" What Book Made You Laugh The Most?"

Hi everybody, welcome to the book club. Now Tabby and I, since we started the show in late February, we've had tons of questions. We've been deluged with questions. We're so grateful to you for your support and for listening to the show. And we thought we would tackle some of the questions. I've got a question for you. This is from Viscount Palmerston. Wow, still alive. Amazing. Still alive. Who knew it? Exciting. Loving the book club so far. Thanks both. Thank you. I'd like to ask you, could you estimate the percentage of books on your shelves that are still unread? For me, I'm going shamefully with about 40%. I think that's pretty good. I mean, it depends on the size of your bookshelf, right? That is such a good question. I reckon it's probably about 50-50. I would say most of the fiction I have, I've read. I reckon there's maybe 50 books I own in fiction. I mean, that sounds like a lot, but I have a lot of books that I haven't read. The non-fiction history books, there's loads I haven't read because I bought them in a rush of enthusiasm thinking, I'm really interested in the history of Armenia. I'll be reading this book. I've always got a palm on my bedside of like five or six books that I'm meaning to get through. And there are some that just get kicked down, kicked down, kind of. And that's the tragedy. I know that one day I'll die with my books unread. And that's sad. What about you? God, you made that so morbid. Well, we've just been doing Mrs. Dalloway. It's been on my mind. This is meant to be like light and fun. I know it's true. We have just been doing Mrs. Dalloway. What about me? Well, my bookshelf is much smaller than yours. So, I've probably read about 60%, I have to say. 60% of your books? Yeah. Including all these very, very high-end, hardback classics that are performatively arranged behind your head. Performatively arranged. Yeah. Not performed. Actually, they're very carefully organised by genre. It's just that it's my organisation you just wouldn't approve. You don't think outside the box. But yeah, I think I probably would say that because also, I have a really bad habit of buying books that I've already read because I get so attached to them. I just want them near me, rather than doing what one should do, which is buy kind of new books that one hasn't read. But hopefully over the course of the book club, we'll both get to read all sorts of books we never read. Tabby's read 10 books, but multiple copies. Yeah, they're all by Hilary Mantel. A few years ago, I set out to try and fill in the gaps in my fiction reading. So in a very sort of joyless and mechanical way. Is that kind of where you go on to those, you know, the BBC's 100 best books of all time and you basically work your way through? Do you know, a little bit, I have a book called the Penguin Classics book over there. Oh, we love Penguin. It's this, right? Oh, magnificent. Yeah, lovely. It's almost like an encyclopedia. It's like Alan Partridge with his world book of wine. Yeah. Basically my world book of classics. Do you have any Partridge on your shelves? I actually don't, which is a great tragedy. Totally we do. I've got I Partridge. We need to talk about Alan. Yeah. Yeah. We'll be doing that on the book club one day. Got Nomad. Nice. So I think he goes on a walk to a power station or something. And, and we've got all the, I mean, obviously we've got all the audio books because Arthur listens to them just constantly in a massive loop. When I came for lunch at your house that time and you were really, really hung over and we got into your car, there was one thing on the back seat and it was a hardback edition of. Yeah, I Partridge. I wondered where the story was going when you said about the car. And it definitely didn't smell of Dominic's sick. Unbelievable. Unbelievable. Nice question. Right. Do you want to ask me this? I don't want to talk to you at all now. This is from Verdana Meridian. What books made you laugh the most? Fiction books that have really made me laugh. So there was a book I read last year for the first time and I've spoken about it before. It's called a confederacy of dunces by John Kennedy tool. And I promise you every other page, I was kind of bodily laughing out loud, reading it. Jeeves and Worcester always makes me laugh. And so does Nancy Mitford's books. I have to say a Highland fling. I was laughing the whole time. What about you? I would definitely agree with the PG Woodhouse. So again, we'll be doing the code of the Worcesters. Can't wait. Which is one of my absolute favourite books. But I remember my friend Luke introduced me to them when I was a teenager at school. And I remember just crying. But yeah, there's something that we both really love. Richmond Crompton's just Williams stories. So funny. I'm really glad you brought that up. Because last Sunday, I had a long car drive back to London from Essex. And it was kind of a bit bleak Sunday evening back to school feeling. And so I did what I always did as a child