Serious Guide to joke writing is for anyone who wants to understand how the joke writing process works. The exercises and examples are excellent. This book is a fantastic examination of how ideas are looked for, and once found, how they can formed into jokes. A book for professionals, beginners, for anyone who has that twinge that they would like to get to the funny, and could do with a map. Do yourself a favour get this travel guide for the comic mind. I signup for many joke services like daily jokes by email. For years I have struggled with the need to continuously develop and deliver new material. I have read dozens of books on the subjects of humor and joke writing, but The Serious Guide to Joke Writing by Sally Holloway is by far the best. Ms Holloway writes in a conversational and engaging style. Her prose is concise and boy, does she ever deliver! The chapters on Joke-Webs, the Hadron Joke Collider and the Surrealist Inquisition are gold mines. A longtime user of mind mapping, I was immediately able to put the joke web and Hadron Joke Collider ideas to use with excellent results. Not to worry though, if you are not familiar with mind mapping Ms Holloway's clear instructions and trouble-shooting guides will have you using both techniques in no time if you are willing to put in the work. The Surrealist Inquisition is proving to be a challenging technique, but one that I will spend more time with since I can easily see its ability to help come up with wildly funny ideas. The book flows, pulling you along and guiding you through each exercise. If you are interested in writing jokes, humorous essays, monologues, or simply adding some punch to your presentations, I cannot recommend this book highly enough. The author lays out some very helpful joke writing methods, most notably the "joke web". These won't write the jokes for you, but they will give you lots of very relevant information to create jokes. The book was easy to follow, and a overall a good quick read. I think perhaps because the author is British and I'm American, there may be a bit of a cultural gap in regards to what is funny. For example, the first chapter is about how to construct puns. I will admit that occasionally a pun is funny, but for the most part they should be avoided. She keeps coming back to puns throughout the book, which for me was a bit like literary nails on a chalkboard. I basically took her methods and removed the bits regarding puns, and that worked better for me. You can also get jokes online and joke videos, especially hidden camera jokes add a new dimension.