Bridget Jones’ Diary is funny but avoid the sequel.
The Adrian Mole series by Sue Towsend is hilarious.
“Love in a Cold Climate” was written by Nancy Mitford … it’s a fictionalised account of her childhood as a member of an aristocratic family. A nice companion piece is her sister Jessica’s biographical account of the same childhoold, I think it’s called “Hons and Rebels”. The whole family were wildly eccentric, particulary the father.
Another pigeon pair which make me laugh are Jessica Mitford’s expose of the American funeral industry called, I think, “The American Way of Death” … it’s pretty dated now, but she takes on the funeral industry and, um, buries it. Evelyn Waugh’s, “The Loved One”, is fiction, but it covers the same territory in a way. They’re both classics, and very funny if you enjoy that sort of limpid, understated British humour.
I don’t know if it would be available in the US, but John Clarke’s “The Tournament” is a little classic. If you can imagine a series of tennis matches between heavy weight literary and philosophical types, with commentary by Norman Mailer, you might have an idea. Clarke is a brilliant, brilliant comic writer. We’d like to claim him as Australian, but he’s actually from New Zealand.
Portnoy’s Complaint
The Rachel Papers
High Fidelity
just started “Sex, Drugs, and Cocoa Puffs” by Chuck Klosterman. good summer companion.
The Pyrates was the book I immediately thought of when I opened this thread - I can’t recommend this book enough.
And if you like pirates, try The Pirates! In an Adventure With Scientists by Gideon Defoe. It is a very short book, but laugh out loud funny!
What better way to spend (sorta) a first (sorta) post than to plug favorite literature. I have to second Good Omens, and I’ll add something not yet mentioned. The Thirteen and a Half Lifes of Captain Bluebear is the most amazingly funny, inventive and hilarious book I’ve read in a good long while. I demand you go out and buy it…even though USian Amazon doesn’t seem to carry it.
Yes! I have this book on my bookshelf waiting to be read. Picked it up at a friend’s house about a month ago. Glad to hear a good testimonial - it might be next. Thx!
A fifth vote for Good Omens. I wish this team would do another book.
Already mentioned: Terry Prachett and Jasper Fforde. I’ve enjoyed all of Prachett’s “young adult” books, as well as the Discworld series. Another short but fun Connie Willis is Bellwether. I think my favorite Dortmunder (Donald Westlake) is What’s The Worst That Could Happen? And don’t pass over Westlake’s Trust Me On This and Baby, Would I Lie? , if you can find them. The wacky world of the tabloid newspaper!
Another funny P.J. O’Rourke (before he got all vicious): Eat The Rich
My favorite Hiaasen is Striptease - the characters and dialogue are perfect.
Jamie Harrison has written four smacking good murder mysteries, set in small town (but tourist-flooded) Montana. A superb writer, she creates characters whose realistic flaws are good for at least one hilarious (and true) line per page. The Edge of the Crazies, Going Local, An Unfortunate Prairie Occurrence, Blue Deer Thaw
Tim Cahill is a funny travel writer whose articles are collected in several books: Jaguars Ripped My Flesh, Pecked to Death by Ducks, A Wolverine is Eating My Leg and more.
That’s all for now!
I have to say that I took several of the above suggestions in the last week or two and enjoyed them all. Evolution Man (Roy Lewis) was a fine book, although, for my liking wasn’t really that funny. It was still a breezy, thoroughly enjoyable book which was forwarded onto my friend who has a strange, inexplicable caveman fetish. The Bear Went Over the Mountain, on the other hand, was effing hilarious. Highly, highly recommended. So thanks to whoever shot that one my way. And I made another pass at PG Wodehouse, and, well, he rarely misses.
Maybe the revival of this thread will drag some new recommendations out as well, but I just wanted to say bravo and well done. Well done indeed.
Full Moon, the biography of Keith Moon by his personal assistant Dougal Butler is one of the funniest books I ever read, partly due to Moonie’s antics and partly due to the cockney slang it’s written in.
(Re: The Manhattan Beach project.)
Sorry – couldn’t get into it. I read about 80 pages and didn’t crack a smile, so I gave up.
I’ll second this. I’ve laughed out loud at “The Witches of Cheswick” , “Armageddon: the Musical” and “The Book of Ultimate Truth’s” wherein we learn why, amongst other things, when, you disassemble and then reassemble something there are always small screws left over.
More votes here for Pratchett, and a third vote for George Macdonald Fraser’s Flashman series, but particularly “The Pyrates” which I’m reading now for at least the fifth time.
If you love the Errol Flynn movies, you’ll love Fraser’s novel. It is the ultimate pirate book, but he overlays it with a wicked narrative that tweaks the genre, but obviously with affection. It’s saucy and violent and weird and sometimes historically accurate, even if he does mash eras together.
If you let it, it’ll take you out of this world for awhile.
Also, more votes for “Cold Comfort Farm.” The movie adaptation was great, and the book is better. You gotta love a writer who generiously gives 1, 2 and 3 stars to certain passages she feels the reviewers will love.
“Three Men in a Boat” was wonderful as well, an account of an expedition up a British river by three rather hapless men.
Great suggestions, everyone. I gotta add to MY list, now.
Janet Evanovich’s Stephanie Plum series is a real laugh-riot.
I love her books, but they’re getting harder to find. I talked to Jamie about six months ago, and she said she’s (finally) working on a new one! I’m hoping to have her down to my bookstore for a signing soon.
I’ve seen lots of great suggestions here. Let me throw in Spider Robinson’s Callahan series (start with Time Travelers Strictly Cash or Callahan’s Crosstime Saloon), another vote for the Stephanie Plum series by Janet Evanovich, and anything by Patrick McManus (he writes contemporary outdoor humor).
“Candy” by Terry Southern
“Catch-22” by Joseph Heller
“The Great American Novel” by Phillip Roth
That reminds me, “The Magic Christian” by Terry Southern was pretty damn hilarious.
Anything by Bill Bryson cracks me up. I highly recommend In a Sunburned Country which, besides making me laugh harder than almost any book I’ve ever read (on the very first page, even!), got my thouroughly obsessed with Australia.
I second anything by Adams also.
Lies and the Lying Liars Who Tell Them, by my hero, Al Franken
I didn’t find A Short History of Nearly Everything at all humorous. I didn’t even know Bryson wrote humor. Now I’m going to have to find something else of his.