humor

  • Book Bingo NW 2025: Humor

    Book Bingo NW 2025: Humor

    Knock knock? Who’s there? No, Who’s on first… That was either met with crickets, a chuckle, or an eyeroll, which drives home that not everyone’s sense of humor is the same. There is something for everyone, and, notwithstanding the above attempt, the written word can be hilarious. Absurd situations, witty turns of phrase, wry retorts—all… Continue reading

  • Funny Stories for Teens

    Funny Stories for Teens

    To keep everyone laughing, we’ve updated our Teen Humor list for 2025.  Here are some highlights. In Elise Bryant’s novel Reggie and Delilah’s Year of Falling, Black nerd Reggie keeps running into biracial punk singer Delilah on various holidays throughout the year.  Eventually, they start their own holidays just so they can keep meeting.  In… Continue reading

  • #BookBingoNW2021 Made You Laugh

    Summer Book Bingo has officially launched, so let’s get reading! With so many great categories to work with, The Seattle Public Library staff would love to help you find your perfect match. You are in no short supply of hilarious books for the Made You Laugh category. Safe bets include the various works of David… Continue reading

  • Comedy in Comics Spotlight: Chip Zdarsky

    Rose City Comic Con is coming up, the weekend of September 8-10, in Portland, OR. Comic book artist and writer Chip Zdarsky will attend as a guest. As he rarely travels south from the wilderlands of Canada (urban Toronto), this is a unique opportunity for fans to meet him in person. Chip Zdarsky is the pseudonym… Continue reading

  • Hidden Humor

    A recent blog post by Shannon Hale about funny girls getting shushed got me thinking about women writers who are really stinkin’ funny, but not usually marketed or thought of as humor writers. Then I looked on my nightstand and saw a Katie MacAlister book.  The Importance of Being Alice is labelled a romance, the… Continue reading

  • The Science Fiction Checklist Challenge: Humorous SF

    ~posted by David H. Science fiction as a literary genre is often viewed as one of the more serious, so it can be surprising to many people that it has such a rich history of comic stories. Many of the authors from science fiction’s “Golden Age” wrote humorous science fiction tales, including L. Sprague de… Continue reading

  • Theatre at the Library Presents – The Hunchback of Seville

    Washington Ensemble Theater By Katie H. The Capitol Hill Library and the Washington Ensemble Theatre will host a preview performance of the world premier of The Hunchback of Seville by playwright Charise Castro Smith on Saturday, June 14th from 2:00 to 4:00 p.m. in the Capitol Hill meeting room. After the performance, the play’s designers and cast will… Continue reading

  • Three smart, witty authors you want to read

    I’m pretty sure you all know that David Sedaris has a new book, Let’s Explore Diabetes with Owls. Maybe you’re even one of the 1,095 people on the waiting lists for our 217 copies (that’s five different formats: print, large print, CD, eaudio and ebook). But there are some other writers out there who are… Continue reading

  • Who Says the Dead Can’t Dance?

    Ok, I’m not usually a big fan of gore and ghosts, but when they come with excellent characters and a great deal of witty dialogue, what’s not to love? I can’t guarantee that everyone will find these books funny, but that was definitely an aspect that kept me turning the pages. After all, I had… Continue reading

  • Fiction with a side of wry: Five books our librarians love

    Smart, witty and fun to read: That’s the criteria my fellow librarian Misha and I used when selecting books for our newest “Humor” list. Here are some of our favorites from that list. Middle Men by James Gavin With deadpan humor, these stories of Los Angeles men of the slacker variety provide insight and wit… Continue reading

  • Delightfully disturbing picture books to share with your friends

    Why do I read picture books? Because they make me laugh and they are full of fantastic illustrations, of course. Also, it’s an easy evening’s entertainment to have an impromptu storytime while sipping cocktails before you settle in for dinner or break out Settlers of Catan. These have reduced my friends to abject hilarity, and… Continue reading

  • What’s Funny, Part 2: Dysfunction — how bad is it?

    The time for labeling and loving books about “dysfunctional” families is past. Readers have moved on, having acknowledged that no family is actually “functional” and that’s okay. Now we want to read more exciting dysfunction stories: we need more drama, more humor, and more action. We might throw in a little horror and suspense like… Continue reading

  • What’s funny?

    Sometimes we just want a funny book, but our definitions of “funny” differ widely according to individual taste, background and predilection. When I was six going on sixteen I thought my mother’s sense of humor was just bizarre. She loved Jerry Lewis, Tony Curtis and Lucille Ball: it was the slapstick humor she loved. To… Continue reading

  • Sit Down with Stand-Ups

    My colleagues inform me that March is the official month of mirth, a more depressing concept I truly cannot think of. Despite my enormous reservations with such a frivolously joyful demarcation (what next, Cake and Presents Day?!?), I resign myself to acknowledging such trivialities in my role of public servant. So here we are. Mirth.… Continue reading

  • A book to make you smile

    Lately, I’ve kept a copy of Learning to Love You More by Harrell Fletcher and Miranda July at the information desk to take a quick peek at when I’m feeling blue. Like Truc, I’m a shelf browser and, yes, I originally picked it for the cover. But one curious flip through its pages and I… Continue reading

  • Potty Poetry

    Spring is here and summer is on the minds of many parents. This triggers a little-known phenomenon in the library… The absence of all potty training materials on our shelves! Warmer weather seems to motivate parents to start the process of teaching bathroom etiquette to their young. Parents all over Seattle suddenly descend upon the… Continue reading

  • Catholic Humor

    As a lapsed Catholic not ready to change religions or to abandon it completely, I’ve been reading modern novels written by other people who take “THE FAITH” seriously, but not that seriously. Morte D’Urban by J. F. Powers won the National Book Award in 1963, and it’s set in rural Minnesota, where my most of… Continue reading

  • Book review: Fool by Christopher Moore

    If you are in the mood to read something extremely, embarrassingly funny, you might pick up a copy of Fool, the latest book by Christopher Moore.  On the surface this novel is a retelling of Shakespeare’s King Lear told from the perspective of Pocket, the King’s fool.  Any accuracy or comparison to the original story… Continue reading