If the state of the world has you pulling out your hair and tossing and turning at night, let us suggest putting down the news feed and indulging in a little pleasant distraction. In fact, regardless of what you need a distraction from, a funny book is a great way to keep morale up. So, here's a slew of great books that will have you laughing instead of crying!
There's literary fiction that's darkly funny, books from comedians that will make you guffaw and outlandish stories that will help you forget the outlandishness of the real world (for a little while at least).
BLOB by Maggie Su
A hilarious and moving debut novel about a young woman who decides to turn a sentient blob into her perfect man ...
Vi Liu's life is a mess. Having dropped out of college, she's stuck in a job she hates at a local hotel. Her ex-boyfriend has blocked her and she's lashing out at her family and co-workers.
One night, drunk outside a drag club, she stumbles across a mysterious sentient blob. She takes it home, where she feeds it a diet of sugary cereal and reality TV. Slowly, she realises that she can shape the blob into her perfect man: someone attentive, outgoing and with more than a passing resemblance to Ryan Gosling ...
Woo Woo by Ella Baxter
Darkly funny, intense and unsettling, Woo Woo is an astonishing and unflinching dissection of creativity and obsession, love and passion, vengeance and rage. Nothing will prepare you for this literary firestorm from the author of the internationally acclaimed debut New Animal.
Sabine is having a moment. Her new exhibition, Fuck You, Help Me, is opening soon and, as her gallerist says, 'Hell is an artist three days before their exhibition opens.' But it's not only this coming milestone that is causing Sabine to melt down.
She is being stalked. As exhibition day draws closer, so too does the man who has been watching her. As his approaches become more overt and threatening, Sabine's fear amplifies and transforms into something feral and primal. And then things start to get really strange.
The Husbands by Holly Gramazio
You wait ages for The One ... then 203 come along at once.
One night Lauren finds a strange man in her flat who claims to be her husband. All the evidence – from photos to electricity bills – suggests he's right.
Lauren's attic, she slowly realises, is creating an endless supply of husbands for her. There's the one who pretends to play music on her toes, the one who's too hot (there must be a catch), the one who makes a great breakfast sandwich. But when you can change husbands as easily as changing a lightbulb, how do you know whether the one you have now is the good enough one, or the wrong one, or the best one?
Slivers, Shards and Skerricks by Shaun Micallef
This indefinitive collection brings together under one cover the very best comic writing – parody, poetry, prose, plays, philosophy and political treatise – by Australia's greatest living television host.
From 'I Was Scott Morrison's Schnoodle' and 'Around the World in One Pair of Underpants' to the deliciously decadent recipe for 'Satyricon Surprise', Shaun Micallef's sublime anthology has it all.
Thrill to the meta-ironic existential crisis in the Rocky universe; gasp as you learn what happened to Scrooge in the days following A Christmas Carol; discover what it takes to pass for human in an increasingly convoluted post-Robodebt world.
Lies and Weddings by Kevin Kwan
Taking us from the sand beaches of Hawaii to the skies of Marrakech, from the glitzy bachelor pads of Beverly Hills to the inner sanctums of England's oldest family estates, Kevin Kwan has written a juicy, hilarious and sophisticated tale of love, money, murder, sex, and the lies we tell about them all.
Rufus Leung Gresham, future Earl of Greshamsbury and son of a former Hong Kong supermodel, is drowning in debt. The only solution, according to his mother, is for him to attend his sister's wedding and seduce a woman with money.
Will it be the French hotel heiress with a royal bloodline? The venture capital genius who passes out billions like lollipops? Or will Rufus betray his family and confess his love for his best friend and 'girl next door' Eden?
What a Way to Go by Bella Mackie
‘I was immensely grateful that despite the gruesome way my husband died, he’d done it with his clothes on.’
Anthony Wistern is wealthy beyond imagination. Fragrant wife, gaggle of photogenic children, French chateau, Cotswold manor, plethora of mistresses, penchant for cutting moral corners, tick tick tick tick tick tick.
