Coyote vs. ACME by Ian Frazier. The title essay alone is worth the price of the book.
Without Feathers by Woody Allen. I remember my sides aching when I read this in high school. Like FairyChatMom, I’ll have to see if my sense of humor has changed since then.
Catcher in the Wry by Bob Uecker. I’m not sure if it would hold up for me now, but it killed me when I was younger.
I’ll also second anything by David Sedaris.
Women by Charles Bukowski – especially if you’re getting over a nasty breakup.
Among those not mentioned so far:
Stephen Fry, Paperweight
Tom Sharpe, The Great Pursuit
David Lodge, Changing Places and Small World
Evelyn Waugh, Decline and Fall
P.G. Wodehouse, The Mating Season, among others (especially the story “Goodbye to All Cats”, which always sets me giggling).
Thomas Pynchon, The Crying of Lot 49
Laurence Sterne, Tristram Shandy
Ian Frazier, Coyote v. Acme
I have to agree with curwin on The Onion’s Our Dumb Century. The Titanic and Moon Landing stories are each worth the price of the book themselves.
“Roger that Tranquility Base, you are standing on the f*cking moon.”
Two that made me laugh so hard I hurt:
The Unexpurgated Code by J. P. Donleavey
Pride of the Bimbos by John Sayles
David Sedaris: Naked
Very very funny short stories. I cant wait to read more of his books. If anybody here is a fan of NPR radio, he is one of the reporters. You may have already enjoyed his humor and not even known it.
I agree with:
PG Wodehouse - A sequence from one of his short stories where he describes the effect of a pretty young woman on a male stutterer is burned into my mind. According to Wodehouse this makes him, “sound like a soda siphon trying to recite Gunga Din.”
Also Douglas Adams - I enjoyed the Hitch Hikers trilogy (all 5 books) but I thought “Dirk Gently Holistic Detective Agency” was his true masterpiece.
But no one has mentioned James Thurber!
Aside form his wonderful drawings his essays are among the funniest things ever put down in English.
The Gunseller by Hugh Laurie is laugh out loud funny.
And I definitely agree with anything by David Sedaris.
And not to be a total suck up, but The Straight Dope books never fail to make me howl.
Oh, and I Hated Hated Hated This Movie by Roger Ebert…all of his bad reviews. Fantastic.
jarbaby
Gravity’s Rainbow by Thomas Pynchon. If you don’t laugh at s Skinnerian behaviourist with a toilet stuck on his foot trying to catch a dog, a pie fight between a hot-air balloon and an airplane, or a German navy so specialized it has a toilet ship, then what can you laugh at?
Also any of Samuel Beckett’s novels.
tourbot, see my above post. You might be somebody who’d find “Choke” as funny as I did.
Oh and Don Delilo’s “White Noise.”
And Martin Amis’s “Money” amoung others.
sigh Why do the really cool ones always live in different time zones? How about it, Miss? You likely to be in NYC before I come to Chicago?
Oh Cap
I wasn’t planning on going anywhere anytime before September; I’m training for a charity bike ride in August. What about you? Can’t you sail the Crud ship out here?
(by the way-David Sedaris is doing a reading and book signing on Friday! I AM SOOO THERE!! WOOO HOOO)
Long ago but I remember laughing out loud at -
Terry Southern “The Magic Christian”, “Blue Movie”
Phillip Roth “The Great American Novel”
Woody Allen “The Complete Prose”
Mordecai Richler “Cocksure” and others
Hunter S Thompson “Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas”
Daniel Sugarman “Wonderland Boulevard”
Bill Bryson anything with his name on the cover
In my judgment—Mark Twain’s Roughing It. I’m a bedtime reader. Every time I’ve taken on Roughing It I have kept Mrs. Gelding up half the night with my giggling. Great book. In its own way just as absurd as any of the late, great Douglas Adams’ stuff, or Thurber at his best, as in The Night the Bed Fell on Father
Both “Naked” and “Barrel Fever” by David Sedaris. His writing is so sharp and witty that you can’t help but laugh.
A thousand apologies. I have an excuse though. I was high last night when I wrote that. Or anyways I must have been, seeing as how I forgot to mention Our Dumb Century or Dave Barry.
Not mentioning Douglas Adams was understandable; many posters already had. But not mentioning Barry, who hadn’t yet been mentioned by any other poster and who seems incapable of not being funny, well, my brain must’ve been fried.
Also really good is P.J. O’Rourke. Not quite as funny as the Davester, but in the same league.
I saw a brief excerpt from Science Made Stupid in the back of Omni magazine some 15 years ago, and I’ve wanted the book ever since.
I’ll see your sig, and raise you…
ATTENTION SELF STARTERS: Are you that special kind of “can do” guy or gal who’s looking for a chance to work extremely hard under horrible conditions for your entire life without getting paid and being severely beaten whenever we feel like it, plus we get to keep your children? To find out more about this exciting career opportunity, contact: The South
ahhh…success! Apropos of this thread, in April I posted this question the day before I went on vacation, and promptly forgot about it. Just remembered to look at it and got my answer. So that’s one of the funniest books I’ve ever read.
For those who don’t want to click, it’s “The Last Coin”, by James Blaylock.
I also find Anne Lamott’s non-fiction very funny, esp. “Operating Instructions” and “Bird by Bird”.
Wow, this thread has given me ample reason to spend my mortgage at the bookstore this month.
“When Gravity Fails” had a lot of laugh-out-loud humor and interesting characters, on top of being a damn interesting pseudo-cyberpunk novel. “Snow Crash” is hilarious as well, especially if you see it as a pastiche of the genre.
Boy—looks like I’d better get myself to the COMEDY section of the library. I recognize only half the names mentioned. I’ll begin by re-reading my WOODY ALLEN books.
Authors----
S.J. PERLEMEN
ALEXANDER KING
OSCAR LEVANT
LETTERS FROM THE EARTH–MARK TWAIN
TOPPER–THORNE SMITH
Does anybody know if MARK TWAIN and OSCAR WILDE ever met? Talk about brilliant droppings of the human mind.
::jumps up and down:: Yahoo! Another Cahill fan! I’ve got a pile of his books and a correspondingly large stack of Outside Magazines.
If you like him, you’ll also probably like Peter Moore…
I also dig Bryson - though, like Cahill, some of his side tangeants -while educational - slow down the comedy.
Anything by James Herriot…though the book where he’s in the RAF wasn’t as fun as the rest.
Echo Heron’s “Intensive Care” -the second nursing book of hers is kind of a downer…
Funny Farm - Jay Cronley
Down & Dirty Birding : From the Sublime to the Ridiculous–Here’s All the Outrageous but True Stuff You Ever Wanted to Know About North American birds - Joey Slinger
Diana Gabaldon’s “Outlander” -ok, it wasn’t in the romance section when I bought it in, oh, 1990 (91?)… it was under sci-fi of all the things.
ok, it’s cartoons, but:
Herman Comics… it’s kind of like a step over from Far Sides… I like far sides, but they don’t get a LOL out of me unless they portray imminent doom (“luposlipophobia - fear of being chased by lumberwolves around a kitchen table while wearing socks on a newly waxed floor”)… Herman’s - most of them are just…twisted… (old lady at DMV: “what’s a good hand signal for backing on to a freeway?”)
I’ve thrown together a nice fat list in notepad of all the stuff in this thread I haven’t read yet…cool, always looking for good books.
Meg