Humour
Horrid Henry's A - Z of Everything Horrid by Francesca Simon
Francesca Simon's Horrid Henry is a very popular little boy, although you might have a different opinion if you actually had to put up with his antics yourself. A slightly modernised embodiment of 'slugs and snails and puppy dogs' tails' concept of boyhood, Henry is naughtiness personified, combining irreverence for authority with a huge dose of gross-out crude humour that really appeals to the target readership of early primary school children. Add a somewhat nostalgic, timeless feel, trademark alliterations, subtle (and not so subtle) digs at family dynamics, sibling rivalry and particularly at modern middle-class manners and sensibilities and you have a winning character and a base for a very successful edutainment franchise. Full review...
Low Life by Jeremy Clarke
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. Full review...
Bird Brain by Guy Kennaway
'It began for Basil Banger Peyton-Crumbe the day he died in a pheasant shooting incident'.
If you were in any doubt as to the nature of the novel given the cover jacket and the author's disclaimer to the effect that any similarity between the human characters and any real person is entirely coincidental, but he feels safe from any threats of libel action on behalf of the dead animals whose characters he has mercilessly manipulated for narrative effect, then its opening sentence should put you straight. Full review...
Why Me? The Very Important Emails of Bob Servant by Neil Forsyth
Catchy title and catchy front cover graphics. What's not to like? It takes a lot to make me laugh generally, but as I had an initial flick through this book, things looked promising. And I was also thinking that it's a pleasant change to see another location (other than perhaps the predictable Glasgow and Edinburgh) get an airing. Full review...
Tintin: Herge and His Creation by Harry Thompson
I love Tintin. 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 language. So I was thrilled to see a biography of the character and Hergé, his creator, and I picked it up with enthusiasm. Full review...
Catch 22 by Joseph Heller
At the heart of the very black comedy that is Catch 22 is Captain Yossarian, a World War II American bombardier, who wants to survive the war. Flying repeated combat missions is undermining his sanity, and surely a mad man should be grounded? But if he asks to be grounded, he demonstrates an absolutely sane concern for his own safety. If he is sane, he can't be grounded. This, his doctor tells him, is catch 22. Full review...
Busy Monsters by William Giraldi
Charles Homar loves his Gillian. He's proved it to us, if not to her, by going after her possessive, jealous state trooper of an ex with the intent to kill - if only ended up rescuing a cat instead. But lo and behold, she's declared she's off to discover the real love of her life - the giant squid. Failing to stop this, Charlie spends too long with a Nessie obsessive, then goes on a hunt of his own - for Bigfoot, all the while, chapter by chapter, sending his narrative of the same to a magazine as essays for one of those autobiographical, frivolous columns. Full review...
The Family Fang by Kevin Wilson
Annie Fang 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 the rocks with the kind of self-destruction so much enjoyed by tabloid writers, and he - well, he's here because of a jumbo spud gun. Neither want life back at home, as throughout their childhood they were used by their parents - without much planning, without any consideration of feelings, or consent - in a whole career of performance art pieces, designed to enact a point of life or just cause havoc. Full review...
White Teeth by Zadie Smith
Some books sneak up 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 about. Full review...
The Campus Trilogy by David Lodge
Somewhere along the line the word "vintage" stopped meaning simply the wine crop of any given year, and started to mean the wine of a particularly good year, and then to mean anything of a past year that was (is) of outstanding quality. Such is the mutability of language. Full review...
The Gloomster by Ludwig Bechstein, Axel Sceffler and Julia Donaldson
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. Full review...
Conference at Cold Comfort Farm by Stella Gibbons
There are no Starkadders at Cold Comfort Farm.
To those of you who've not read Stella Gibbons' magnificient original novel, this is hardly likely to be a major shock - to the Gibbons fans amongst us, though, this is chilling news indeed. And when Robert Poste's child Flora returns to the farm - now a modernised monstrosity full of members of the International Thinkers' Group – sixteen years after her original visit, the news get graver and graver, as the cows Feckless, Graceless, Pointless, and Aimless have passed away of shame due to the disgrace of the bull Big Business. With the menfolk trying to make their fortunes abroad, and the women struggling, it's left to Flora to try to save the day once again. Full review...
Cold Comfort Farm by Stella Gibbons
Orphaned at 19, Flora Poste – a London sophisticate – 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 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. Full review...
The Further Adventures of Sherlock Holmes: The Peerless Peer by Philip Jose Farmer
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... Full review...
The Wilt Inheritance by Tom Sharpe
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. Full review...
Memoirs of a Porcupine by Alain Mabanckou
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. Full review...
Life, Liberty and the Pursuit of Sausages by Tom Holt
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. Full review...
How I Became a Famous Novelist by Steve Hely
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. Full review...
Great Food: A Dissertation Upon Roast Pig and Other Essays by Charles Lamb
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. Full review...
Clients From Hell by ClientsFromHell.net
Everyone who's worked as a freelancer has a story of a client from hell - that person who asked 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 ClientsFromHell.net has collated a number of such stories over the years, and has now published them as a book. Full review...
Serious Men by Manu Joseph
Ayyan Mani is a Dalit, an untouchable, stuck in a flat in Mumbai's slums but hoping, somehow, for a better future for his son. Working at the Insitute of Theory and Research he uses all his cunning and wiles to stay ahead of the game amongst the Brahmin scientists. Does he have the intelligence, and nerves, to convince everyone that his son, against all odds, is a genius? Full review...
