I like conversation-heavy, witty books. Any recommendations?

Examples:

Dave Gorman and Danny Wallace: Are you Dave Gorman?

Bill Maher: True Story

Douglas Adams: Hitchhikers Guide to the Galaxy

Joseph Heller: Catch-22
Does anybody have any recommendations for my next amazon shipment?

Big Trouble by Dave Barry

The Loved One, by Evelyn Wsaugh

I’m not sure they’re witty, but Asimov’s Foundation series is definitely conversation-heavy. Nothing happens on-stage except for a bunch of people talking about what happened elsewhere in the galaxy.

Anything by Nancy Mitford. She was hilarious. I am reading The Pursuit Of Love and enjoying every word.

Steven Brust’s Vlad Taltos novels probably fit the bill–lots of witty repartee flying around, though I don’t know if they’d reach the level of being conversation-heavy exactly. Rex Stout’s Nero Wolfe novels also have flashes of wit, but definitely aren’t conversation heavy.

The Lust Lizard of Melancholy Cove by Christopher Moore. Or just about anything else by him, but that’s a good one to start with. Very funny.

I was also going to recommend Waugh, but I prefer his earlier work, like Vile Bodies. Funny, nasty, brutal.

A Confederacy of Dunces by John Kennedy Toole

South Wind by George Norman Douglas.

And, yes, nearly anything by Evelyn Waugh, especially the first five novels: Decline and Fall, Vile Bodies, Black Mischief, A Handful of Dust, Scoop.

Oh. Don’t buy the copy of South Wind that Amazon lists. It was published in reprint by Dover back in 1982, and used copies are available for dirt cheap at any online booksearch service.

Hitchhikers Guide to the Galaxy is not a conversation-heavy book

Vile Bodies, yes, but really, no one could possibly prefer Decline and Fall of the two!

[Puts away her heavy-duty chain-yanking gloves]

Yeah, well, I’m not sure any of them are all that conversation-heavy. They have more conversation than, say, Lord of the Rings or The Stand, but less than The Sun Only Rises.

Anyway, please go by my examples, not by my way of describing them.

Well, one really must admit that A Handful of Dust would be the most…well…literary of the five.

{vastly irritating smirk}

**Vox **by Nicholson Baker - one long conversation. Kinda sexy, if it grabs you. You might’ve heard of it…

Good Omens by Neil Gaiman and Terry Pratchett.

Tuf Voyaging by George R.R. Martin is one of my favorite science fiction books. Part of its allure is its many witty conversations between the unflappable, phlegmatic hero and various excitable military officers and planetary heads of state. Two thumbs way up!

Infinite Jest by David Foster Wallace.

Also by DFW, The Broom of the System, if you can find it.

The Sot Weed Factor John Barth