eternal spinster. Along your journey, spins them you'll be accompanied by Lady Evangeline Youngblood - a fiesty noble eager to save you from a yarnlife alone, and strings them along fired by a rogueish sense for as long as possibleadventure. Sometimes When it comes to suitors though, you'll have to make the advert is fairly innocuous ultimate decision between witty, pretty and wealthy Sir Benedict Granville, wholesome, rugged and caring Captain Angus MacTaggart, or the mad, bad and he emails them anywayterrifyingly sexy Lord Garraway Craven. These are emails from With orphans, werewolves, long lost lovers and ancient Egyptian artefacts along the way, it's clear this isn't going to be an asshole, after alleasy decision...|amazonuk=<amazonuk>1402778279</amazonuk>

 {{newreviewFrontpage|authorisbn=L C TylerStibbe_Xmas|title=The Herring In The LibraryAn Almost Perfect Christmas|author=Nina Stibbe

|summary='Give me your tired, your poor, Your huddled masses yearning to breathe free, The wretched refuse of your teeming shore.' That quote, on Christmas – the Statue time of Liberty, was probably not designed with the inclusion of vampires in mindtraditional trauma. But by some means or another North America is rife with You only have to think about the things turkey for that – hiding in plain sight, as once upon a time it was leaving it sat on the older ones can bear sunlightdownstairs loo to defrost overnight, with and if that failed the help of darkened glasseshair-dryer shoved inside it treatment was your next best bet. It might just come down Nowadays it's all having to one eager young man to rid his new country of such things, on his way to something he’s a bit more known for.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>1849014086</amazonuk>}} {{newreview|author=Jane Austen, Seth Grahamemake sure it's suitably free-Smith range and Tony Lee|title=Pride and Prejudice and Zombies: The Graphic Novel|rating=3|genre=Graphic Novels|summary=It is a truth universally acknowledged organic – but not too organic that a zombie story of any renown will not remain simply a zombie story. Before you can say ''the risen undead'' go and visit it will become a series of books, inspiring others, and/or lead get too friendly with it to the same story being published in many different guiseswant to eat it. HereChristmas, then, on its way to Hollywoodthough, is Jane Austen’s story of Lizzie Bennetcourse also a time of great boons. It's cash in hand for a lot of plump people who can hire red suits and beards, it was always a godsend for postmen with all the feisty young woman trying thank-you letters to ignore Mr Darcy while fighting off the ''manky unmentionables'' – at least she is until the hidden truths open up to heraunties you saw twice a decade that your parents made you write out in long-hand as a child, just and as for the soft soils makers of Hertfordshire do to yield their once-human remains. And this Meltis Newberry Fruits – well, did they even try and sell them any other time it’s in graphic novel form.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>1848566948</amazonuk>of the year?

 {{newreview|author=Carl McInerney|title=The Funniest Football Joke Book Ever|rating=3.5|genre=Confident Readers|summary=Who scored the most goals in the Greek Mythology League? The centaur forward. Badoom boom tshhhh. It's a football joke book, packed to the gills with all sorts of cheesiness and silliness. Funniest ever? Perhaps not, but it's not too bad.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>1849391114</amazonuk>}} {{newreviewFrontpage|authorisbn=Paul MagrsDoescher_Will|title=Hell's Belles|rating=3.5|genre=Humour|summary=The idea behind this series of novels is quite enchanting and amusing. FrankensteinWilliam Shakespeare's daughter is living and sleuthing in Whitby, ably aided and abetted by her sidekick, the enigmatic Effie, and a growing menagerie of younger accomplices, namely Michael and Penny. Whilst the original idea showed huge promise, I felt that the author has rather overdone it in terms of output, in his desire to capitalise on his original success. Book two in the series was quite disappointing, relying on sensationalism rather than adequate plot and character development. Book three was an improvement-and I'm delighted to report that this, the fourth book in the series, shows him returning to form with the promise we saw in the first of the series.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>0755346467</amazonuk>}} {{newreview|author=Valerie Thomas and Korky Paul|title=Winnie's Jokes|rating=2.5|genre=Confident Readers|summary=Who turns off Force Doth Awaken: Star Wars Part the lights at Halloween? The lights witch. What does an Australian witch ride on? A broomerang. Yep, it's a joke book.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>0192729063</amazonuk>}} {{newreviewSeventh|author=Nick Wadley|title=Man + DogIan Doescher

