A guide to what's new in comedy Christmas gift books.

One of the biggest indicators of an impending Christmas (asides from the tacky plastic decorations, crap television and forced civility to colleagues/family/neighbours etc) is the flood of gift books appearing in the shops.

Humour is always one of the most popular genres for Christmas books so it is no surprise there are more than a few comedy gems published just in time to be chucked into Santa’s sack.

Here are just a few of those options, which will at least keep you amused while you’re waiting at the back a huge queue at the checkout and wishing you’d done your Christmas shopping on the internet last month like everybody else. 

Totally Mad
Hachette $45

The subtitle 60 Years of Humour, Satire, Stupidity and Stupidity sums up this book far more succinctly than any cover jacket blurb could hope to. 

It has been six decades since the magazine started and after becoming a regular sight on magazine racks around the (English speaking) world, it has never gone away.

Mad has never had any pretentions about lifting itself out of the low-brow basket of satire but some of the film parodies, cartoons and random nonsense it has produced show the magazine is cleverer than it gives itself credit for.

Many of the artists and writers have become cult figures. If the names Sergio Aragonés, Don Martin or Al Jaffe mean anything to you then you are in for a treat. 

This celebration of the magazine compiles some of the best moments over its long history and if for those many readers who bought every issue as a youngster before moving onto something more grown up, this a great way to relive your childhood.

The Onion Book of Known Knowledge
Hachette $40

Although The Onion is a mere babe in the comedy world compared to Mad, it has managed to spread its wings far and wide since its inception in 1988 as a college newspaper.

Just as with the newspapers, website, TV shows and other operations which make up the Onion empire, the Book of Known Knowledge is firmly irreverent in its satire.

The definitions in the book may be not be exactly correct but they  are often entertaining and are the perfect Christmas gift book – allowing the buyer to have a few chuckles as he or she edges agonisingly closer to the front of the queue. 

As with any good encyclopaedia, the targets are varied - from theatre (“…a designated enclosed space in which society’s most attention-starved people are permitted to get out all their shouting, singing, and dancing.”) to the Olympics (“…in which the world’s greatest athletes compete to determine which nation is the best at cheating.”).

The humour may not be to everyone’s taste, especially the kind of people who actually find Two and a Half Men funny and they will be left scratching their heads (but anything is preferable compared to what they usually scratch).

Texts From Dog
Joe Butcher (October Jones)
Headline 19.99

Cheaper, smaller and easier to wrap is Texts From Dog.

When animator Joe Butcher found he could send texts to himself on his smart phone, he took the next logical step which was to send texts between his alter ego (October Jones) and pet dog.

The regular text exchanges were sent to his Twitter followers before making their way onto a Tumblr account which gained more than 80,000 followers in a month and the rest is social media history.

This compilation of the exchanges compiles some the original and best, along with many previously unseen texts and a few cartoons thrown in for good measure (and possibly to help the page count along).

They are very much hit and miss, with just enough hits to make it an enjoyable read (and then you can re-gift it anyway).