 | Breakfast of Champions by Kurt Vonnegut
Buy new: £5.09 / Used from: £2.90 Funny, crazy, frivolous, serious and very easy to read. Deals with the meaning of everything. Simply, my favourite book. Do yourself a favour and buy it now. (Slaughterhouse 5 is also very good).
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 | The Eliza Stories (Prion Humour Classics) by Barry Pain
Buy new: £6.48 / Used from: £0.13 If youve read the unutterably *pants* Diary of a Nobody, move on. The Eliza books will restore your faith in the Victorians ability to be very funny. I laughed out loud. (i.e., at this book).
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 | The Man in the High Castle (Penguin Modern Classics) by Philip K. Dick
Buy new: £5.74 / Used from: £3.25 PKDs finest hour. Yes, this is a sci-fi thriller (in an alternate world, the Nazis won and now rule America) but it deals with shopping, the I Ching and push-up bras. Astonishing.
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 | The Thirty-nine Steps (Penguin Popular Classics) by John Buchan
Buy new: £2.17 / Used from: £0.01 I dont normally read thrillers but this rocks. Its also very short (and cheap). Buy it, make some beverage, curl up and have yourself a gripping, thrilling Sunday.
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 | The Secret History by Donna Tartt
Buy new: £6.97 / Used from: £0.01 Another cracking thriller. Flawed (hey it was a first novel!) but still dark and unputdownable.
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 | The Jeeves Omnibus: No.1 by P.G. Wodehouse
Buy new: £11.60 / Used from: £9.99 Yes, Wodehouse is old-fashioned but he is also hilarious (Douglas Adams was a big fan). His metaphors and turns of phrase are often brilliant.
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 | Where I'm Calling from: Selected Stories by Raymond Carver
Buy new: £9.07 / Used from: £7.07 Cool, crisp stories (usually of love) told by an expert teller. The best 2 stories are So Much Water So Close to Home and Cathedral. Then you should read all the rest too.
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 | Kid by Simon Armitage
Buy new: £6.49 / Used from: £1.70 Poetry with a RocknRoll swagger. Technically accomplished but with broken beats, puns and blurred rhymes. Often funny and sometimes very serious.
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 | Blazing Fruit: Selected Poems 1967-1987 by Roger McGough
Buy used from: £0.01 More up-tempo fun poetry, this time from the 1960s.
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 | Selected Poems by W.H. Auden
Buy new: £7.78 / Used from: £2.80 Auden was a great poet. Full stop. Sometimes incomprehensible, always in control, but mostly either funny or moving. Read him.
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 | Collected Poems by Philip Larkin
Buy used from: £1.32 Another very readable poet with top-notch technical mastery. Some great turns of phrase. Deals with the biggest themes of human existence.
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 | The Wasp Factory by Iain Banks
Buy new: £4.98 / Used from: £0.01 Trashy but (embarrassingly) also very good. Iain Banks first novel and still his best. Gripping, dark, shocking, disturbing and sometimes a little funny.
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 | On Broadway: "More Than Somewhat"; "Furthermore"; "Take it Easy" (Penguin Modern Classics) by Damon Runyon
Buy used from: £5.93 A style entirely his own, and still as funny as a punny bunny with some honey.
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 | Reinforced Concrete Designer's Handbook by Charles E. Reynolds
Buy used from: £34.77 If you have an interest in reinforced concrete, you won't want to be without the Reinforced Concrete Designer's Handbook.
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