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[[Category:New Reviews|Humour]]==Humour==__NOTOC__{{newreviewFrontpage|author=Philip ReeveDean Koontz|title=GoblinsThe Bad Weather Friend|rating=4.5|genre=Confident ReadersParanormal|summary=Poor SkarperBenny is having a terrifically bad day. He's such a loserloses his job, he loses his fiancee, and his house gets trashed. In the violent Oh, and bloodthirsty goblin world where fighting and eating and taking other people's loot are all-time-favouritesomeone has delivered a really weird, numberdisturbing coffin-one activitiessized object to his home, he has a terrible handicap. He thinks. In fact, heand it's pretty clever, for a goblin, to possible that whoever or whatever was inside is the extent thing that he uses has trashed his house! The thing is, Benny is the goblins' bumwipe heaps for very last person to deserve all this bad luck. He is a nice person. A really nice person. reading. Yup, you heard me. Reading. The foolish hatchling works So fortunately for Benny it turns out that the black squiggles on the mouldering heaps of soft and crinkly stuff leftdelivery to his house is a new friend, long agoa bad weather friend called Spike, by the ancient inhabitants who has been sent to help him since Benny is clearly under attack from nefarious forces for being a good person. Spike is going to take care of the tower, are written wordsBenny, and instead will certainly take care of going out raiding like any sensible goblinBenny's enemies, if he creeps off to , Benny, and Harper (a quiet corner to work waitress slash Private Investigator who finds herself roped into Benny's wild adventure) can figure out what who exactly they meanare. Silly, eh?|amazonukisbn=<amazonuk>1407115278</amazonuk>1662500491

 {{newreviewFrontpage|authorisbn=Etgar Keret1529153050|title=Suddenly, a Knock on the Door Britain's Best Political Cartoons 2022|author=Tim Benson

|summary=Amelia Seeking some light relief from the current political turmoil which is 13 years old coming to seem more and lives with her mother, brother and extended family in 1980s Liverpool. Con, her great-uncle, is a psychiatrist with prestigious patients and a bit of a drink problemmore like an adrenaline sport, Great-Aunt Edith is a devout Catholic with an inclination I was nudged towards eccentricity and her brother, Julian, is a junky. Amelia''Britain's mother tries to hold everyone together but becomes slightly distracted when she inherits a convent in Ireland, complete with nunsBest Political Cartoons of 2022''. Amelia has her own problems, though. She sees visions of Sharp eyes will have noted that we're not yet through the Goddess Irena and is pregnant with year: the next Messiahcartoons run from 4 September 2021 to 31 August 2022. (A girl this time as Who can imagine what there will be to come in the original male Messiah didn't have much luck.)|amazonuk=<amazonuk>095600539X</amazonuk>2023 edition?

 {{newreviewFrontpage|authorisbn=Sue Townsend1785633074|title=The Growing Pains of Adrian MoleStaggering Hubris|author=Josh Berry

|genre=General FictionHumour|summary=The Members of Parliament like us to believe that the country might be at war over is run by politicians, headed by the Falklands but life is hardly straightPrime minister -forward in the Mole household. Adrian''primus inter pares'' (that's parents for those of you who are back together after both had disastrous affairs Eton and it's not long before Adrian Oxbridge educated) but the reality is shocked to learn that his mother is pregnant. He's equally shocked to see his father helping Doreen (a.k.a. the 'stick insect') along a path which isnprime't particularly slippy, although he does notice that she seems to have put on quite a bit of weight. Pandora Braithwaite is as fickle, but adorable, as ever and Adrian's hormones movers are still playing hopthe special advisers -scotch with his brainthe SPADS - who are the driving force behind the government. SoWe are in the privileged position of having access to the memoirs of Rafe Hubris, what's new?|amazonuk=<amazonuk>0141046430</amazonuk>the man who was behind the skilful control of the Covid crisis which was completely contained by the end of 2020. You might not know the name now but he will certainly be the man to watch.

