Welcome back to Book Break! This video is all about funny books. I have made one of these videos
here on Book Break before so I will link to that below, a video full of hilarious recommendations,
everything from This Is Going to Hurt to The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy and so much in
between. And you all loved that one so I am back for more. Diving straight in because we've got a
lot to get through in this video. Recommendation number one is Through the Keyhole by Louis
Theroux. Louis Theroux is beloved for his very dry sense of humour, this book Through the Keyhole was
written during lockdown and so instead of going and exploring the weird and wonderful lives of
other people that Louis Theroux is most famous for doing, he instead turns the lens on himself
and on his family. So this is Louis on Louis. Then there's A Funny Life by Michael Mcintyre. This is
his second autobiography, his first autobiography told the story of his life up to his 2006 big
break, and this book takes it from there, it tells the story of his journey through fame. He's got a
bunch of amazing career defining moments in there and a lot of disasters that happened along the
way. And of course being Michael McIntyre this book is laugh out loud funny. For some fiction,
Anxious People by Fredrick Backman. Makes a bit of a change from Fredrik Backman's
usual very heart-wrenching style, this one is completely absurd. It's just as emotional but it
is very funny. So Anxious People tells the story of an accidental hostage situation. A bank robber
didn't mean to end up holding an open apartment viewing full of people hostage,
but that is kind of just what happened. The whole story goes from the sublime to the ridiculous,
introducing a whole host of larger-than-life characters. I laughed and cried the whole way
through it. But if that was wholesome humour, I've got some very dark humour here. Mother for
Dinner by Shalom Auslander. This is described as a grotesque family comedy, it's about a family
of cannibals. In this book, the last living family of Cannibal Americans have a problem. Their mother
has just died and her final dying wish was for, in the tradition of their family, their children
to eat her. But even divided between all 12 children that's a lot of meat, plus it
wouldn't really be divided between 12 because one of them is already dead, one of them keeps kosher,
and one of them's a vegan. From that premise alone you can see what a ridiculous journey you're about
to embark on by reading this book. I can't resist dark comedy so I'm also going to recommend My
Sister the Serial Killer by Oyinkan Braithwaite. This is a thriller comedy about two sisters,
one of whom keeps murdering her boyfriends. It is up to Korede, the older sister, time and time
again to save the day after her younger sister accidentally murders someone else. This has been
a bit of a Marmite book which makes it really fun. It's not quite what you expect from a thriller,
it's not quite what you expect from a comedy, I thought it was fantastic. We Are Never Meeting
in Real Life by Samantha Irby is a hilariously relatable essay collection that manages to capture
a lot of powerful emotional truths, while also filling the book with anecdotes that
will make you spit out your drink laughing. Samantha Irby is a blogger and comedian who
manages to brilliantly make fun of her very difficult childhood and some of her very
sad situations she's been through, some of the very awkward situations that she's been through,
everyone will see a lot of themselves in various parts of this essay collection. And for another
really funny essay collection I've got Why Not Me by Mindy Kaling. This is actually her second
collection of essays and of course it's Mindy Kaling, so you will not be able to
stop laughing at this book. Just like her first collection Is Everyone Hanging Out Without Me
Mindy Kaling somehow manages to be relatable despite living a very different life. She
hangs out with celebrities, she's a glamorous actress, producer, I can share precisely zero
of those experiences with her, but I found myself mirrored in a lot of these pages. In the last one
of these videos I made I recommended the hilarious Diary of a Somebody by the poet Brian Bilston
so this time I'm going to recommend the book that that title was inspired by,
Diary of a Nobody by George and Weedon Grossmith. This is a very funny classic about a bank clerk
called Charles Pooter who really thinks a lot of himself, and mistakenly believes that a record
of all of his comings and goings, including with his good friends Mr Cummings and Mr Going
are worthy of permanent record. How to Win at Feminism is a completely ridiculous book that
I laughed until my face hurt at. This is created by the website Reductress which is like a feminist
version of The Onion so that hopefully gives you an idea of how hilariously stupid this book is
going to be. It's a satire of pop culture feminism with chapters like Designer handbags to hold all
your feminism in, How to be feminist without being too opiniony. It's fantastic. Diary of a
Drag Queen by Crystal Rasmussen does what it says on the tin and brilliantly. You'll get snippets of
queer theory in this autobiography, mixed in with loads and loads of anecdotes about sex,
makeup and ambition, that will have you choking with laughter, and learning something as well.
