Laughter is the Best Medicine

Publisher:   Reader's Digest

Published:  2006

Hardback: 416 pages

Seeing the lighter side of things and laughing away your troubles is the one of the crucial ingredients to a happy  life. Picking up this book when you are in dumps and randomly reading any page (of course you can read it cover-to-cover too) from it will drive your blues away. This is one of the best anthology of humorous pieces I have read in recent times.

There are more than 1000 cartoons, jokes, one-liners, poems and prose extracts, plus dozens of  classic TV and radio script extracts - from The Office, Fawlty Towers, Dad's Army and other comedy shows.

These humorous pieces embrace a wide variety of topics - The Ages of Man, The Body, Food, Booze & Smokes, Love & Sex, People & Places, Money Matters, Transports , War & Peace, Law & Order, Games & Sports, Arts & Entertainment, The Political World, Home Life, Work Life, Pets & Other Animals & Spiritual Life.

You can  find quotes by some of the wittiest people like Ronnie Barker, John Cleese, Tommy Cooper, Les Dawson, W.C. Fields, Dawn French, Jennifer Saunders, Ricky Gervais, Tony Hancock, Edward Lear, Groucho Marx, Spike Milligan, P.G. Wodehouse, Victoria Wood and many more (over 200 humorists). There is a  also a section with brief biographies about these laughter makers.

Browse a few pages of this book at Amazon site.

Just one minor downside to this book - the humor in about  5-10 % of the selections  may not make sense for those who are outside UK. At least it went above my head for me. But what the heck ! Enjoy the rest 90 % !

Strongly recommend it for anybody's bookshelf. Unfortunately it can't be in mine. The copy I read was borrowed from the library which I must return tomorrow. However I have noted down some of my favorite pieces. I was half tempted to post at least a few of those here. But I feel rather lazy to do so. Besides my sense of humor  may not match yours. So just get hold of the book by hook or crook and enjoy !