 {{newreviewFrontpage|authorisbn=John Niven0571365884|title=The Second ComingMy Mess is a Bit of Life: Adventures in Anxiety|author=Georgia Pritchett

|genre=HumourAutobiography|summary=God Georgia Pritchett has come back from always been anxious, even as a holiday and has some catching up to dochild. What’s been happening on Earth for She would worry about whether the monsters under the last couple of hundred years? The realisation hits him hard... bed were comfortable: it makes him sick in fact. So what’s was the answer? To quote the religious cliché, Jesus issort of life where if she had nothing to worry about she would become anxious but such occasions were few and far between. After On a board meeting with the senior saintsvisit to a therapist, as an adult, God decides that his son must be torn away from jamming when she was completely unable to speak about what was wrong with Hendrix to go back to the streets of the world to remind the sinners of the way.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>0099535521</amazonuk>}} {{newreview|author=Sue Townsend|title=The Secret Diary of Adrian Mole Aged 13¾|rating=4.5|genre=General Fiction|summary=Adrian Mole her it was just three months away from his fourteenth birthday when he began writing his diary on New Yearsuggested that she should write it down and 's Day. He's just on the edge of true adolescence - pimples are appearing as My Mess is a little bit Bit of interest a Life: Adventures in the opposite sex. He's thinking about what he might like to do ''eventuallyAnxiety'', but his first major challenge is the breakdown of his parents' marriage. He writes with a wonderful mixture of ''knowingness'' and innocence and usually manages to get things just everresult -or so-slightly wrongwe are given to believe.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>0141046422</amazonuk>

 {{newreviewFrontpage|author=Bruce RobinsonJohn Boyne|title=The Rum Diary - A ScreenplayEcho Chamber

|summary=Kemp has lied his way onto a failing newspaper in San Juan, Puerto Rica, Meet George Cleverley. He is self-defined as "one of the only candidate for few television personalities over the job, and in age of fifty without a semi-comatose state induced by too many miniatures from the hotel minibar, stumbles into criminal record". He starts this book a conspiracy of epic proportionsbit worried when his mistress tells him she's carrying his child, via classic bar room brawls and nightclub mayhembut then his author wife is getting her kicks with the Ukrainian partner "Strictly Come Dancing" paired her with. On the way he (almost) writes horoscopes and bowling championship storiesThey have three children, meets the fantastically erotic girlfriend of the evil businessmanwho are a sad-sack with absolutely no social skills whatsoever, and teams up a girl who hangs around with a protovirtue-Nazi signalling, keyboard warrior "wokester" who wants to save the world's homeless with out -of his mind on a cocktail of hootch and LSD-date food, and a photographer side kickfit young lad doing the gay hustle thing. There is no question Add in a few other characters – therapists, lawyers, random transgender types – that this is Hunter S Thompson territoryall have two very different connections to his life, especially when all and you have something that suggests an almost farcical approach to the modern world. What suggests the above farcical approach even more, however, is combined with a witty, slow-talking hero who in spite of his alcoholic haze sees clearly through the exploitation of a third world country by its massive first world near neighbourfact this is bloody funny. |amazonukisbn=<amazonuk>0099555697</amazonuk>0857526219

 {{newreviewFrontpage|author=Francesca SimonStephen Clarke|title=Horrid Henry's A - Z of Everything HorridThe Spy Who Inspired Me

|summary=Catchy title and catchy front cover graphicsThis is a spoof spy story, that isn't about James Bond. What's not to like? Or Ian Fleming. It takes But it features a lot to make me laugh generallyman called Ian Lemming, who dresses well and 'likes the ladies' and who works for the secret service, but as I had an initial flick through this book, in the planning side of things looked promisingmore than the active service. And I was also thinking that it's 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 pleasant change desperate mission to see another location (other than perhaps unearth traitors in the predictable Glasgow resistance network, and Edinburgh) get an airing.Lemming desperately trying to keep up with her!|amazonukisbn=<amazonuk>1780270097</amazonuk>2952163855

