How to Be Funny: The One and Only Practical Guide for Every Occasion, Situation, and Disaster (no kidding)

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He is passionate about literacy and getting primary school children to read, driven by the firm belief that there is no such thing as people who “don’t like to read” only people who haven’t found the right book yet. Handey’s best-known contribution to American letters remains his “Deep Thoughts” sketches on ’90s episodes of Saturday Night Live, but the man who wrote “Unfrozen Caveman Lawyer” works surprisingly well in prose. A genuinely funny book is one of life's simplest pleasures, but finding the real stand-outs is never as easy. It is funny and touching, and his accounts of trying to learn French will leave you spitting up the windows. Late-night host David Letterman, a man who’s shared a stage with the biggest comedians of the past forty years, describes Macdonald as “funny in a way that some people inhale and exhale […] There may be people as funny as Norm, but I don’t know anybody who is funnier.

Every day spent with you," his French teacher eventually tells him, "is like having a caesarean section.Like her stand-up, Jo Caulfield’s caustic wit and razor-sharp observations make her account of life with her sister, even in the worst of times, as entertaining as it is touching and relatable. It’s exhausting: every sentence is so funny and has so many ideas in it that I had to read it really slowly to take it all in. Although it was written partly out of the pain of discovering his first wife’s adultery and ends on “the biggest battlefield in the history of the world”, it is continuously amusing and often laugh-out-loud funny. John Wright, founder of Trestle Theatre and Told by an Idiot, brings a wide range of experience of physical comedy to this unique exploration of comedy and comedic techniques. Or maybe your main character always seems to land in absurd situations, leading to moments of humor.

There is also a great humanity to the narrator: if he is critical of others, he is equally critical of himself. She’s clear-eyed about the prospects of the underdog and brilliant at capturing the desperation that lurks behind the smiles and bravado of those on the lower rungs – has anyone written about failure so well? Waugh perfectly skewers a Fleet Street baron (Lord Copper, owner of The Daily Beast), while protagonist William Boot, the nature columnist mistakenly sent to cover a conflict in the African Republic of Ishmaelia, is a marvellous comic creation. Joshua Ferris brings a masterful touch to one of comedy’s best-loved subjects in this poignant and witty novel. Thomas Mann it ain’t, but while I’ve read The Magic Mountain once, The Plague and I has been a constant companion since I discovered it as a teenager.It's strange how this novel has become a by-word for doomy, nihilistic introspection; I blame Mark Chapman. There's big, squirm-inducing stuff here, especially when it comes to the excruciating lengths Alix and her husband go to to convince Emira – and themselves – that they're not racists. When the two can be combined — think of King Arthur’s battle against the Black Knight, as well as the Black Knight’s reaction to his own “flesh wounds," in Monty Python and the Holy Grail — that’s comedy at its best. The book opens with an analysis of the different kinds of laughter that can be provoked by performance.

For example, you may have the sentence: “Being happy is simple: Eat well, fall in love, and take happy pills when it all comes crashing down. Warm and tender, frequently very funny and, ultimately, incredibly moving tale of siblings and cancer.

Jamie Grimm is a middle schooler on a mission: he wants to become the world's greatest standup comedian–even if he doesn't have a lot to laugh about these days. The set pieces, such as Mr Milton diving disastrously from the high board ("He hit the water – impacted really is the word for it – at over six hundred miles an hour, with a report so loud that it made birds fly out of trees up to three miles away. In between, he had become hugely successful, but his books were increasingly lazy, stuffed with stereotypes, and crushingly formulaic: cosy chuckles for tedious old farts.