|summary=Throughout my life I've lived with dogs or deeply regretted the fact that I lacked A long time ago, in a canine companion. Watching galaxy far away, there was a dog – or better stillman called William Shakespeare, the interaction between dogs – is infinitely better than anything on television and it's sheer joy who was able to see how man and dog interacts and how, so often, they hold create a mirror up to each other.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>1564785521</amazonuk>}} {{newreview|author=The Harvard Lampoon|title=Nightlight: A Parody series of Twilight |rating=3.5|genre=Humour|summary=Most people will have heard dramatic histories full of the worldwide phenomenon that is [[Twilight by Stephenie Meyer|Twilight]]. The books by Stephenie Meyer machinations most foul, rulers most evil and the film have made a legend of the romance between vampire Edward Mullen (Robert Pattinson plays the movie role) rebellious heroes and teenage schoolgirl Bella Swan (Kristen Stewart)heroines most sturdy.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>1849013330</amazonuk>}} {{newreview|author=Steven Lowe and Alan McArthur |title=Is it Just Me You may or Has may not have noticed the Shit Hit the Fan?: Your Hilarious New Guide to Unremitting Global Misery|rating=3|genre=Humour|summary=cinematic version of his original stage play for ''The banks fell over like fat Labradors running over a wet kitchen floor.Force Doth Awaken'' Surely that is the wackiest, most inappropriate simile for but here at last we get the credit crunch and all it has done for the world. You won't get any such namby-pamby animal likenesses from these authorsactual script, instead complete with quite a potty mouth on them they will lambast the modern world, the entire banking system, all those who failed to see it coming, and those millions just seemingly waiting for us all to revert to highannoying-in-different-interest, highways-risk, highto-lending capitalismbefore droids anew, so they can get back on the expenses trainreturning heroes from elsewhere in his oeuvre, and back up people keeping it in the rich listsfamily til it hurts.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>1847443656</amazonuk>}} {{newreview|author=Eoin Colfer|title=And Another Thing ... Douglas Adams' Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy: Part Six of Three (Hitchhikers Guide 6) |rating=3.5|genre=Science Fiction|summary=Of all the big books announced for this yearif you need further encouragement, this one must have raised more eyebrows than many. Why try and write a new Hitchhikerdon's Guide to the Galaxy book, when way before the end, its creator Douglas Adams was proving quite hopeless at such a task? And why approach an Irishman, Eoin Colfer, when the originals - tempered with their humour which could t forget his audience only be described as Monty Python doing a sci-fi Terry Pratchett, and with their cups demanded three parts of tea and dressing gowns, could only be described as very English? Well Henry VI – here the answer series is most evident - Colfer is a world-beater when it comes so popular we're on to knocking up a story.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>0718155149</amazonuk>part seven – surely making this over twice as good…

{{newreview|author=The Vampire Miles Proctor|title=The New Vampire's Handbook|rating=3.5|genre=Humour|summary=I shall start with a prediction. I will not become a vampire, for this imminent Hallowe'en, any festive fancy dress parties, or indeed for life as the lifeless undead. I will not need tips Move on filing my fangs, or how to divert attention from the fact I cannot eat human food at dinner parties. Me and my reflection in mirrors will remain intact. But for those of you reading this at night, somewhere, flameproof cape at hand, with your distaste of garlic, publicity and presumably the anaemic, this is the sterling how-to lifestyle guide.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>0224086464</amazonuk>}} {{newreview|author=David O'Doherty, Claudia O'Doherty and Mike Ahern|title=100 Facts About Pandas|rating=3.5|genre=Humour|summary=Sometimes the title says it all - this is a book with 100 facts about pandas. Sometimes you need to note the author too - David O'Doherty won an Edinburgh Comedy Award, so this is a book of a 100 silly and untrue facts about pandas.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>0224086324</amazonuk>}}[[Newest LGBT Fiction Reviews]]