 {{newreviewFrontpage|author=Harry ThompsonAfonso Cruz and Rahul Bery (translator)|title=Tintin: Herge and His CreationKokoschka's Doll|rating=32.5|genre=BiographyLiterary Fiction|summary=Well, this looked very much like a book I could love Tintin. I love his quiff and his innocence, his plusfrom the get-fours and his foreign adventuresgo, which is why I love Snowy the dog picked my review copy up and most flipped pages over several times before actually reading any of all I love Captain Haddock and the flamboyance of his blistering barnacles languageit. So I was thrilled found things to see potentially delight me each time – a weird section in the middle on darker stock paper, a biography of chapter whose number was in the character and Hergé20,000s, his creatorletters used as narrative form, and so on. It intrigued with the subterranean voice a man hears in wartorn Dresden that what little I picked knew of it up mentioned, too. But you've seen the star rating that comes with enthusiasmthis review, and can tell that if love was on these pages, it was not actually caused by them. So what happened?|amazonukisbn=<amazonuk>1848546726</amazonuk>1529402697

{{newreview|author=Joseph Heller|title=Catch 22|rating=5|genre=Literary Fiction|summary=At the heart of the very black comedy You don't get many better opening sentences than that is , do you? We first met His Excellency and The Ambassador''Catch 22'' is Captain Yossarian, a World War II American bombardier, who wants to survive s Wife in [[Sorting the Priorities: Ambassadress and Beagle Survive Diplomacy by Sandra Aragona|Sorting the war. Flying repeated combat missions is undermining his sanity, Priorities]] and surely a mad man should we learned what it was like to be grounded? But if he asks moved around countries like accompanying baggage by the Italian Government but the time has come for HE to be grounded, he demonstrates an absolutely sane concern retires and for his own safetySandra Aragona to become The Wife of Former Ambassador... If he is sane, he can't be groundedThey have left The Career and settled in Rome. ThisWell 'settled' rather overstates the situation and their dog, Beagle, his doctor tells himhas no intention of slowing down any time soon, is catch 22despite being sixteen and deaf.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>0099529114</amazonuk>

 {{newreviewFrontpage|authorisbn=William GiraldiB08GFSK2WZ|title=Busy MonstersThe Karma Trap|author=Lisette Boyd

|genre=General Women's Fiction|summary=Charles Homar loves his GillianGeorge Jackson is thirty-three years old, absolutely gorgeous to look at - and single. HeShe's proved it to us, if not to had sex for eight months and she's stuck in the karma trap: an awful lot of bad luck is being visited on her, and she has a real talent for attracting drama. Her life's chaotic: she dealt with the leak from the shower by going after her possessive, jealous state trooper putting something down at the bottom of an ex with the intent stairs to kill absorb the water - if only ended up rescuing a cat insteadthen the shower fell through the roof whilst she was in it and left her, stark naked, staring at the pervy postman. But lo and behold, sheShe only has to take her mother's declared she's off dog out for a walk for her to discover the real love of end up with dog poo spattered across her life face - and a photo being taken by someone who shares it around the giant squidoffice. Failing to stop this, Charlie spends too long with }} {{Frontpage|author=David C Mason|title=Pandora's Gardener|rating=3|genre=Crime|summary= John Cranston is a Nessie obsessivegardener, then goes on although what he did before he became a hunt of his own - for Bigfootgardener, all the whilehe claims, chapter by chapter, sending his narrative of the same is classified. That is just as well because he is about to be caught up in a magazine as essays for one of those autobiographicalcriminal / spy / terrorist plot, frivolous columnswhere only he can save the day.|amazonukisbn=<amazonuk>0393079627</amazonuk>0956180523

 {{newreviewFrontpage|authorisbn=Kevin WilsonJester_Forever|title=The Family FangForever After: a dark comedy|author=David Jester|rating=4.5|genre=General FictionHorror|summary=Annie Fang Michael Holland is a cocky and brash young man who dies and her brother Buster are back living at home with their parents - where they never thought they'd ever be again. But it has come to this - her film actress career is on gets made the rocks with the kind offer of self-destruction so much enjoyed by tabloid writershis lifetime; immortality. We follow Michael, a grim reaper and he - wellhis friends, he's here because of Chip (a stoner tooth fairy) and Naff (a jumbo spud gun. Neither want life back at home, stoner in the records department) as throughout their childhood they were used by grapple with their parents - without much planning, without any consideration of feelings, or consent - in long lives and finding a whole career of performance art pieces, designed clean surface to enact a point of life or just cause havoc.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>1447202384</amazonuk>}} {{newreview|author=Zadie Smith|title=White Teeth|rating=5|genre=Literary Fiction|summary=Some books sneak up sit on you. Others are thrown at you from every corner of the media to the extent that you almost make a conscious decision NOT to read them, or at least, not yet. Let the furore die down. If they're still around in a few years, your subconscious whispers, maybe we'll go see what all the fuss was abouttheir flat. |amazonuk=<amazonuk>0241954576</amazonuk>

