Funny Books

Seres

only books that i seem to read are depresssing and sad , although alot of them are really good id really like to pic up a few really funny books , any ideas ?

mud

Me-Moir by Vic Reeves.

LenaClaire

I would suggest just about anything by Terry Pratchett. One of my favorites is the Night Watch.

IvyTheTerrible

I would second Terry Pratchett. Also Douglas Adams, The Hitchikers Guide to the Galaxy. I found Catch 22 by James Heller very funny (but there are lots of people who don't so..).

I liked the first Spike Milligan book about the 2nd world war (I can't just now remember the name).

Three men in a boat is a classic as well.

Denerick

There can be humour in superficially dour books. The Butcher Boy by Pat McCabe for example (The descriptions of rural Monaghan and her people always make me laugh my arse off) Also, Catch 22 x infinitum.

Seres

IvyTheTerrible wrote: »

I would second Terry Pratchett. Also Douglas Adams, The Hitchikers Guide to the Galaxy. I found Catch 22 by James Heller very funny (but there are lots of people who don't so..).

I liked the first Spike Milligan book about the 2nd world war (I can't just now remember the name).

Three men in a boat is a classic as well.

thank you for the suggestions however i am not really a fan of terry pratchett and didnt really enjoy hitchikers guide to the galaxy , will defo source out Catch 22 and some of Spike milligans stuff

IvyTheTerrible

Seres wrote: »

thank you for the suggestions however i am not really a fan of terry pratchett and didnt really enjoy hitchikers guide to the galaxy , will defo source out Catch 22 and some of Spike milligans stuff

No problem, life would be very boring if we all liked the same things!

Anouilh

This book is hilarious:

http://www.amazon.co.uk/Trust-Me-Im-Junior-Doctor/dp/0340951672

It was read aloud on Radio Four and I nearly died laughing...

Hermy

Well Remembered Days by Arthur Matthews is a funny read.

Lame Lantern

Every time this question comes up I simply slap people with a bit of Flann O'Brien. Pick up The Third Policeman, it's a pile of deadly.

"The gross and net result of it is that people who spent most of their natural lives riding iron bicycles over the rocky roadsteads of this parish get their personalities mixed up with the personalities of their bicycle as a result of the interchanging of the atoms of each of them and you would be surprised at the number of people in these parts who are nearly half people and half bicycles."

"When a man lets things go so far that he is more than half a bicycle, you will not see him so much because he spends a lot of his time leaning with one elbow on walls or standing propped by one foot at kerbstones."

alwaysadub

I never laughed so much as when i read Can You Keep A Secret by Sophie Kinsella. It is a bit of a girlie book but doesn't take much concentration!

Morzadec

I don't mean to consistenly plug the same book on this forum, but 'A Fraction of a Whole' by Steve Tolz is absolutely hilarious.

Coileach dearg

Don Quixote - Funniest book of all time

Eliot Rosewater

I read Catch 22 but to be honest I didn't find it that funny!

Breakfast of Champions, by Kurt Vonnegut, is pretty funny. Its a social satire, kind of like Catch 22 I suppose.

Breakfast of Chamions wrote:

Trout trudged onward, a stranger in a strange land. His pilgrimage was rewarded with new wisdom, which would never have been his had he remained in his basement in Cohoes. He learned the answer to a question many human beings were asking themselves so frantically: "What's blocking the traffic on the westbound barrel of the Midland City stretch of the Interstate?"

Denerick

Eliot Rosewater wrote: »

I read Catch 22 but to be honest I didn't find it that funny!

Heretic!

I suppose Hellerisms aren't for everyone. There really seems to be a marmite effect going on with Catch 22...

mackthefinger

Catch 22 has already been mentioned, so I'll throw in 'Something happened' by the same author.

'Confederacy of dunces' by John kennedy Toole is another favourite.

Dibble

I have just finished Spike Milligan's first WW2 book (Adolf Hitler: My Part in His Downfall) and it's hilarious. I've started the second book (Rommel? Gunner Who?: A Confrontation in the Desert) which starts off where the first finished. Also very funny but some people may find some of the language offensive (it was written in the '70s when the use of racist terms were more commonplace and acceptable than they are now).

Anouilh

Dibble wrote: »

I have just finished Spike Milligan's first WW2 book (Adolf Hitler: My Part in His Downfall) and it's hilarious. I've started the second book (Rommel? Gunner Who?: A Confrontation in the Desert) which starts off where the first finished. Also very funny but some people may find some of the language offensive (it was written in the '70s when the use of racist terms were more commonplace and acceptable than they are now).

Spike Milligan uses surrealism and satire to poke fun at racism, which is very different from being offensive. The astonishing squeamishness of the past fifteen years in relation to words makes reading many blogs on the Internet almost painful. I was very relieved when Ali G appeared on television, as he seemed to be following in the Goon tradition.

And for sheer anarchy, you could not beat "Zazie dans le Métro" by Raymond Queneau.


http://www.ac-strasbourg.fr/pedago/lettres/Lecture/Zazieext1.htm

Dibble

Hi Anouilh,

I take your point. I don’t believe Spike Milligan was a racist. In fact, he would have had a much broader view on race than most people of his generation, considering he was born in India.

However, I don’t see him using surrealism or satire to poke fun at racism in the following two paragraphs from the Rommel Who? book:

A line of black clad Arab ladies carrying pitchers moved liquidly by. ‘You’d think their old man would buy ’em a suitcase,’ said Chalky White. ‘How you gonna carry bloody water in a suitcase?’
‘Look, I just think of the ideas, it’s up to the wogs to make ‘em work.’

I’d offer her Champagne (Ovaltine), she would ask me to play ‘Honeysuckle Rose’ on my trumpet and then die. It didn’t happen. And not only did it not happen, here I was by the roadside of some bloody wog village in Africa and she hadn’t even bothered to write to me.

To be honest, I am far from being an authority on Spike Milligan, or satire for that matter, and stand to be corrected on my point above.

Cheers,
Dibble.

Anouilh

Dibble wrote: »

....To be honest, I am far from being an authority on Spike Milligan, or satire for that matter, and stand to be corrected on my point above.

You certainly have found the unfunny side to dear old Spike, though when he spoke in such a way he seems to have somehow put his finger on the touchy question of imperialism and a colonial mentality.

http://old.chortle.co.uk/books/bkfeatures/spike.html

Jesus Juice

Frankie Boyles autobiography is really really funny.I find comedians dumb down there stuff in books but if anything Boyle has gone even more abstract,its great!

LenaClaire

Another good funny author is David Sedaris. He writes books of short stories about growing up that are all based on his life.