Ayoade on Ayoade by Richard Ayoade is a sort of parody of introspection. So in this book he
interviews himself through ten brilliantly insightful, and often unexpectedly erotic
interviews. For another brilliantly funny autobiography there's The Misadventures of
Awkward Black Girl by Issa Rae which is her story of being awkward and introverted in a world
that idolises people being cool, and Black in a world that thinks being Black makes you cool.
So her life feels like a series of contradictions, and she is at the middle of it feeling
incredibly awkward. So this is a collection of hilarious essays, some of her funniest stories
that will be so relatable to you whether you are cool yourself or whether like most of us you're
incredibly awkward yourself. The Princess Bride by William Goldman is one of my favourite books.
I absolutely love the movie as well but even if you've seen the movie you are not prepared
for this book. The levels of ridiculous comedy that this book goes to are just fantastic. In here
you get way more backstory about characters that are only minor in the movie. You also get a whole
overly complicated framing device that will leave you puzzling over whether The Princess Bride is
actually a real book or not, and it has a totally different ending so you don't know where it's
going. If you've never seen the film The Princess Bride and you don't know what I'm talking about,
first of all go and fix that, but second of all I'll give you some of the flavour here.
Get ready for some poison, revenge, giants, snakes, spiders, fencing, lies, miracles,
oh and a long and perilous chase. It's a parody of the adventure novel and it is so much fun.
The Discworld Series by Terry Pratchett is a series of 41 books, so this will really keep you
laughing for a long time. This is a comedy fantasy series that parodies so many different genres, so
many different authors. All of the Discworld books take place on a flat circular world which balances
on the back of four elephants, which are standing on the back of a giant turtle. The world may seem
completely different to our own but somehow through these books you explore a lot of human
issues. Then for some comic sci-fi there's To Say Nothing of the Dog by Connie Willis. So this
one the name is taken from a book I recommended in the last version of this video, which again I will
link below, Three Men in a Boat (to say nothing of the dog) by Jerome K Jerome. I won't tell
you about that book again because I already told you in the last video, but it is very very funny
and this book takes its title from there. So To Say Nothing of the Dog is a time travel rom-com
about a present-day time traveller who decides a holiday in Victorian England sounds very relaxing,
but the trip turns into anything but. Love is for Losers by Wibke Brueggeman is a very very funny YA
novel. This is like a modern updated version of the Georgia Nicholson books, Angus, Thongs and
Full Frontal Snogging and so on. It's like that meets Sex Education. It's wonderfully progressive,
it's wonderfully queer, and it is so endlessly funny. The book actually covers a lot of deep
issues which I wasn't expecting to find in there, and they're explored so brilliantly, keeping me
laughing the whole way through, even when it was approaching some quite heavy or quite sad topics.
And finally recommendation number 19 on this list is The Appeal by Janice Hallett. This is a murder
mystery, it's a parody of the cosy crime genre, it's a very interesting book, it's mixed media
mostly told through emails and documents. Two law students are trying to work out what happened in
a murder case, and it is very funny, as well as being very gripping and mysterious. The
characters in here are such perfect cliches of the small town amateur dramatics society that's being
described in here, I just loved every second. So there were 19 hilarious book recommendations
to keep you laughing well into the new year and beyond. Do leave a comment below with any of your
favourite funny book recommendations, because I'm always looking for a good laugh. I will link here
to the last video we made recommending funny books in case you haven't seen that one yet,
so do click through and have a look, and have a laugh, and I'll see you next time!