 {{newreviewFrontpage|authorisbn=David Lodge1683691172|title=The Campus TrilogyWilliam Shakespeare's Much Ado About Mean Girls|author=Ian Doescher|rating=42.5

|summary=Somewhere along A long time ago, in a galaxy far away, all the line Star Wars films were crunched up against Shakespeare, and the word "vintage" stopped meaning simply marriage seemed a perfectly suitable one. So much so – so easily did the wine crop of any given yearplots and characters converse in Shakespearean dialogue, and started behave with Shakespearean stage directions – that the producers tried again, with [[William Shakespeare's Get Thee Back to mean the wine of a particularly good year, and then Future! by Ian Doescher|Back to mean anything of the Future]] no less. And that worked. But simultaneously they put a past year that real test out. A film I can't even really remember seeing was (is) of outstanding qualitytranscribed into the original Elizabethan lingo. Such is A cult following I had never followed whatsoever was given the mutability of languagebrand new, yet oh so ancient, dressing. |amazonuk=<amazonuk>0099529130</amazonuk>Here was the true challenge – would I manage to enjoy this, based on little foreknowledge? Oh damn those shiny gold stars for letting the game away…

 {{newreviewFrontpage|authorisbn=Ludwig Bechstein, Axel Sceffler and Julia Donaldson168369094X|title=The Gloomster|rating=4.5|genre=General Fiction|summary=WeWilliam Shakespeare'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 damnations Get Thee Back to the Future!" 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>}} {{newreview|author=Stella Gibbons|title=Conference at Cold Comfort FarmIan Doescher

|summary=There are no Starkadders at Cold Comfort Farm. To those of you who've not read Stella Gibbons' magnificient A long time ago, in a publishing house far away, [[Cold Comfort Farm by Stella Gibbons:Category:Ian Doescher|original novelsomeone]]thought it wonderfully wacky to rewrite the story of Star Wars in Shakespearean pentameter, this is hardly likely to be colliding two entirely different genres and styles in such a major shock - to clever way they seemed perfectly suited. It was then duly repeated for all the other films in the Gibbons fans amongst usmain Star Wars cycle, though, this is chilling news indeed. And when RobertPosteand clearly someone's child Flora returns to buffing their quills ready for Episode Nine, the farm - now a modernised monstrosity full of members title of which became public knowledge the day before I write. In the International Thinkers' Group – sixteen years after her original visithiatus, however, the news get graver and graver, as effort has been made to see if the cows Feckless, Graceless, Pointlesssame shtick works with other texts, and Aimless to riff on other seemingly unlikely source materials in iambs. And could we have passed away of shame due anything more suitably unsuitable-seeming than Back to the disgrace Future, with its tales of the bull Big Business. With the menfolk trying to make their fortunes abroadtime travel, bullying, and the women struggling, it's left to Flora to try to save the day once again.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>0099528681<parent/amazonuk>child strife like no other?

