The Book Lover's Joke Book

How many crime writers does it take to change a light bulb?

A. Two. One to screw it most of the way in, and the other to give it an astonishing twist at the end.

I slipped over in the library this morning. It was the non-friction section.

Peter: What are you doing in that wardrobe?

Lucy: Narnia business

Joke books have a long publishing history dating back to the ‘Philogelos’ from ancient Greece and ‘Facetiae’ of the 15th century.

But while there are themed joke books on everything from cats to lawyers, there have surprisingly been few with a literary theme. The Book of Book Jokes includes a huge range of comic material concentrating exclusively on the themes of books, reading, libraries, bookshops, and the literary life.

As well as one-liners, puns, knock-knock jokes, and shaggy dog stories, it will feature sections including gravestones, book titles, jokes in acknowledgements/ copyright/index pages, literary hoaxes, literary snark, and authors’ in-jokes in novels, as well as sections such as Charles Dickens’s humorous fake book decorations. It will also feature the favorite jokes of well-known writers, and a selection of literary cartoons.

About the Author

Alex Johnson is a journalist and author. Previous books for The British Library include Famous Writers and Their Pets (“the perfect stocking filler for people who love books and trivia”, Interesting Literature, 2019), The Book of Book Lists (“every list reveals another way of thinking, another way of figuring things out”, The TLS, 2017) and Shelf Life (“a lovely anthology… a perfect Christmas present for book lovers”, The Idler, 2018). His book How To Give Your Children A Lifelong Love Of Reading was published by the British Library in 2019.