It’s very cold in February, so we’ll need an extra boost of humour to keep our spirits up. Laugh away the darkness of winter with 10 gems from our catalog.

To survive winter in Canada, one probably needs an extra large amount of Humour of the North. This compilation by various Canadian authors showcases a selection of short funny pieces in poetry and prose.

Careful though, because the type of humour people enjoy tends to be different across countries. Wilhelm Busch found a way to make German humour more widely appealing by using pictures. Have a look, not just a listen at his Bildergeschichten, and you won’t even need to know the language.

Even more cute pictures can be found in the book Sonnets of a Budding Bard. Nixon Waterman assumes the point of view of a schoolboy and writes little introspective poems about Mary and that pet lamb of hers, for example.

Already quite grownup and famous was a certain humourist author when he met the editor William Dean Howells. The two became friends, and eventually, Howells wrote a biography about his friendship entitled My Mark Twain.

More like frenemies are certain retired gentlemen of a particular business who settle down together at Wappin’ Wharf. Unfortunately, retirement does not suit them, really, and so we are treated to A Frightful Comedy of Pirates in the play by Charles S. Brooks.

William Blades harbours many ill thoughts and sentiments. And he lists their targets meticulously in The Enemies of Books. While the contents is serious and spans from fire and water to bookbinders and collectors, the tone is seriously tongue-in-cheek.

Learning grammar rules is usually not much fun, as many of us can attest. However, an anonymous author does his very best to teach the essence of English as She is Wrote in a lively and entertaining way.

GK Chesterton definitely knew his grammar to make fun of the English. Visit England where the current, randomly chosen king only wants one thing: to have fun. Nobody really takes him seriously, except for one: Adam Wayne, the Napoleon of Notting Hill.

Kong Ho is also all alone in England. While he may not have met the king, he is intrigued by the strange customs and dutifully reports them to his father in China. His letters were collected by Ernest Bramah and published in The Mirror of Kong Ho.

Another satirical account, this time of the customs of the 16th century, was written by Francisco de Queveda. In his book Historia de la vida del Buscon he describes the life and travels of a young man from the country who is trying to move up in society.

Enjoy – and always keep smiling!

Happy New Year 2019! Any New Year’s Resolutions? “Reading more books” is on your list, right? But sometimes, reading a single book can be enough of a challenge, as the following epic 10 gems from our catalog will show.

What is the longest book you can think of? War and Peace, of course! Leo Tolstoy depicts Russian society in the Napoleonic Wars from 1805 to 1820. He needed 17 volumes for that – and our volunteers needed 64 hours to read it all.

Even longer than this – 66 hours –  is Henry Gray’s textbook on the Anatomy of the Human Body. First published in 1858, it is still used by medical students to this day, although our 1918 edition may be not 100% up-to-date.

LibriVox is very much up-to-date and brings you the complete version of Historias de Herodoto in Spanish. The nine books of ancient history of the Middle East, Persia, and Greece, written by Herodotus around 440 BC was completed only a few days ago, and a single soloist read all 36 hours of it!

Equally long (38 hours even), equally daunting, and packed into a single volume is Middlemarch. It is a study of provincial life in the Midlands of the 1830s, with a hint of social commentary, masterfully written by George Eliot.

Ms. Eliot apparently had a liking for long tomes, since she translated David F. Strauss’ book The Life of Jesus Critically Examined into English. This book about the historical person Jesus clocks in at 58 hours and cost the original author his job.

Much more than that was at stake for Edmond Dantes in the famous novel by Alexandre Dumas. It took him years to become Le Comte de Monte-Cristo, and it takes more than 51 hours to tell the story.

Another life story (in two parts) is that of the scholar Faust. At a mere 11 hours 40 minutes, it seems pretty tame on this list, but don’t forget that Johann Wolfgang Goethe wrote this as play to be performed on stage!

No mere childs play is the story of The Virginians, two brothers who end up at different sides of the American War for Independence. In some 40 hours, William M. Thackeray explores what can happen if you fall for the wrong woman.

Well, not every woman can be a Faerie Queene. With a runtime of 32 hours, Edmund Spenser produced one of the longest poems in English. And he didn’t even complete his goal to “fashion a gentleman in virtuous and gentle discipline”.

Don’t worry, not everything that is long has to be dead serious. Although, in a sense, our longest book on this list – 67 hours in 3 parts – is exactly this: Varney the Vampyre started as a “penny dreadful” serial by Thomas Prest, and became the mother of all vampire stories ever written.

Take your time and enjoy – and we hope that you’ll read more than one book this year! ;-)