 {{newreviewFrontpage|authorisbn=Stella Gibbons1473669065|title=Cold Comfort FarmQueenie Malone's Paradise Hotel|author=Ruth Hogan

|summary=Orphaned at 19Tilda returns to Brighton, Flora Poste – a London sophisticate – is led to retreat to deepest Sussex tidy away the remains of her mother's life after her death. Whilst there, she returns to live off her relatives the Starkadders at the aptly named Cold Comfort FarmParadise hotel, a mournful bunch who take haven for eccentrics and misfits. A place where people can be themselves, and let go of thoughts that torment them elsewhere. Little wonder that Tilda cannot forgive her mother for banishing her in as they couldn't refuse anything of 'Robert Poste's a child', but seem less than happy with having to do sofrom this place of wonder. As she meets With the preacher Amoshelp of Queenie Malone, his over-sexed younger son Seth, his flighty sister Elphinecaring, and the hugely memorable – if barely seen – Aunt Ada Doomgregarious, the first person in literature Tilda begins to see 'something nasty in pick apart the woodshed' – tricky and uncertain relationship she resolves to take the family in hand had with her sometimes cruel and solve their problemsdistant mother.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>0141441593</amazonuk>

 {{newreview|author=Philip Jose Farmer|title=The Further 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>}} {{newreview|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 Porcupine|rating=4|genre=Literary Fiction|summary=The protagonist of this novel is an ordinary Congolese porcupine until Papa Kibandi performs an ancient ritual involving a hallucinogenic cocktail called ''mayamvumbi'', and transforms him into his son's harmful double. The insecure younger Kibandi becomes more and more embittered as his life goes on, and sends his porcupine to 'eat' anybody he feels the least bit threatened by, a process whereby that person'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 to the hollow of a baobab tree where he writes this confessional.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>1846687675</amazonuk>}} {{newreviewFrontpage|authorisbn=Tom Holt1683690346|title=Life, Liberty and the Pursuit of Sausages|rating=5|genre=Fantasy|summary=Imagine a world where pigs can do quantum mechanics, and where female solicitors turn into chickens. Add a dry cleaner that moves (literally, from the roof tiles to the basement) from town to town every forty-eight hours, a couple of medieval knights who've fought every day for centuries, and a magical ring (or pencil sharpener, depending on the mood it's in). Stir in a bit of property developing, a thaumaturgical detective and an old man who lives in a cloud. Result? You haven't even begun to probe the depths of this crazy, absurd, complex and hilarious book.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>1841495077</amazonuk>}} {{newreview|author=Steve Hely|title=How I Became a Famous Novelist|rating=4|genre=General Fiction|summary=With an uncompromising title like 'How I Became a Famous Novelist', this clearly isn't intended to be a subtle book. So I can hardly complain when a cynical look at the writing industry swings raw punches in every direction. It just isn't my sort of humour, but equally, if you rave about 'The Office' you will likely enjoy this book far more than I have done.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>1849015724</amazonuk>}} {{newreview|author=Charles Lamb|title=Great Food: A Dissertation Upon Roast Pig and Other Essays|rating=4|genre=Cookery|summary=''A Dissertation Upon Roast Pig'' is a collection of food-related essays from the early 19th century, with a humorous bent. They're but a few pages each - a light read to bring a smile to your face, then on to the next little foodie treat.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>0241951003</amazonuk>}} {{newreviewCon Artist|author=ClientsFromHell.net|title=Clients From HellFred Van Lente

|summary=Everyone who's worked as Comic-Cons are a freelancer has a story place of a client from hell - that person who asked wonder and sanctuary for something that was impossible, wanted it done yesterday for a fraction of the usual price, or is just plain angry about the work produced. The website [http://www.clientsfromhell.net ClientsFromHell.net] has collated a number of such stories over the yearsmany people, and has now published them as a when Comic book.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>0982473931</amazonuk>}} {{newreview|author=Manu Joseph|title=Serious Men|rating=4|genre=General Fiction|summary=Ayyan Mani is a Dalitartist Mike Mason arrives at San Diego Comic-Con, an untouchable, stuck in a flat in Mumbaihe's slums but hopinglooking for both that and sanctuary with other fans and creators, somehowplus the chance of maybe, for a better future for just maybe reuniting with his sonex. Working at the Insitute of Theory and Research he uses all However, when his cunning and wiles rival is found dead, Mike is forced to stay ahead navigate every dark corner of the game amongst the Brahmin scientists. Does he have the intelligence, con in order to clear his name – from cosplay flash mobs and nerves, intrusive fans to convince everyone that zombie obstacle courses – Mike must prove his soninnocence and, against all oddsin doing so, is may just unravel a dark secret behind a genius?|amazonuk=<amazonuk>1848543085</amazonuk>legendary industry creator.

