Funniest Books You've Read

Howard the Duck

So i'm going away for a week soon and i'm looking for funny books to read. If you go into a book shop and go to the humour section it's normally full of joke books and cartoon strips. I'm more into novels or non-fiction. Some of my favourites are Frank Skinner's autobiography and David Sedaris books.

What are some of yours?

osarusan

Catch 22 might be worth a read.

El Weirdo

I, Partridge.

The audiobook version.

Kovu

I actually found myself laughing out loud at some Discworld books.

Alf Veedersane

osarusan wrote: »

Catch 22 might be worth a read.

+1

Not a comedy by any stretch but some genuine laugh out loud parts. A lot of them because of Milo's antics.

Also, anything from The Flashman Papers. I'd suggest starting with the first installment, Flashman, but after that you could probably read them in any order.

Arsemageddon

A Confederacy of Dunces by John Kennedy Toole or anything by PG Woodhouse

Conall Cernach

PG Wodehouse's Jeeves and Wooster books have always hit the spot with me. His use of the first person narrative never leaves you in any doubt that Bertie Wooster really is the author.

George Macdonald Fraser's Flashman and Terry Pratchett's Discworld books are also funny though of different styles.

Howard the Duck

osarusan wrote: »

Catch 22 might be worth a read.

I've read Catch 22 and i have to say i didn't enjoy it too much except for the ending which i really enjoyed.

SEPT 23 1989

Adolf Hitler: My Part in His Downfall (War Memoirs)by Spike Milligan

JustShon

Kovu wrote: »

I actually found myself laughing out loud at some Discworld books.

+1 on the Discworld books.

The watch series (starts with Guards Guards!! I think?) if you want something a bit more on the dry side or The Colour of Magic for something a bit more off the wall.

cdeb

Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy. Bill Bryson on form is excellent too.

I found Catch22 to be one funny joke stretched over 400 pages.

kazamo

The Throwback by Tom Sharpe
A few others by same author come close Wilt, Ancestral Vices and Porterhouse Blue

FTA69

Brendan Behan's Confession of an Irish Rebel. Basically him wandering around Dublin, Belfast, London and Paris getting blind drunk and insulting everyone he meets. What an absolutely marvellous wit he had.

One eyed Jack

SEPT 23 1989 wrote: »

Adolf Hitler: My Part in His Downfall (War Memoirs)by Spike Milligan

Anything by Spike Milligan really

And Robert Rankin


(Barry the time travelling brussel sprout is just class )

Mr. CooL ICE

The Fridge in a Denim Jacket

Howard the Duck

JustShon wrote: »

+1 on the Discworld books.

The watch series (starts with Guards Guards!! I think?) if you want something a bit more on the dry side or The Colour of Magic for something a bit more off the wall.

Tried to read one of these but just not my sense of humour at all. One series i loved was the Adrian Mole diaries, probably some of my favourite books.

Baron Kurtz

Lucky Jim

JustShon

Howard the Duck wrote: »

Tried to read one of these but just not my sense of humour at all. One series i loved was the Adrian Mole diaries, probably some of my favourite books.

Have you tried the guards / night watch series?

The vast majority of the Discworld books aren't my cup of tea either but everything with Sam Vimes in it is pure gold.

Howard the Duck

JustShon wrote: »

Have you tried the guards / night watch series?

The vast majority of the Discworld books aren't my cup of tea either but everything with Sam Vimes in it is pure gold.

No i haven't , my sister has a ton of disc world books in her house i'll see if she has any of those. cheers

mud

Rik Mayall's Bigger Than Hitler, Better Than Christ

Ross O'Carroll Kelly

Adrian Mole - bit dated but still very funny

Most of Kurt Vonnegut's books are hilariously dark.

FrKurtFahrt

'Best of Myles'(Myles Na Gcopaleen) is a compilation of newspaper articles that I return to again and again, and it leaves me doubled up every time. Also 'The Third Policeman' (as Flann O'Brien) is surreally hilarious.

I second 'A confederacy of dunces'.

(By the way, Fr. Kurt Fahrt is a Flann O'Brien creation, so clearly I'm very biased)

the evasion_kid

Mccarethys bar by pete Mccarthy

Samaris

Definately adding a vote for Discworld - Guards, Guards is a good place to start, or Wyrd Sisters*. Mind you, a lot of people seem to have started with Mort. Good Omens is his collaboration with Neil Gaimen if you want a slightly less fantasy bent on it all.

Bill Bryson is always good for a chuckle, especially when travelling. Notes from a Big Country is great for travelling as it's a collection of his articles in a paper from the 90s so easy to pick up and put down.

Recently, I've read through Mark Forsyth's Horologicon, Etymologicon and Elements of Eloquence - recommend you start with Etymologicon where he picks a word and then travels madly through the English language linking words to it and explaining their connections and background. Very humorous writer with it.

All of them are available on Kindle if you're an e-book reader. Bryson and Pratchett are easily gettable in pretty much any bookshop, Forsyth is an Amazon job though (although kindle helps there).

