Never Hit a Jellyfish with a Spade, Guy Browning

Buy it now from Blackwell Books

I laughed 'til I wet myself



Not a business book maybe, but I had to put this in - it's hilarious! First published in the UK in 2004, I picked up a US version earlier this year and could not put it down. Luckily for us all it is still in print.



Guy Browning writes a column called 'How to ...' in the weekend Guardian magazine; this book contains 278 pages of his stuff beginning with how to exercise and ending with how to control the duvet dispensing a thousand belly laughs in between.



It is a difficult book to describe and quotes out of context are never really funny, but ...



"There is a phrase which says that when you're tired of London you're tired of life. This explains why people on the Underground generally look suicidal. ... They also say 'early to bed, early to rise, makes you healthy, wealthy and wise' - hence the national glut of rich philosopher-milkmen."



and ... (the italicised bit is my interjection)



"Very occasionally, the great British public get (surely, 'gets', or am I being pedantic?) so annoyed about something they decide to demonstrate. This generally involves descending on London en masse, discovering how few public toilets there are, and then returning home with lots of shopping."



If those extracts do not intrigue, let me just say I seldom laugh out loud and this book had me doing so pretty regularly. I urge you to buy it and if it doesn't reduce you to tears of laughter, send it to me and I'll give you your money back. Can't say fairer than that, can I?

How to Get Rich, Felix Dennis

Published by Ebury Press

Buy it now from Blackwell Books

Someone's having a laugh!

I’m not sure that hippy-turned-tycoon-turned-poet Felix Dennis’s book will help you get rich; in fact it may well put you off the whole idea!

But this roistering, rambunctious tour de force will certainly entertain and enlighten you. And I suspect that, taken to heart, his ideas could well pay off for the determined wealth seeker.

However, Mr Dennis does not come from the rose-tinted dream worlds of positive thinking or do-as-I-did formulae. He is brutally honest about the downside of riches; in fact he begins his book offering solid reasons not to seek wealth. That takes just 17 pages – the next 300 cover getting started, getting rich and what to do when you have made it big.

Liberally laced with anecdotes and asides, warnings and wit, poetry and polemic, this is a compulsive read; more fun and containing more wisdom than the last ten ‘get rich’ books I have read combined.

I can find little fault with this vastly entertaining volume; perhaps on occasion the author overdoes the rambling and musing but he is never less than fascinating as he bitches and blusters his way to his final piece of advice – “Remember to duck!”

Highly recommended for fun or profit, whichever is your fancy. My final piece of advice – don’t lend it to anyone; you will never see it again.