It’s hard to recommend humor books. When people ask for something funny, are they thinking along the lines of racy standup comedians, or are they angling for something classier, like Walter the Farting Dog? What is side-splittingly funny to one person can strike others as offensive or mundane.
Despite the challenges, I’m going to be writing about humor this week. This will be difficult, as there exist some human beings who do not, in fact, derive humor from Walter the Farting Dog. Those folks are beyond my help. For everyone else, I’m going to write about five funny books. Odds are that you’ll find at least one you like.
Kicking off my week of humor books is Eats, Shoots and Leaves: The Zero Tolerance Approach to Punctuation, one of the funnier grammar books in a genre that, in the face of all expectations, has a lot of funny books.
(It is sad that I know this. It is sad that anyone should have read enough grammar books to be able to make accurate generalizations about the genre. Maybe this is why I don’t get invited to parties.)
From the preface:
“A lot of well-educated sensitive people really have been weeping friendlessly in caves for the past few years, praying for someone—anyone—to write a book about punctuation with a panda on the cover.”
Thank you, Lynne Truss, for answering those prayers. This is a narrative book about grammar and usage. There are plenty of examples, lots of How-To, but in the final analysis, it’s just a fun read. In addition to grammar explanations, there are fun facts about the history of the language. For instance, we learn about the person who unified our system of punctuation:
“That man was Aldus Manutius the Elder (1450-1515) and I will happily admit I hadn’t heard of him until about a year ago, but am now absolutely kicking myself that I never volunteered to have his babies.”
And, really: There are two pandas on the cover.
Hmmm. I’m a Transitive Vampire girl, myself. But I’ll give this one a whirl.
S’funny, I was going to write about Deluxe Transitive Vampires, or else Grammar Snobs Are Great Big Meanies… but then I thought, why not save up some of these books for a grammar-themed blog week?
And then I thought, hrm, they might get mad at me if our blog stats plummeted to zero for an entire week.
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