I want to read something funny. Any suggestions?
Ben
Terry Pratchett…Douglas Adams…
The Princess Bride - William Goldman
Hitchiker’s Guide to the Galaxy - Douglas Adams
Discworld Series - Terry Prachett
Still Life with Woodpecker - Tom Robbins
Skinny Legs and All - Tom Robbins
Jitterbug Perfume - Tom Robbins
Catch-22 - Joseph Heller
Return of the Twelves (Okay, a kid’s book. Bite me. 
) - Pauline Clark
Cat’s Cradle Kurt Vonnegut
Good Omens Neil Gaiman and Terry Pratchett
Terry Southern: The Magic Christian
Double Whammy and Tourist Season by Carl Hiassen(sp?)
The Hot Rock by Donald Westlake
Burglars Can’t Be Choosers by Lawrence Block
Bill, the Galactic Hero by Harry Harrison
The Lazlo Letters by Don Novello
The Complete Book of Guys by Dave Barry
Miami Blues by Charles Willeford(sp?)
Rush Limbaugh is a Big Fat Idiot by Al Franken
Give War a Chance by PJ O’Rourke
What Do We Have for the Witnesses, Johnny? by Gary Trudeau
‘a confederacy of dunces’ by john kennedy toole
Dave Barry Slept Here: A Sort of History of the United States by Dave Barry
Hype & Glory by William Goldman
I third The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy by Douglas Adams
Letters from the Earth by Mark Twain (his other short stories are good too)
Straightman by Richard Russo
Benlormat, you’ll come back and let us know what you picked, right?
Ooooh. That’s a great one!
Anything by David Sedaris!
I hear Mr. Wodehouse can be quite humorous…
Island of the Sequined Love Nun
Coyote Blue
Practical Demonkeeping
all by Christopher Moore
Anything by Patrick McManus. True American humor that most can relate too. I wish I knew a Rancid Crabtree when I was growing up.
Anything by Dave Barry.
anything by David Sedaris (my favorite is naked, followed by me talk pretty one day)
Fraud by David Rakoff
the title essay of David Foster Wallace’s A Supposedly Fun Thing I’ll Never Do Again
and I’ll second the Discworld books and The Princess Bride (written by the same person who wrote the screenplay)
Classic American humorists:
Robert Benchley
James Thurber
S. J. Perelman
Corey Ford
Richard Armour
Art Buchwald
Ogden Nash
Woody Allen
Roy Blount Jr.
H. Allen Smith
Everything by Joe Queenan. His movie reviews/celebrity interviews are priceless, and his observations on American pop culture (or lack thereof) is dead on. He is a snob–I dare you to read Red Lobster, White Trash, Blue Lagoon without once saying "but I like . . . "
My favourite humourous writer is Paul Quarrington.
You may be familiar with the film adaptation of Whale Music. The book is much better, but still not one of my favourites.
Highly recommended:
Civilization: Its Part in My Downfall. Film students will relish the many in-jokes. Everyone else will piss themselves over the “fuck-pigs.”
Mr. Quarrington often writes what superficially appear to be “Sports Novels”, which should be enough to turn any semi-literate person off – however, he’s an amazingly gifted writer. Gifted enough that I read everything of his, except the “sports” themed novels (I am phenomenally unmoved by sports,) and then read and enjoyed them all, too. Not your typical “sports” novels. Logan in Overtime, for example gives us a protaganist who is a goalie for the losingist hockey team in Canada-- and, although the book is ostensibly about the longest overtime game in hockey history, not a single hockey play is described. Mr. Quarrington tends to focus more on Logan’s sincere belief that his kneecaps are actually hostile intelligences from the Sirius system, out to ruin his life.
Hell, in Home Game he writes compellingly about a baseball game. (No mean feat- baseball is about a banal and pointless an activity as I know of.) But this is a baseball game between a troupe of stranded Circus freaks and a bunch of dour religious extremists, for whom the game is a deadly-serious spiritual metaphor, or something. The protaganist, Nathaniel “Crybaby” Isbister has quite a history himself.
Dear god.
Yes, Quarrington is my favourite funny guy, but, like Vonnegut, his work is not merely funny – it’s insightful and often profound. He’s the only author that consistently makes laugh out loud since Douglas Adams – and I was about thirteen when I was reading Douglas Adams – I think that my threshold is somewhat higher now that I’m a bitter, jaded old man.
Right on Weird AL, I never read his books in public after people thought I was crazy while reading Dave Barry in Cyberspace. Dave Barry Slept Here will be one of the funniest books you’ve ever read if you know American history. Also, Art Buchwald is worth reading.
Kinky, Kinky, Kinky…Friedman, that is. In the mystery section.
Also get one of his CDs for background music.