Books To Make You Laugh

When I'm in a bad mood, nothing lifts my spirits like a good book and sometimes, only something that makes me laugh will do. I find my mood is very much affected by my reading habits and science has proved that laughing is good for you, so here are my recommendations for books that will make you smile.

Terry Pratchett's Discworld series never fails to entertain me. Some of the characters are so utterly insane that you cannot help but laugh at them. However, it is the interactions between the witches tht always make me smile the most. These women are so very different to each other and yet they accept these differences with acerbic humour and always have each other's back. Just as it should be.

Angela Carter is an author I was introduced to on the Masters' course. When we were studying unreliable narrators, this was one of the books we looked at an extract from. Dora is looking back on her life and she is witty and irreverant and utterly unreliable, but she is adorable in spite of this. Years after I read it, I can't remember much of the detail of the plot, but what I do remember is that I laughed a lot and it became a book I recommended to others.

We read this in my book group when it was first published, before all the hype which eventually surrounded it. It was one of those books where eventually I struggled to distinguish between fiction and reality. Elizabeth became so real to me that I was cross that she hadn't been mentioned in a non-fiction book about female scientists whose work had been stolen by their male peers. It took me a few minutes to remember that the reasons for her omission was that she was a fictional character!

Sophie Kinsella is not an author I would generally read, but this came up as a recommendation somewhere and I thought it sounded like such a brilliant concept that I immediately wanted to read it and the book lived up to the recommendation. I thoroughly enjoyed it and although it wouldn't necessarily make me read any of her normal romcom type books, I would read it if she wrote another like this which had an added element to make it a bit different.

This was a surprise inclusion on this list. When I picked it up, I wasn't expecting it to be particularly funny. However, I sound found myself giggling away at all the unlikely scenarios Mr Pooter finds himself in. Such is his self-importance that he cannot conceive of why other people do not perceive him in the same way and for the reader, this is the source of much of the amusement.