when I had to kind of go back to school. I put on just William for the car journey, read by Martin Jarvis. And it just totally elevated the experience. The one where he meets the which is the one that we have often chatted about. It's the one where the woman turns up, which is American tourist. Is this Stratford, Barnaven? She wants Anne Hathaway's cottage. She wants to go to the home of William Shakespeare. And so William tells her that he is the descendant of William Shakespeare. He's Nelson's descendant or whatever. And then there's an old woman looking angrily. There's like a mad old woman who lives in the cottage. And William says, yeah, that's Anne Hathaway right there. It's so good. Next question. So this is great name, Millicent Daisies. Love your podcast. I need to carve out more time to read. I do want to try a literary classic next. What would you two recommend for someone who hasn't really strayed out of their fantasy book genre? Very good question. That's a great question, actually. So you're coming to it from fantasy and the question is, do you want a massive change or do you want something fantasy adjacent? So if you want to something fantasy adjacent, I would say, what about something like H.G. Wells, like The Time Machine or The War of the Worlds or something like that? Or I don't know, King Solomon's Mines or something. Yeah. Keep with the adventure genre or you could do a mystery like The Woman in White or The Moonstone or that. How about The Hound of the Baskervilles on the show? I was actually going to say, I think you should start on a Sherlock Holmes novel, you know, because it's a really easy read. It's not at all intimidating. It's a page turner. And then I don't know, maybe jump from that. It's a bit of a change, but maybe try Jane Austen. They're very, very readable. They're also quite funny. And, you know, they have, you know, a bit of romance and stuff, which is always enjoyable to read. So Millicent Davis is a prisoner of the fantasy book genre and Tabby, you are a massive fantasy reader, aren't you? I mean, I hope I'm not giving anything away when I say that you're, if there's basically some bloke with wings having an affair with some princess, you're all in. No, you always do this. You always assume that I love romanticity because I'm a 20 something old woman. Not so. I do love fantasy, though. I really believe that what you read as a child can turn you into a reader or not, or what is read to you. Like I went to school and stuff quite late, so I spent a lot of time with my brother reading fantasy books. So I would say I loved the Chronicles of Ancient Darkness by Michelle Pava. Those are brilliant. The Bartimaeus Chronicles, which I'm trying to get Dominic's son, Arthur, to read right now. And then also another series that I've always tried to get you and Arthur to read. These are slightly off the beaten track. You know, I love Harry Potter, his dark materials as much as The Next Bart and Lord of the Rings, of course. But it's called The Name of the Wind by Patrick Rothfuss. You love that bloke Rothfuss. He's got something on you. It is so good. If you're an adult and you feel like, you know, maybe you shouldn't be reading fantasy. It's perfect. It's adult fantasy. Better than Game of Thrones, I think. So what about you? You're also a big fantasy man. I've never really got outside the canonical fantasy books like Ursula K. Le Guin when I was younger. Love Ursula K. Le Guin. I read a lot of that sort of stuff when I was a teenager, I suppose. Read and reread Tolkien. I read Lloyd Alexander, the kind of, did we mention him already? The Chronicles of Prydain, is it? Have you ever read Susan Cooper? Oversea Under Stone and The Darkest Rising, The Darkest Rising sequence. They are brilliant. So I read them all out loud to Arthur. And the whole of the Chronicles of Narnia. The Chronicles of Narnia was actually a shocker because basically I kept breaking down completely. I mean, I literally, you know, when Aslan comes back to life in The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe or the bit in the last battle when they all realise they're dead and they're in heaven. I mean, I was like a sobbing wreck and he was like, what's wrong with you? Get a grip of yourself, man. I bet Arthur was like, just keep reading. Exactly. Pull yourself together. Why do we have to have these long hiatuses where he has to seek therapy? And also we plan to do some more Narnia. Our first ever pilot for this show was actually The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe. We're going to be releasing that one day. It's in a lead casket right now, very deep under the sea. I don't know if we're allowed to say this, but it was a very unusual GoHunger pilot because it was suppressed because as a senior person said to me, you were having too much fun. Too much fun. Oh, that's sad. I've got time for one more question. BlackLimJ8B, how do you feel about audiobooks? I feel very positive about audiobooks, actually. So there's a big debate about, can you