12 Canadian books that will make you laugh out loud this summer
CBC Books | Posted: July 20, 2018 1:33 PM | Last Updated: July 26, 2018
Here are 12 books by Canadian writers that will make you laugh out loud this summer.
Property Values by Charles Demers
Charles Demers is a Juno Award-nominated comedian and author. His crime novel, Property Values, uses comedy to explore themes of urban gentrification, gang violence and the challenges of purchasing a new home in the modern world.
Trust No Aunty by Maria Qamar
Based on her popular Instagram @hatecopy and her experience in a South Asian immigrant family, Trust No Aunty by Maria Qamar is a comic book filled with anecdotes and advice exploring what it's like to grow up a South Asian girl (Desi) in North America under the eye of watchful female elders.
A Brief History of Oversharing by Shawn Hitchins
Humiliation fuels Shawn Hitchins's A Brief History of Oversharing. This collection of essays reveal how laughter helped him confront difficult situations and relationships from his childhood in Egypt, Ont., to his adult life in Toronto.
One Day We'll All Be Dead and None of This Will Matter by Scaachi Koul
BuzzFeed News writer Scaachi Koul's debut book, One Day We'll All Be Dead and None of This Will Matter, speaks to her experience being of South Asian descent in Canada in a collection of funny nonfiction essays that deal with racism, sexism and life as the daughter of immigrants from India.
Everyone's a Aliebn When Ur a Aliebn Too by Jonny Sun
In Jonny Sun's comic book, a lonely aliebn is sent to study Earth where he meets a myriad of wise, vivacious woodland creatures. Full of heart, humour and friendship, this book also examines how loneliness can be an ever-present, unshakable feeling. The book is inspired by the comedian's aliebn alter ego Jomny, who has over 500,000 followers on Twitter.
Sputnik's Children by Terri Favro
This speculative fiction story by Terri Favro injects inventive humour within its premise: a cult comic book creator who confronts alternate timelines, nuclear war and her own fictional superheroes — just not necessarily in that order.
Take Us to Your Chief and Other Stories by Drew Hayden Taylor
The short story collection by award-winning playwright and author Drew Hayden Taylor combines Indigenous stories with science fiction. The book was a finalist for the 2017 Stephen Leacock Medal, a prestigious Canadian literary prize for humour writing.
Gone to Pot by Jennifer Craig
Jennifer Craig is a B.C.-based nurse-turned-novelist. Her most recent book, Gone to Pot, is a funny tale about a grandmother who resorts to growing and selling marijuana in order to make ends meet. Balancing her life as a doting grandma, respected community member and drug dealer turns out to be trickier than expected. Gone to Pot won the 2018 Stephen Leacock Memorial Medal for Humour.
Young Frances by Hartley Lin
Young Frances is illustrator Hartley Lin's first collection under his real name after a decade of publishing under pseudonym Ethan Rilly. It is an early chapter in the lives of Frances and Vickie, characters from his Pope Hats series, as they attempt to stay connected despite their careers threatening to pull them apart.
Class Mom by Laurie Gelman
Laurie Gelman's Class Mom follows a year in the life of a mother who has to navigate tricky school politics along with special requests to bring brownies to curriculum night. The humorous novel was a finalist for the 2018 Stephen Leacock Memorial Medal for Humour.
13 Ways of Looking at a Fat Girl by Mona Awad
Mona Awad's debut novel, 13 Ways of Looking at a Fat Girl, has struck a chord with readers — it won the Amazon.ca First Novel Award and was shortlisted for the 2016 Scotiabank Giller Prize. The book features gentle humour as it follows a sharp-voiced young woman named Lizzie, who struggles with her weight as a teenager and then with her weight loss as an adult. Fatness and skinniness seem to factor into all of Lizzie's relationships, feeding the tension in this compelling, compact debut.
Manfried the Man by Caitlin Major, illustrated by Kelly Bastow
Caitlin Major and Kelly Bastow's Manfried the Man takes place in an alternate universe populated by anthropomorphic cats that have dim-witted, but cute, human men as pets.