Unfortunately for him, he’s also dead. Suddenly poised to inherit his fortune, each member of the family falls under suspicion. And that’s when everything comes crashing down …
The Pairing by Casey McQuiston
Theo and Kit have been a lot of things: childhood best friends, crushes, lovers and now estranged exes. After a brutal breakup on a flight to their dream European food and wine tour, they exited each other's lives. Time apart has done them good. All that remains is the unused voucher for the European tour that never happened.
Four years later, it seems like a great idea to finally take the trip. Solo. Separately. It's not until Theo and Kit board the tour bus that they discover they've both had the exact same idea, and now they're trapped with each other for three weeks of the most romantic sights and sensuous flavours of France, Spain, and Italy. But, it'll be fine – as long as they agree they're absolutely over each other. So, when Theo suggests a friendly wager to see who can sleep with their hot Italian tour guide first, Kit is game. In fact, why stop there? Why not a full-on European hookup competition? But sometimes a taste of everything only makes you crave what you can't have ...
The Twat Files by Dawn French
A hugely relatable, funny, honest and inspirational 'memoir of sorts' in which Dawn celebrates what it means to be gloriously, messily human
When I was younger I wanted to be an interesting, sophisticated, semi-heroic, multi-layered person.
BUT – that kind of perfect is impossible. Being an actual twat is much more the real me. Sorry to boast, but I am a champion twat.
In The Twat Files I will tell you about all the times I've been a total and utter twat. The moments where I've misunderstood stuff and messed up. My hope is that these stories might fire up yer engines to remind you of just what a massive twat you also are.
Pity Party by Daisy Buchanan
Katherine lives by the rules, ticks all the boxes and prepares for the worst, even while she hopes for the best. Then the worst actually happens and, as she tries to navigate life as a young widow, it turns out she was not prepared at all.
Nothing scares Katherine more than stopping, but everyone insists she needs to take some time for herself. Head to a wellness retreat, they said. Enjoy some me-time, they said ...
Except this retreat isn't the pity party she was hoping for. Instead of massages, she has erotic meditation, and instead of spa treatments she has scream therapy.
Katherine has never lost control in her life. In fact, she's fairly certain that if she starts screaming she might never stop ...
Hilarious, heartbreaking and honest, this is a story about learning how to stop playing it safe in a world that feels so dangerous – and showing up to the party, even when it feels impossible.
The World According to Cunk by Philomena Cunk
Romans! Madrigals! The Dark Ages! Evolutions! Trumpets! The Oranges of The First World War!
All of this (except trumpets) and more is covered in this definitive, illustrated, easy-clean history of all world history so far, written by the twenty-first century's leading historian, philosopher and thought-thinker, Philomena Cunk.
Focusing on the inventions, art and brainboxes that made the modern world the unbearable place it is today, The World According to Cunk is the history book to end all history books. From the birth of the first baby caveman to the invention of the poo emoji ...
The Unfinished Harauld Hughes by Richard Ayoade
The gifted filmmaker, corduroy activist and amateur dentist, Richard Ayoade, first chanced upon a copy of The Two-Hander Trilogy by Harauld Hughes in a second-hand bookshop. At first startled by his uncanny resemblance to the author's photo, he opened the volume and was electrified. Terse, aggressive and elliptical, what was true of Ayoade was also true of Hughes's writing, which encompassed stage, screen, and some of the shortest poems ever published.
Ayoade embarked on a documentary, The Unfinished Harauld Hughes, to understand the unfathomable collapse of Hughes's final film O Bedlam! O Bedlam!, taking us deep inside the most furious British writer since the Boer War.
This is the story of the story of that quest.
Thunderhead by Miranda Darling
A black comedy, set in suburbia, about one woman’s struggle to be free.
When Winona Dalloway begins her day – in the peaceful early hours before her children, that ‘tiny tornado of little hands and feet’, wake up – she doesn’t know that by the end of it, everything in her world will have changed.
On the outside, Winona is a seemingly unremarkable young mother: unobtrusive, quietly going about her tasks. But within is a vivid, chaotic self, teeming with voices – a mind both wild and precise.
And meanwhile, a storm is brewing …