 {{newreviewFrontpage|authorisbn=John Saunders1473669588|title=The Vernham ChroniclesFalling Short|author=Lex Coulton

|summary=Set amidst the rolling British countryside around Vernbury Vale Lex Coulton's debut novel is the little village of Vernham. Anyone who lives in a village will recognise it immediatelystory about mistakes, failures, with its cobbled streets and Tudor buildingsrelationships. There was some damage during the war (which mightThe main protagonist, Frances Pilgrim, or might not have been down to is a lighthouse folly constructed by a local landowner on his lake) but the gaps have been filled sixth form English teacher who has recently fallen out with some beautifulher best friend Jackson, er, mock Tudor buildings. Almost unique a work colleague and nearly beautiful as the village is, it's not grappling with the star increasingly eccentric behaviour of The Vernham Chroniclesher mother. The stars are This relationship is complicated by the people who live in Vernhamfact that Frances's father disappeared at sea when she was five years old.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>1907499598</amazonuk>

 {{newreviewFrontpage|authorisbn=Martin Millar1683690133|title=The Good Fairies of New York|rating=4|genre=Fantasy|summary=In this fairytale of New York, the Cornish fairy KingMy Lady's children are living in exile, hiding in Central Park from a nasty industrial revolution back home. They have friends from Ireland with them, and all have the ability to startle the local squirrels. Elsewhere two innocent scallywag fairies fleeing Scotland have arrived, and adopted a human each. Heather has joined up with Dinnie, the city's worst busker, a fat, alcoholic and lonely fan of TV ads for phone sex, while Morag befriends Kerry, a dying kleptomaniac beauty, just as alone for different reasons.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>0749954205</amazonuk>}} {{newreviewChoosing|author=Gervase Phinn|title=Twinkle, Twinkle, Little StarsKitty Curran and Larissa Zageris

|summary=I spent many You are a lass of my teenage years reading James Herriottwenty-eight. Plucky, penniless and in Regency-era London the race is on to find a suitable suitor - or else doom yourself to life as an eternal spinster. Along your journey, you's booksll be accompanied by Lady Evangeline Youngblood - a fiesty noble eager to save you from a life alone, and I found that this collection of anecdotes and poems fired by Gervase Phinn had a real flavour of Herriot about itrogueish sense for adventure. Perhaps When it was just comes to suitors though, you'll have to make the settingultimate decision between witty, for Phinn was a school inspector in the Dales for many yearspretty and wealthy Sir Benedict Granville, but I think he also has that knack of capturing a situationwholesome, rugged and a charactercaring Captain Angus MacTaggart, or the mad, bad and bringing out the humour without making the person appear ridiculousterrifyingly sexy Lord Garraway Craven. Here he collates stories from his other booksWith orphans, werewolves, some Christmassy long lost lovers and others notancient Egyptian artefacts along the way, and he relates them with several of his own poems interspersed betweenit's clear this isn't going to be an easy decision...|amazonuk=<amazonuk>0141036435</amazonuk>

 [[Category:History]]{{newreviewFrontpage|authorisbn=Simon GarfieldStibbe_Xmas|title=Just My Type: A Book About FontsAn Almost Perfect Christmas|author=Nina Stibbe

|summary=A quality typeface is a bit like a good referee at a football match in that you Christmas – the time of traditional trauma. You only really notice them if something has gone wrong. A referee is there have to facilitate think about the players turkey for that – once upon a time it was leaving it sat on the pitchdownstairs 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 to want to be the star eat it. Christmas, though, is of the show (though watching Match course also a time of the Day these past few weeks yougreat boons. It'd often beg to differ). So s cash in hand for a lot of plump people who can hire red suits and beards, it is was always a godsend for postmen with typefaces. A good type helps all the readerthank-you letters to aunties you saw twice a decade that your parents made you write out in long-hand as a child, enhances the flow and makes as for the viewing experience easy makers of Meltis Newberry Fruits – well, did they even try and simple. Well sort sell them any other time of.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>1846683017</amazonuk>the year?