*Don't recommend you start with Colour of Magic, Light Fantastic, Strata or Dark Side of the Sun (I think) tbh. I quite enjoyed them but they're not the best start off into the world of Pratchett. All very early books of his and he's not really hit his stride in them.

MadYaker

Waiting for Godot

Howard the Duck

Samaris wrote: »

Bill Bryson is always good for a chuckle, especially when travelling. Notes from a Big Country is great for travelling as it's a collection of his articles in a paper from the 90s so easy to pick up and put down.

Recently, I've read through Mark Forsyth's Horologicon, Etymologicon and Elements of Eloquence - recommend you start with Etymologicon where he picks a word and then travels madly through the English language linking words to it and explaining their connections and background. Very humorous writer with it.

All of them are available on Kindle if you're an e-book reader. Bryson and Pratchett are easily gettable in pretty much any bookshop, Forsyth is an Amazon job though (although kindle helps there).
.

Cheers for the recommendations. I've read some Bill Bryson and enjoyed the books i've read but didn't find them particularly funny. The Mark Forsyth books sound very interesting.

Lots of good recommendations, cheers guys

Dirty Dingus McGee

Woody Allens Complete Prose anthology.Contains the Short Story Collections Getting Even,Side Effects and Without Feathers.

Also Mere Anarchy another Short Story Collection from him is very funny aswell.

Dirty Dingus McGee

cdeb wrote: »

Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy. Bill Bryson on form is excellent too.

I found Catch22 to be one funny joke stretched over 400 pages.

I gave up on Catch 22 after 80 pages.

It was like the writer was shouting the joke at you and elbowing you in the side and saying "Funny, isn't it. It's funny this is isn't it".

Corvo

"Low Life" or "Hatcheck Boy" by Mike Duff are very funny, about Manchester criminals.

holy guacamole

Although they tend to deal with quite serious subject matters Irvine Welsh's earlier works are some of the funniest books I've ever read. From Trainspotting through to Ecstasy, The Maribou Stork Nightmares and Glue, he creates worlds and characters that'll have you laughing out loud every few pages.

Another hilarious book which follows a similar style of humour is Kill your Friends by John Niven. Again, the comedy is as black as coal but so long as you'e not easily offended you should love it.

https://www.amazon.co.uk/Kill-Your-Friends-John-Niven/dp/0099592096/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1463658179&sr=1-1&keywords=kill+your+friends

Aglomerado

Monica Dickens' memoirs of housekeeping/ nursing are extremely funny.

One Pair Of Hands (1939)
One Pair Of Feet (1942)

Noo

the evasion_kid wrote: »

Mccarethys bar by pete Mccarthy

I read this on holiday 13 years ago (oh crap that makes me feel old) and remember really enjoying it. I cant remember any particulars so i must give it another read.

MarcoAntonio23

Anything by Spike Milligan or Dr. Seuss

Ragnar Lothbrok

I remember reading Tom Sharpe's Wilt for the first time and laughing out loud. I read all his others in quick succession and found that I got quite bored of them by the end.

Bill Bryson is always good for a laugh too, particularly "Down Under".

the evasion_kid

Noo wrote: »

I read this on holiday 13 years ago (oh crap that makes me feel old) and remember really enjoying it. I cant remember any particulars so i must give it another read.

“The harp player had just fallen off the stage and cracked his head on an Italian tourist’s pint. There was a big cheer, and Con the barman rang a bell on the counter.”

Think this was the opening sentence of the book,Tony hawkes travels around Ireland with a fridge has that same kind of situational humour

Badly Drunk Boy

mud wrote: »

Most of Kurt Vonnegut's books are hilariously dark.

That's who I was going to recommend. Something like Breakfast Of Champions might be a good start.

I'll second Flann O'Brien's The Third Policeman, or any of his stuff.

Boom_Bap

For laughs in your face laughs I like to read the Ross O Carrol Kelly books. I find Bukowski to be really funny as well, but it's a strange type of humour.

Conall Cernach

“Jeeves, I'm engaged."
"I hope you will be very happy, sir."
"Don't be an ass. I'm engaged to Miss Bassett.”
― P.G. Wodehouse, Right Ho, Jeeves

“She fitted into my biggest arm-chair as if it had been built round her by someone who knew they were wearing arm-chairs tight about the hips that season”
― P.G. Wodehouse, Carry on, Jeeves

check_six

Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas by Hunter S Thompson is bonkers, hilarious, and, frankly, terrifying. Thompson was sent to cover a motorbike race and decided to travel to Vegas with his lunatic lawyer mate and enough drugs and booze to sink a battleship. The book tells the story of his various crazy misadventures that inevitably followed.

StupidLikeAFox

The Teleportation Accident by Ned Beauman

I had stopped reading for years and ended up randomly getting in to this. Its really excellent. It occurs in Germany around the war but the main character is going around blissfully unaware of whats happening. Its very good.

