Library / Funny Books as Gifts
Gift Guide
Funny Books as Gifts
A funny book can be a joke, a story, a novelty object, or all three. The strongest gift books give the recipient something to discover as well as something to laugh about.
Four types of funny gift books
Gag books
The premise or reveal is central to the joke.
Novelty books
The unusual subject, format or presentation is a major part of the appeal.
Absurdist literature
The work uses irrationality, contradiction or strange premises as literary material.
Conceptual comedy
The idea, format or object itself becomes the comic mechanism.
A book that is the joke
EW deliberately crosses these categories: a 261-page repeated-word novel that can be given as a gag, displayed as a novelty, or approached as an experiment in literary form.