David Thorne Books in Order

If you want the breakout book: The Internet is a Playground → I'll Go Home Then, It's Warm and Has Chairs. The Unpublished Emails. → Look Evelyn Duck Dynasty Wiper Blades. We Should Get Them
If you want classic email chaos: The Ducks in the Bathroom Are Not Mine → Everyone's Friendly and Nobody Gets Upset
If you want workplace satire: I Wont Be Coming Into Work Today Because You're All Dickheads → Deadlines Don't Care If Janet Doesn't Like Her Photo → Burning Bridges to Light the Way
If you want the newer books: How to Talk to Girls and Lizards → Yesterday's Words at Tomorrow's Prices → Just Because It Happened To You Doesn't Make It Interesting

David Thorne was born in Geraldton, Western Australia, on February 23, 1972. When he was four, his family moved to Adelaide, South Australia, and that is where he mostly grew up. He went to Modbury North Primary School, then Banksia Park International High School.

Before readers knew him as the guy sending impossible emails, he was headed for a design career. In 1991 he entered the University of South Australia and earned a bachelor's degree in visual communication. He worked as a user interface designer, built systems for the printing and packaging world, started his own design businesses, and in 2001 became Design Director at an Adelaide branding agency.

That background matters. Thorne's comedy is built on wording, layout, tone, and the tiny cracks in official language. He notices vague requests, pompous rules, and badly written instructions, then follows them so literally that the whole situation tips over.

A badly drawn spider changed his life.

In 2007 he started 27bslash6. In 2008, an email exchange about an overdue bill went viral after Thorne tried to settle it with a sketch of a seven-legged spider. Traffic to the site exploded, and a much wider audience got a clear sample of what he does best, answering nonsense with perfect seriousness and refusing to stop at the sensible point. His work later showed up on the BBC, The Late Show with David Letterman, The Ellen DeGeneres Show, and Late Night with Conan O'Brien.

His breakout book, The Internet is a Playground, was released in the United States on April 28, 2011, and reached number four on the New York Times Best Seller list. By July 2019 it had sold more than a million copies. It is still the best place to meet the full Thorne package, viral email chains, office absurdity, forms, complaints, and jokes that somehow get funnier the longer he commits to them.

He kept building from there with books like I'll Go Home Then, It's Warm and Has Chairs, Look Evelyn Duck Dynasty Wiper Blades. We Should Get Them, That's Not How You Wash a Squirrel, and Walk It Off, Princess. Later books such as Deadlines Don't Care If Janet Doesn't Like Her Photo and Everyone's Friendly and Nobody Gets Upset kept returning to the same rich territory, office culture, design work, petty bureaucracy, and everyday misunderstandings that spiral out of control.

He writes a lot about coworkers, neighbors, pets, family life, and the little systems that are supposed to keep things orderly but usually do the opposite.

That is a big part of why readers stick with him. The setup is often small, a customer service note, a design brief with no budget, an officious complaint, a workplace rule nobody needed, but Thorne treats it like a stage for escalation. He can be sharp, rude, and very funny, but there is usually a strong sense that he understands how ridiculous modern adult life can be.

His personal life changed quickly around the same time his public profile did. He met Holly in 2008 and married her in 2009. In 2010 he moved from Australia to the United States, and he now lives in Virginia with Holly and their son Sebastian, works remotely for a Washington, D.C., branding agency, and has said that his spare time goes to writing, tennis, ATVs, travel, and work on his boat.