Though it does start with him up to his shoulder in the back of a cow, IIRC.
I agree. My ex-wife and I used to haunt used bookstores, and she went through a “I want to read something that isn’t necessarily for adults” phase. We collected many Young Adult and children’s books that way, that were not very heavy, and just plain nice stories.
She did quite like Shel Silverstein’s poetry; particularly Falling Up, and Where the Sidewalk Ends. Both consist of poems and illustrations by Silverstein. They’re meant for children, but my ex quite liked them, and I’d be surprised if she could not rattle off “Sarah Cynthia Silvia Stout Would Not Take The Garbage Out” from memory today.
A very different category: a lot of Gerald Durrell’s books are a fun read. Yes, Durrell was a respected naturalist who took animal conservation seriously, but his recounting of the adventures he had on animal collecting expeditions, are quite amusing, bordering on hilarious in spots. Try My Family and Other Animals; Birds, Beasts, and Relatives; and Fillets of Plaice to start with.
Clovenhoof by Heide Goody and Iain Grant.
Satan is fired from ruling hell by a board of saints disappointed in his mediocre metrics and condemned to live in Birmingham, England. If you like it there are seven books in the series.
One of my favorite light and witty and engaging reads is To Say Nothing of the Dog, by Connie Willis.
It’s part historical fiction, part sci fi, part tribute to Three Men in a Boat by Jerome K. Jerome, and part tribute to the first detective novel, The Moonstone, by Wilke Collins, and more.
Let Your Mind Alone! by James Thurber, which shows that self-help books in 1937 were as stupid then as they are now:
One more I recalled by Durrell: Three Singles to Adventure. He describes an expedition to Surinam, where he finds a Surinam toad (Pipa pipa)–“the toad with pockets,” as he says. It has an extraordinary life cycle where the baby toads emerge from “pockets” on their mother’s back. Durrell describes the birth, as he watched it.
It sounds dull, but Durrell’s wit and description are light and suitable to any reader. As a side note, the Toronto Zoo had some Pipa toads, and Durrell’s book influenced me to “adopt” them for a number of years, when I lived in Toronto. Why? Because they were so ugly that nobody else was likely to.
The matchbox full of baby scorpions is particularly worth a giggle.
if you like cozy mysteries Laurence blocks burglar series is a light witty read … and yeah it’s almost the same ending in every book but after the first few you’re there for the characters and not the overarching story …
oh another series along the same lines is the Dortmunder series by Donald e Westlake
It’s basically comic lessons on how not to be a crook …
How about some Christopher Moore? Light and easy to read. The first book of his I read had me stopping every page to read a quote to my wife.
Just beware that he’s very self-referential. In most cases that doesn’t matter, but some of the later books you won’t understand what’s going on until you’ve read the earlier books. So read Blood-sucking Fiends before reading You Suck and Bite Me (in that order). and read Fool before you read The Serpent of Venice and Shakespeare for Squirrels 9again, in that order). Secondhand Souls won’t make sense unless you read A Dirty Job first.
(Fool perfectly encapsulates Moore. It’s the story of King Lear, told from the point of view of his fool. Moore takes the bleakest, most depressing and pessimistic of Shakespeare’s plays and make it hilarious. Even the part where Gloucester gets his eyes gouged out. It’s also downright obscene.)
I’ve chosen to read Merry-Making in Old Russia by Evgeny Popov. It’s supposed to be about life in Soviet Russia, but so far it’s about drinking. I bought the book used some years ago, and never got around to reading it. So, I’m doing that now.
But please keep posting recommendations. I’m very interested in them.
By the way, about Terry Pratchett, is his stuff computer geek heavy? Because I’m less likely to lean towards that if it is.
One fiction, one non-fiction suggestion:
Fiction: “The Eyre Affair” by Jasper Fforde. Literary detective Thursday Next chases down a criminal who is rewriting the endings of classic novels.
Non-fiction: If you are a fan of “Jeopardy!” see if you can find a copy of Bob Harris’ “Prisoner of Trebekistan”, in which he recounts his experience as a five-time champ, Tournament of Champions participant, and Jeopardy! All-Star.
This sounds cool. Is this a recent publication? Is finding a copy difficult?
Originally published in 2006. I bought a copy back when it first came out, so I’m not sure if it is still available. I’d suggest checking Amazon or your local public library.
Seconding the recommendations of Pratchett (although I’d recommend starting with Guards! Guards!), Block’s Burglar series, and Wodehouse. To which I’ll add Rex Stout’s Nero Wolfe stories.
There are forty-some books, a mix of full-length novels and short stories (three to a book) featuring the corpulent, reclusive, orchid-loving detective and his smart-aleck sidekick, Archie Goodwin.
They’re virtually all set in Manhattan and environs, and were written and take place from the mid-1930s through the mid-1960s (with the protagonists showing no signs of aging). The mystery aspects of the stories are not as precise and well-plotted as, say, Agatha Christie’s, but as Lawrence Block says in an introduction to one of them, we keep coming back to them because we enjoy being in the company of Archie and Wolfe (almost no one calls him Nero).
As with the Discworld ouevre, I’ve read all of them at least three times.
Definitely. My personal favorite is Lamb - The Gospel According to Biff, Christ’s Childhood Friend. Which manages to be uplifting, blasphemous and funny as hell all at the same time. It also explains a great many things, like why Jews eat Chinese food at Christmas and why rabbits are associated with Easter.
Bill Bryson. Light, funny, and yet informative. Read them all.
See the OP.
If you like history, dip your toe into the Aubrey-Maturin series by Patrick O’Brian, with the first of about 20 novels, Master and Commander. Erudite, deadpan sea adventure stories set in the Napoleonic era. We became addicted to them in the 1980’s when no one seemed to know about them, now they are famous. Very fun to read.
If you like crime novels as a genre, Donald Westlake’s John Dortmunder books are a hoot, starting with The Hot Rock.
I could never get into Patrick O’Brien’s densely written sea epics. If you’re looking for light sea tale reading, I’d suggest the works of Cecil Scott Forester, especially his Horatio Hornblower series. Very easy reads and engrossing stories. He eventually put out a dozen books in the series. But he also wrote The African Queen (famously filmed with Humphrey Bogart and Kathryn Hepburn and The Good Shepherd (recently filmed as Greyhound with Tom Hanks in 2020. There are other nautical and war books by him, several of which were the basis for movies.
It’s hard to find his books i print these days, but they’re out there as e-books on Kindle or other platforms, and as recordings on Audible.