There comes a point in life when you stop looking for “inspiring”, “profound” or “life-changing” books. You just want something funny enough, daft enough, and sharp enough to make you forget the state of the world, your inbox, and the fact that your tax return is probably overdue.

That’s where the absurd humour book comes in. Not the politely “funny” book. Not the vaguely ironic novel some critic will call “delicious” before heading off for a dry white wine with equally miserable company. No: the genuinely absurd book, the one that starts from an objectively stupid idea and pursues it with almost alarming discipline.

If that’s what you’re after, for yourself or as a gift, here’s what to keep in mind.

A good absurd book often starts from a completely ridiculous premise

Absurd humour works when it takes an already slightly stupid idea and treats it with wildly disproportionate seriousness. The simpler the premise, the funnier it can become. A man talking to his toaster like a financial advisor? Great. A fake manual on the political and sexual behaviour of a house cat? Even better.

This is exactly why a book like What to Do If My Cat Is Gay? works so well in this category: the premise is ridiculous — your cat turns woke, racist, a conspiracy theorist, promiscuous or an insufferable Londoner — yet it’s treated like a genuine survival guide, complete with warning signs, solutions and increasingly catastrophic conclusions. All the comic mechanics are there: a stupid concept, pushed methodically until logic itself gives out.

The absurd works better when it’s grounded in something true

The real secret is that pure absurdity isn’t enough on its own. For a funny book to survive more than three pages, it needs a foundation of truth: a modern-day obsession, a social hypocrisy, a relationship dynamic, a cat owner’s fixation, the behaviour of an exhausted middle-class type, something the reader recognises instantly.

With cats, it’s almost too easy: every owner already projects a deranged inner life onto them. The cat is offended, manipulative, jealous, left-wing, burnt out, having an identity crisis, radicalised, snobbish… the absurd book just has to scoop up this collective neurosis and turn it into a system.

The best absurd humour doesn’t try to be “respectable”

A good absurd humour book doesn’t apologise. It doesn’t hold your hand to reassure you “don’t worry, this is tongue-in-cheek”. It moves forward with the confidence of a con artist. It states its most ridiculous premises with bureaucratic calm, then leaves you to deal with the consequences.

That’s exactly why fake guides work so well: they give nonsense a noble shape. The moment an absurdity is presented as a method, a manual, a diagnosis or a procedure, it instantly becomes funnier.

Short-form is often absurd humour’s best ally

Absurd humour needs rhythm. A good book in this genre doesn’t have to be a sprawling 600-page novel; it’s often a text with multiple entry points, a collection, a series of short chapters, something you can open anywhere and be immediately immersed in, with no need for memory or concentration.

That’s also what makes this kind of book so practical as a gift: no need to “push through the slow start”, no need to wait until page 143 for things to kick off. You can dip in, laugh, close it, come back later, read a bit aloud, or humiliate a loved one with a well-chosen extract.

The perfect absurd book is one you immediately want to quote

Excellent test: when you read a passage, do you want to read it to someone else? Does it make you want to send a photo of the page to a friend, say “this is literally you”, or give it to someone whose particular brand of madness you know inside out? If so, you’re probably onto the right thing.

A book like What to Do If My Cat Is Gay? works exactly this way: it’s designed to trigger instant recognition. You read a chapter about a boomer cat, a woke cat, a conspiracy-theorist cat or a Catalan cat, and instantly know exactly who to send it to.

Conclusion

If you’re looking for an absurd humour book, the right question isn’t “is it clever?” but rather: does the book fully commit to its own stupidity, turning it into something precise, well-built and genuinely delightful?

A good absurd book takes a profoundly dim-witted idea and treats it with the discipline of a parliamentary report. That’s exactly the charm of What to Do If My Cat Is Gay?: underneath its bad-joke exterior, the book understands one essential truth — cats are already deeply absurd creatures, all they needed was an ideology.

And from there, anything becomes possible.