Living in Berlin just before the second world war, everything goes wrong for Egon Loeser, and it has nothing to do with the Nazis. In Ned Beauman's terrific second novel, longlisted this week for the Booker, his protagonist, a German set designer, is too sex-starved, self-pitying and, usually, hungover to notice that history is happening all around him.

Zaph

It's already been mentioned, but Good Omens by Terry Pratchett and Neil Gaiman is the funniest book I've ever read. And obviously The Hitch Hikers Guide to the Galaxy is a work of genius. But if you decide to read all the Hitch Hikers books, do not under any circumstances go near the one written by Eoin Colfer. It's the biggest streaming pile of sh*te ever committed to paper. Douglas Adams was probably spinning at high speed in his grave after it was published.

mud

Zaph wrote: »

It's already been mentioned, but Good Omens by Terry Pratchett and Neil Gaiman is the funniest book I've ever read. And obviously The Hitch Hikers Guide to the Galaxy is a work of genius. But if you decide to read all the Hitch Hikers books, do not under any circumstances go near the one written by Eoin Colfer. It's the biggest streaming pile of sh*te ever committed to paper. Douglas Adams was probably spinning at high speed in his grave after it was published.

100% agree on all the above. Why couldn't they just leave it alone?

OP if you're into graphic novels check out the Preacher series by Garth Ennis. It's about to start airing as a TV show on AMC but the novels are ace and the humour is outrageous

Douglas Adams also wrote a book with Mark Cawardine called: 'Last Chance to See' and it is brilliant, Adams' style of writing is sublime.

‘So what do we do if we get bitten by something deadly, then?’ I asked.
He blinked at me as if I were stupid.

‘Well what do you think you do?’ he said. ‘You die of course. That’s what deadly means.’

Easy Rod

El Weirdo wrote: »

I, Partridge.

The audiobook version.

Even the paperback is hilarious, audiobook adds an additional layer but you read it in Partridge's voice regardless.

Birneybau

The Charlie Brooker collections of articles, both on t.v. and general life, are pretty damn funny.

Liam28

holy guacamole wrote: »

Although they tend to deal with quite serious subject matters Irvine Welsh's earlier works are some of the funniest books I've ever read. From Trainspotting through to Ecstasy, The Maribou Stork Nightmares and Glue, he creates worlds and characters that'll have you laughing out loud every few pages.

+1 for Irvine Welsh. Filth is funny as f#@k.

Howard the Duck

holy guacamole wrote: »

Although they tend to deal with quite serious subject matters Irvine Welsh's earlier works are some of the funniest books I've ever read. From Trainspotting through to Ecstasy, The Maribou Stork Nightmares and Glue, he creates worlds and characters that'll have you laughing out loud every few pages.

Another hilarious book which follows a similar style of humour is Kill your Friends by John Niven. Again, the comedy is as black as coal but so long as you'e not easily offended you should love it.

Love Irvine Welsh though i am a couple of books behind . I love his sense of humour but some of the stuff is really dark and messed up not sure it's holiday reading material for me. I'll check out John Niven too, thanks.

the evasion_kid wrote: »

“The harp player had just fallen off the stage and cracked his head on an Italian tourist’s pint. There was a big cheer, and Con the barman rang a bell on the counter.”

Think this was the opening sentence of the book,Tony hawkes travels around Ireland with a fridge has that same kind of situational humour

I'll check that out i liked Tony Hawkes stuff very easy to read and funny.

Birneybau wrote: »

The Charlie Brooker collections of articles, both on t.v. and general life, are pretty damn funny.

That's a good shout i like Brooker's tv stuff especially Black Mirror, looking forward to the new series , think it's gonna be on Netflix.

Rothko

The only books I've laughed out loud at:
Catch-22
Trainspotting
A Confederacy Of Dunces
Don Quixote

Boom_Bap

Welsh's recent books have less humour I have found.
But his older ones are hilarious at times.

chakotha

James Herriot's vet books are full of laugh out loud episodes.

ancapailldorcha

Zaph wrote: »

It's already been mentioned, but Good Omens by Terry Pratchett and Neil Gaiman is the funniest book I've ever read. And obviously The Hitch Hikers Guide to the Galaxy is a work of genius. But if you decide to read all the Hitch Hikers books, do not under any circumstances go near the one written by Eoin Colfer. It's the biggest streaming pile of sh*te ever committed to paper. Douglas Adams was probably spinning at high speed in his grave after it was published.

Bought that recently. Good advice!

Buttros

Zaph wrote: »

It's already been mentioned, but Good Omens by Terry Pratchett and Neil Gaiman is the funniest book I've ever read. And obviously The Hitch Hikers Guide to the Galaxy is a work of genius. But if you decide to read all the Hitch Hikers books, do not under any circumstances go near the one written by Eoin Colfer. It's the biggest streaming pile of sh*te ever committed to paper. Douglas Adams was probably spinning at high speed in his grave after it was published.

Reading Good Omens at the moment. Very funny. Def one of the funniest books I've read. Very enjoyable.

diomed

http://www.amazon.com/How-Talk-Dirty-Influence-People/dp/0671751085