Sedaris is hilarious! I love all his stuff.
Perhaps his wit is too dry for you - Algernon?
Peach, mojave66… I can’t explain why I find Evanovich funny but Sedaris not. Humor is a many splendored thing, and I enjoy virtually all styles.
I like dry wit, so that’s not it. Like a dry wine, it requires a somewhat educated palate, which appeals to me.
Perhaps it’s age related. I’d speculate that Sedaris is popular with readers younger than 50 (my age).
I’m a skooosh over 50 myself and I also found Sedaris in print to be extremely disappointing. Another data point.
And this is true even though I tried him after I saw an adaptation of his one-man play about being an elf at a department store over Christmas that was screamingly funny, so I really thought I would get into his stuff.
Nothing.
C.K. Dexter Haven, sorry but I don’t talk real good. (smilie appropriate but understood to be despised belongs here.)
To rephrase-
And he’s not contemporary, but he’s still funny to me: Jerome K. Jerome.
JK Jerome wrote Three Men in a Boat. I can’t look at a can of cling peaches without giggling to this day.
Max Barry- his book Jennifer Government is the most amusing book I’ve read this year. (and I read Good Omens this year for the record.) The scene with the guy chained to a mini-fridge is priceless.
You can read the first chapter here http://www.maxbarry.com/jennifergovernment/
Bought some Carl Hiaasen tapes (recorded by Ed Asner) to listen to in the car on long road trips. Had to stop because I nearly ran off the road laughing.
Bimbos of the Death Sun; the sequel is Zombies of the Gene Pool.
I find Lawrence Block’s Bernie Rhodenbarr(sp?) novels pretty amusing also.
I had gotten the third or fourth Stephanie Plum book by accident (non-cancellation of a Mystery Guild mailing) and after reading it immediately tracked down the earlier ones, then bought the next as soon as it came out. Haven’t read the last few because I lost track of which one I had last read.
re earlier comments on Sedaris: I’m 50 & I find David Sedaris’ books hysterically funny.
Wish the guy who wrote " Confederacy of Dunces" hadn’t died…that book is so funny.
There are a couple of contemporary sci-fi writers who have similar wit as Douglass Adams - not as good as the master tho. Will try to find their names at library website. One I read was called “Waiting for Godalming” and had some really funny parts.
Totally ditto on “Confederacy of Dunces” and on Sedaris. If you’d like a free sample of Sedaris, Esquire has lots and lots of articles by him here ; one of my favorites not to have yet appeared in his books is the Six to Eight Black Men .
Fanny Flagg’s FRIED GREEN TOMATOES is laugh out loud funny, but it will also make you cry. If you’ve seen the movie but not read the book, the book has a lot more material.
My reaction to Sedaris, from a post to the 50-Book Challenge on LJ: “Is he supposed to be funny? Somebody here said he is, but I don’t like either of them. Mean and comtemptuous sort of “humour”.”
On the other hand, the people who mentioned Evanovich, Westlake, Block (he also does the bleakest hard-boiled novels I’ve ever seen), and Kinky Friedman are all right on track.
A couple more:
He’s not contemporary, but P.G. Wodehouse cracks me up, especially the Jeeves books.
Tim Holt has written a bunch of fantasy (sort of) novels with strange situations (for example, Snow White and the Seven Samurai, and another about the old Norse gods escaping from their nursing home).
Well, I was coming here to mention him. Particularly t mention that the two funniest books I’ve read lately were “Lamb” and “I, Lucifer” by Duncan Glenn. It works particularly well if you read them right after each other; the absolute truth about Jesus, and the absolute truth about Satan. In addition to being very funny, they both seem very plausable to me.
Donald Jack wrote some wonderful novels about a Canadian who ends up in the RCF during WWI. The first and best is Three Cheers For Me. I nearly choked with laughter before I finished the first page.
P. G. Wodehouse.
I’ll second Kinky Friedman. His insights into life and especially life in New York City are a hoot.
For those of you nuts about Confederacy of Dunces, go find a book called Handling Sin by Michael Malone. It’s just as good and funny (if not more so) than CoD.
For what it is Bridget Jones Diary was really funny. But its also annoying
I was going to pipe up with Helen Fielding also- Bridget Jones is one of the books you just laugh out loud at (I liked the movie too but the book is even more rewarding). What is even better is the sequel- Bridget Jones- The Edge Of Reason.
I’m a Jane Austen fan- big time- so I really enjoy reading that line into the Bridget Jones works.
A surprisingly funny – actually, hilarious – novel is The Gold Coast, by Nelson Demille. He usually writes spy and thriller books, which are not my bag, but a friend of mine insisted I read it and within the first couple of pages I was laughing hysterically. It’s about a mob boss who moves next door to a really WASPy family on Long Island’s Gold Coast. Warning – it turns really dark by the end, though.
I was browsing in the Mystery Section at my local Beans and Nibbles looking for an Ian Rankin mystery. Someone had misfiled Robert Rankin’s “Fandom of the Operator” on the shelf. I started leafing through it and was captivated. It is hilarious and interestingly bizarre.
Try Patrick McManus. His books are laugh out loud funny. Even Rancid Crabtree (one of his recurring characters) would agree.