Here's Julie Booker, author of Up Up Up (House of Anansi Press, 2011) and her Lit Wish List: Five Books to Make You Laugh Out Loud.(She's pretty damn funny, too, as you'll see.)

Central to each of Julie's picks is humour, be it tiny observations about marriage while roadtripping around the Great Lakes, to poetic "gems" that list random facts about horses—they like the smell of telephones?—to the kind of things we all think but would think twice before saying—but we so think them!

What are some of the funniest Canadian-authored books you've read or recommended? Share them in the comments.

Julie Booker's Lit Wish List: Five Books to Make You Laugh Out Loud

Lenny Bruce is Dead
Jonathan Goldstein
Coach House Books, 2001

What others have said:

"Jonathan Goldstein is one of the funniest and most original writers I can think of. Anything by him is better than anything by just about anyone else."

—David Sedaris

A Trip around Lake Erie
David McFadden
Coach House Books, 1980 (Republished in Great Lake Suites by Talonbooks, 1997)

What others have said:

"What an unexpected discovery CanLit was for me. Really? We can find ourselves in our literature? We can write about ourselves? And then in university a professor loaned me David McFadden’s Trips around Lake Erie and Huron. I loved these. Here it was again (for me) exactly, McFadden writing precisely to our time and place, and further more, hilariously. He was writing to me. I was inside of it."

—Bella's Bookshelves

A Trip around Lake Huron
David McFadden
Coach House Books, 1980 (Republished in Great Lake Suites by Talonbooks, 1997)

What others have said:

"If you're from Eugene, Oregon you probably won't appreciate this volume a great deal, but if you live around the Great Lakes, you'll find it charming and innocent as the family discovers the joys and tribulations of traveling together."

—Goodreads review (4/5 stars on a re-read 25 years after he'd first encountered the book. I'd also like to get a copy to someone in Eugene, Oregon and see if we can't disprove this theory.)

Three Stories and Ten Poems
David McFadden
Prototype, 1982

What others have said:

"LSD has no effect on horses. Did you know that?"

— Julie Booker, from our interview

"Really?"

—Julie Wilson, from our interview

From Zero to One
Robert Zend
Sono Nis Press, 1973

What others have said:

If I were a gallery curator, Robert Zend would pose a problem.

"Where do you want the stuff to hang, boss," my assistant would ask, "in with the Mondrians, maybe?"

"No, I don't think so—the sense of line is similar, but there's more sense of humour in Zend—so try wedging them between the Miros and the Klees, and better set up an exhibit of Saul Steinberg in the foyer as a teaser."

If I were a symphony manager, the problem would be similar.

"Out of ze question," Maestro von Zuyderhoffer would declare. "I conduct no Zend before Bruckner, not even mit Webern to raise curtains."

"But, maestro, Zend takes the cosmos for a plaything, as does Bruckner, and wrings out of it an epigram, like Webern. However, I suppose we could try him on a chamber concert with early Hindemith, maybe . . ."

"Ja, besser."

". . . .and then, perhaps, Kurt Weill . . ."

"Viel besser!"

". . . and finish off with Satie."

"Nein, kein Satie. Zat vun is not knowing secondary dominants, und ze vork of Zend is full of modulation."

Ah, well.

But if I were a book publisher, no such problem would exist.

Robert Zend could stand alone—his cynically witty, abrasively hedonistic, hesitantly compassionate, furtively God-seeking poems could mingle with each other, find their own program-order, and settle among themselves the question of what goes where and how much wall-space will be needed."

—Glenn Gould

On her first day as teacher-librarian, Julie Booker was asked by a five year old if that was her real name.She's felt at home in libraries since her inaugural job as a Page in the Toronto Public Library.She is the author of Up, Up, Up, a book of short stories published by House of Anansi Press in 2011.

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No matter who you're buying for this holiday season—Secret Santa, work colleague, book club, family, children, host, neighbour, "friend of a friend"—books truly are the gifts that keep on giving. 49th Shelf's Lit Wish List helps you find those books and encourages you to #givecdn!

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