 {{newreviewFrontpage|authorisbn=Bob Servant and Neil ForsythDoescher_Will|title=Bob Servant: Hero of Dundee|rating=3.5|genre=Humour|summary=After [[Delete This at Your Peril: One ManWilliam Shakespeare's Fearless Exchanges with the Internet Spammers by Bob Servant|bursting into public consciousness]] as the scourge of email spammers, Broughty Ferry's resident polymath Bob Servant has returned. This time, he expands upon the colourful life only hinted at in his previous oeuvre, Delete this at Your Peril. And what a life it has been. He steers us from his humble beginnings, his broken family and traumatic schooldays, through the rise and fall of his window cleaning empire, and his role in Dundee's brutal cheeseburger wars. Along the way, we witness his struggles with, respectively, women ('skirt'), his simpleton sidekick Frank, and the demon drink.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>1841589209</amazonuk>}} {{newreview|author=P K Munroe|title=You Can Stick It|rating=3.5|genre=Humour|summary=Literary merit? Absolutely none! Plot, characterisation and all that other stuff you usually talk about? Nope – there's none of that, either. Ah, so it's non-fiction? Well, calling it ''fact'' would be stretching things a little too far... So, come on then. What ''is'' it?|amazonuk=<amazonuk>0007362188</amazonuk>}} {{newreview|author=Axel Scheffler|title=How to Keep a Pet Squirrel|rating=4|genre=Humour|summary=So, how do you keep a pet squirrel? Well, 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 way. 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 life, and he can't wait to see all that it holds, and make a difference to all his students. And then it hits himForce Doth Awaken: Star Wars Part the relentless pettiness of authority figures, the students who can't string two sentences together, the lowering of standards in search of higher test scores, so more money from foreign students, and political correctness gone (as I believe 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 of time to pass away on tour, if only waiting for screaming fans to leave them alone and go back home). Some of them were seen by Tom Maschler, literary editor at Jonathan Cape, who encouraged him to produce more. The results were published in two very successful short books in 1964 and 1965.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>0099530422</amazonuk>}} {{newreview|author=John Lindsay|title=Emails From An Asshole|rating=4|genre=Humour|summary=Some classified ads are crying out for trolling. John Lindsay replies to them, spins them a yarn, and strings them along for as long as possible. Sometimes the advert is fairly innocuous and he emails them anyway. These are emails from an asshole, after all.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>1402778279</amazonuk>}} {{newreviewSeventh|author=L C Tyler|title=The Herring In The LibraryIan Doescher

|summary=A J Jacobs has long time ago, in a galaxy far away, there was a man called William Shakespeare, who was able to create a reputation for setting himself onerous tasksseries of dramatic histories full of machinations most foul, rulers most evil and rebellious heroes and heroines most sturdy. His first book was about reading You may or may not have noticed the entire Encyclopedia Britannica; cinematic version of his second detailed a year spent according original stage play for ''The Force Doth Awaken'', but here at last we get the actual script, complete with annoying-in-different-ways-to -before droids anew, returning heroes from elsewhere in his oeuvre, and people keeping it in the Biblical preceptsfamily til it hurts. In My Experimental Life And if you need further encouragement, he recounts nine briefer episodes don't forget his audience only demanded three parts of living outside his comfort zone.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>0099547422</amazonuk>Henry VI – here the series is so popular we're on to part seven – surely making this over twice as good…

{{newreview|author=Seth Grahame-Smith|title=Abraham Lincoln Vampire Hunter|rating=3.5|genre=Humour|summary='Give me your tired, your poor, Your huddled masses yearning to breathe free, The wretched refuse of your teeming shore.' That quote, on the Statue of Liberty, was probably not designed with the inclusion of vampires in mind. But by some means or another North America is rife with the things – hiding in plain sight, as the older ones can bear sunlight, with the help of darkened glasses. It might just come down to one eager young man to rid his new country of such things, Move on his way to something he’s a bit more known for.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>1849014086</amazonuk>}}[[Newest LGBT Fiction Reviews]]