Today’s TTT is a nod to April Fools, so I’m going to spotlight some books I’ve tagged as humor. But first, teases!

In May 2013, The Guardian reported that a 60-year-old fisherman had died in Belarus after being bitten by a beaver that severed his femoral artery. Although the circumstances of this exceptional event are unclear, it is believed that he may have been drinking more than a little vodka before attempting to pick it up and kiss it. (Bringing Back the Beaver)

And now, for some funny books!

(1) My Holiday in North Korea.

As we step out of our car to an empty parking lot, we are met by the local guides and the factory manager. It’s then that Older Handler tells me the shocking news: A mere five minutes earlier, the factory unexpectedly lost power, forcing it to close and send all 5,000 employees home. We will still be allowed inside, but there will be no people to see and nothing working. A group of Brits who happen to be visiting the factory at the same time seem to enjoy peppering their handlers with questions they must know will result in inane answers:
BRIT: So, all 5,000 people have just left the building five minutes ago and gone home then, or are they all waiting in the lunchroom for the power to come back on?
LOCAL GUIDE: Yes. (My Holiday in North Korea, Wendy Simmons)

(2) Hope Never Dies. Biden and Obama solve a mystery together.

(3) The Best Cook in the World. My introduction to Bragg’s writing, ruminating on his mother’s cooking traditions. She does not cook chitlins, he informs us, because she knows that God made them to do.

(4) The Many Loves of Dobie Gillis. A collection of short stories from the late 1940s that has kept me rolling for 23 years.

I perceived that his trouble was not physical, but mental. “Why do you want a raccoon coat?”
“I should have known it,” he cried, pounding his temples. “I should have known they’d come back when the Charleston came back. Like a fool I spent all my money for textbooks, and now I can’t get a raccoon coat.”
“Can you mean,” I said incredulously, “that people are actually wearing raccoon coats again?”
“All the Big Men on Campus are wearing them. Where’ve you been?”
“In the library,” I said, naming a place not frequented by Big Men on Campus.

5. Anything by PG Wodehouse. I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again, you don’t know how fun the English language can be unless you’ve experienced Wodehouse.

“I can never forget Augustus, but my love for him is dead. I will be your wife.”
Well, one has to be civil.
“Right ho,” I said. “Thanks awfully.”

6. Most anything by AJ Jacobs, but The Year of Living Biblically and Know-it-All are the best.

7. What If? Serious Scientific Answers to Absurd Questions, Randall Monroe — but read by Wil Wheaton.

8. The works of Harrison Scott Key, a southern humorist.

For my tenth birthday, Pop presented me with a Remington 12-gauge pump. “This gun right here can kill a grown man,” he said, which made it sound like we’d been trying to kill grown men for many years without success.

Boredom, I knew, was a dangerous thing. For some children, it led to experiments with sex, and drugs, and alcohol, and lighting one another on fire, sometimes with the alcohol. For some of us, the never-ending rural ennui led to destructive habits with literature.

9. Most anything by Sean Dietrich, but keep in mind with him that humor and tragedy go together like the strokes of a bicycle. From Kinfolk:

The two deputies looked at each other. “Anything you can tell us might be helpful,” said Burke.
“Okay. Deer mice are the most common mammal in North America.”

10. The Old Man and the Boy, Robert Ruark. One of my very favorite books; it’s a fictionalized collection of Ruark’s memories growing up in the 1920s, mentored by his grandfather. The stories are superficially about hunting, fishing, or generally running around outdoors, but the Old Man is always teaching lessons, often in a funny-grump manner.