read a book and then sort of slip into the audiobook? I don't like that very much. I like to be just the novel and have my voice that I read in, in my head or whatever. But then as a child, audiobooks were a big thing because we hated car journeys and it made it bearable. And also there was this wonderful reader, this guy called Jonathan Keeble. And basically during lockdown, when I was reading and rereading, tragically, A Place of Greater Safety by Hilary Mantel, I got to the point where I was like, right, I now need to read other things because there's lots of books out there. Yeah. But I don't want to leave behind A Place of Greater Safety. So I listened to the audiobook of A Place of Greater Safety while I read other things. Great technique, by the way, covers so much ground. And I think he is the greatest audiobook narrator ever. And I started reading books just because he read them. Oh my God. Can have them make a huge difference to your experience of a book, I think. You've never listened to my audiobooks, have you? God, no. I hear enough of your voice as it is producing and presenting. Yeah, that's true. What about you? You read a lot of books to Arthur, so you have, you know, expertise. Yeah, and I recorded my books as audiobooks. You have, yeah. I mean, reading out loud is a brilliant thing to do, by the way. You have such an intimate knowledge of a book when you've actually read it out loud, far more so than anything else. And my greatest achievement as a human being was to have read the whole of The Lord of the Rings, including the songs, including all the bits in Elvish. Did you sing the songs? I mean, singing them would be ridiculous. I say them a bit like a poem. Did you dress up? I didn't dress up. It was like 7.30 at night. It was like bedtime. I don't know. I'm hardly going to put on my special costume. Your Tom Bombadil outfit. Yeah. For tonight's reading, I should be dressing as Arwen. No, but the thing with reading The Lord of the Rings, to read it out loud is so time consuming. And you'd be reading bits especially early on when you turn to chapter four, shortcut to mushrooms or whatever. He's sitting there kind of sat up for bed and he's like, is there going to be a battle in this bit? Probably not. There's probably not going to be a battle for about three months. They're still on the road to Bree. Exactly. We're halfway through the book. What? I'd be reading for like half an hour and I'd be like, this has been pure topographical description. It's just a stuff about a cop or whatever. A whole chapter dedicated to tea time or something. Exactly. Yeah. So I've been on the side of reading out books. The only books that I think I've ever listened to as audio books, tragically, it's something you've already mentioned, is Partridge. And I think that's in a class of its own. That's your hinterland though, really. Yeah. That and the Martin Jarvis, Richmond Crompton. Did you ever listen to Stephen Fry reading Harry Potter? Oh yeah, of course. Seminal. So this is my biggest confession, actually talking about fantasy. I've told you this before. The thing I've got most wrong in my life is Harry Potter. Because in the Great British Dream Factory, I was dismissive about Harry Potter. And I said, oh, it's rubbish. It's not as good as Billy Bunter. I mean, it's obviously not as good as Billy Bunter because nothing is. But I was dismissive about it. And then we went to a New England on holiday and we were driving around and Arthur was quite small. And we had the Harry Potter audio books and he started listening and he just would not get out of the car. Yeah. He was just like, this is genius. This is brilliant. And nothing that would happen outside the car could possibly be better than what's happening in it. Because Harry Potter has just arrived at Hogwarts and blah, blah, blah. I totally agree with that. And I realised for the first time the power, you know, I'd sort of been dismissive about it because I was too old for it and all that sort of stuff. And now I realised just how powerful it was. And that was thanks initially to those audio books, which obviously Stephen Fry is fantastic at it. And he's also Stephen Fry also did Sherlock Holmes. Did he? So he did the collected Sherlock Holmes audio books. And actually, I was only talking to somebody the other night about it. My friend Jesse Norman, who is an MP, about Stephen Fry's reading the Sherlock Holmes books and how unbelievably brilliant he is. There's something so Edwardian about his voice that it just sort of plunges you into the Conan Doyle world. I still think audio books are not the same as reading. And I still think they're not the same. It's a different experience. I agree that they're absolutely not the same. Doesn't mean that they're worse, but they're not the same. All right. We've gone on too long. Always the way with us. Mortifying. OK, we've got to go. Bye-bye, everybody. Keep the questions coming. Yeah. Thank you, everyone. We'd love to answer more questions and keep listening. Bye-bye. Bye.