The Vernham Chronicles by John Saunders
Set amidst the rolling British countryside around Vernbury Vale is the little village of Vernham. Anyone who lives in a village will recognise it immediately, with its cobbled streets and Tudor buildings. There was some damage during the war (which might, or might not have been down to a lighthouse folly constructed by a local landowner on his lake) but the gaps have been filled with some beautiful, er, mock Tudor buildings. Almost unique and nearly beautiful as the village is, it's not the star of The Vernham Chronicles. The stars are the people who live in Vernham. Full review...
The Good Fairies of New York by Martin Millar
In this fairytale of New York, the Cornish fairy King'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. Full review...
Twinkle, Twinkle, Little Stars by Gervase Phinn
I spent many of my teenage years reading James Herriot's books, and I found that this collection of anecdotes and poems by Gervase Phinn had a real flavour of Herriot about it. Perhaps it was just the setting, for Phinn was a school inspector in the Dales for many years, but I think he also has that knack of capturing a situation, and a character, and bringing out the humour without making the person appear ridiculous. Here he collates stories from his other books, some Christmassy and others not, and he relates them with several of his own poems interspersed between. Full review...
Just My Type: A Book About Fonts by Simon Garfield
A quality typeface is a bit like a good referee at a football match in that you only really notice them if something has gone wrong. A referee is there to facilitate the players on the pitch, not to be the star of the show (though watching Match of the Day these past few weeks you'd often beg to differ). So it is with typefaces. A good type helps the reader, enhances the flow and makes the viewing experience easy and simple. Well sort of. Full review...
Bob Servant: Hero of Dundee by Bob Servant and Neil Forsyth
After 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. Full review...
You Can Stick It by P K Munroe
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? Full review...
How to Keep a Pet Squirrel by Axel Scheffler
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. Full review...
Crump by PJ Vanston
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 him: 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. Full review...
In His Own Write and A Spaniard in the Works by John Lennon
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. Full review...
Emails From An Asshole by John Lindsay
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. Full review...
The Herring In The Library by L C Tyler
Tall, elegant Ethelred is a gentleman, and a third-rate author. Elsie, his literary agent, is short and dumpy, and not afraid to speak her mind. It is Elsie, in fact, who constantly assures her client he only occasionally aspires to the giddy heights of being second-rate. This could be the business partnership from hell, but not only do these two seem to get along, they even manage to solve crimes together. In this, the third outing for L C Tyler's eccentric sleuths, we are provided with a locked room mystery, a cast of possible villains of the most stereotypical type, and a fresh, funny tale which will make you laugh so much you'll get a stitch. Full review...
My Experimental Life by A J Jacobs
A J Jacobs has a reputation for setting himself onerous tasks. His first book was about reading the entire Encyclopedia Britannica; his second detailed a year spent according to the Biblical precepts. In My Experimental Life, he recounts nine briefer episodes of living outside his comfort zone. Full review...
Abraham Lincoln Vampire Hunter by Seth Grahame-Smith
'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, on his way to something he’s a bit more known for. Full review...
Pride and Prejudice and Zombies: The Graphic Novel by Jane Austen, Seth Grahame-Smith and Tony Lee
It is a truth universally acknowledged that a zombie story of any renown will not remain simply a zombie story. Before you can say the risen undead it will become a series of books, inspiring others, and/or lead to the same story being published in many different guises. Here, then, on its way to Hollywood, is Jane Austen’s story of Lizzie Bennet, the feisty young woman trying to ignore Mr Darcy while fighting off the manky unmentionables – at least she is until the hidden truths open up to her, just as the soft soils of Hertfordshire do to yield their once-human remains. And this time it’s in graphic novel form. Full review...
The Funniest Football Joke Book Ever by Carl McInerney
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. Full review...
Hell's Belles by Paul Magrs
The idea behind this series of novels is quite enchanting and amusing. Frankenstein'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. Full review...
Winnie's Jokes by Valerie Thomas and Korky Paul
Who turns off the lights at Halloween? The lights witch. What does an Australian witch ride on? A broomerang. Yep, it's a joke book. Full review...
Man + Dog by Nick Wadley
Throughout my life I've lived with dogs or deeply regretted the fact that I lacked a canine companion. Watching a dog – or better still, the interaction between dogs – is infinitely better than anything on television and it's sheer joy to see how man and dog interacts and how, so often, they hold a mirror up to each other. Full review...
Nightlight: A Parody of Twilight by The Harvard Lampoon
Most people will have heard of the worldwide phenomenon that is Twilight. The books by Stephenie Meyer and the film have made a legend of the romance between vampire Edward Mullen (Robert Pattinson plays the movie role) and teenage schoolgirl Bella Swan (Kristen Stewart). Full review...
Is it Just Me or Has the Shit Hit the Fan?: Your Hilarious New Guide to Unremitting Global Misery by Steven Lowe and Alan McArthur
The banks fell over like fat Labradors running over a wet kitchen floor. Surely that is the wackiest, most inappropriate simile for the credit crunch and all it has done for the world. You won't get any such namby-pamby animal likenesses from these authors, instead 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 high-interest, high-risk, high-lending capitalism, so they can get back on the expenses train, and back up the rich lists. Full review...
And Another Thing ... Douglas Adams' Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy: Part Six of Three (Hitchhikers Guide 6) by Eoin Colfer
Of all the big books announced for this year, this one must have raised more eyebrows than many. Why try and write a new Hitchhiker'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 only be described as Monty Python doing a sci-fi Terry Pratchett, and with their cups of tea and dressing gowns, could only be described as very English? Well the answer is most evident - Colfer is a world-beater when it comes to knocking up a story. Full review...
The New Vampire's Handbook by The Vampire Miles Proctor
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 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. Full review...
100 Facts About Pandas by David O'Doherty, Claudia O'Doherty and Mike Ahern
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. Full review...