Anything by Loretta LaRoche
Introduction to Quantam---cute cartoons!!!
Bill Mahr - New Rules!!!
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Anything by Loretta LaRoche
Introduction to Quantam---cute cartoons!!!
Bill Mahr - New Rules!!!
Anything by Wilde
Anything by Douglas Adams and Terry Pratchett will always get a laugh out of me. Nick Hornby's High Fidelity, Wilde's The Importance of Being Ernest and Gide's Les Faux Monayeurs.
Quote:
Originally Posted by Jack_Aubrey
.....yup, funny stuff...........
I saw a speech of hers once, and could not have laughed harder, as she has such a contagious optimism and good spirit that brings smiles to anyone's face. Oddly, I had no idea she wrote books, but only thought her, perhaps, a motivational speaker through humor. :DQuote:
Originally Posted by PistisSophia
I thought that Don Quixote Book I my Cervantes was hilarious, soda shootin' out the nostrils funny.
Forgive me its by Cervantes, not my Cervantes. I will practice more diligence in future posts.
I thought "The Importance of being earnest" was really funny. My favourites, though, are by Idilko von Kürthy. Alas, I think there aren't any translation of her books, yet.
If you want to laugh so hard you loose your breath...
Dave Barry
Pat McManus
Douglas Adams (especially his Dictionary Deeper Meaning of Liff written with John Lloyd
Ambrose Bierce's The Devil's Dictionary
Lewis Grizzard (Some get a little too earthy for my taste, but the man's killingly funny)
Robert Fulghum (He's a modern philosopher with a wicked wit and an hilarious outlook on life.) ;) ;) ;) :lol: :lol: :lol:
Don quixote ,
Hocus Pocus by Vonnegut.
Slaughter house 5
breakfast of champions
ham on rye and post office by bukowski
the things they carried
huckleberry finn
Anything by P G Wodehouse makes me laugh, especially the Jeeves and Wooster books. In fact I am reading Stiff Upper Lip, Jeeves at the moment and it's wonderful,Light as a soufflé but witty and entertaining. If you haven't read him I strongly recommend him to you. If everyone read Wodehouse there would be no depression in the world!
maybe i'm just way too happy in general, but i don't think i've ever read a book that didn't make me laugh, although some made me laugh more than the others.
the latest book that i remember laughing at more than ten times is nick hornby's a long way down. :D
Some people I know mentioned this book as a very funny one also..However, haven't got the chance to read it...
Quote:
Originally Posted by Themis
That's pretty much the same for me too :D... Right now I'm reading this book called The Year My Life Went Down the Loo- by Katie Maxwell. It's hilarious :lol:Quote:
Originally Posted by underground
Maybe you are, because I can not imagine someone's laughing when s/he read books like Crime and Punishment..
Perhaps.. ironic laughs?!
Quote:
Originally Posted by underground
I don't know whether this entirely counts as it isn't really fiction but a book that I can't stop laughing at is 'The World according to Jeremy Clarkson.' obviously by Jeremy Clarkson.
I love his TV show 'Top Gear' despite not knowing anything about cars, because it is really funny and the book is just as good.
It's filled with loads of small chapters with his opinion on everything from health and safety laws to the European Union and is a great read!
"A Prayer for Owen Meany" by John Irving: very deftly written, Owen and his best friend are very comical yet heart-breaking characters. Very good read!
I stumbled across the title to this thread while tracking a URL that had entered my web site so I registered today to respond and offer a challenge to those who care about this timeless question.
I am the author of the golf book - 'Who Were the Red Ball People?'.
According to Golf Today Magazine:
“‘Who were the Red Ball People?’ rivals the famed 'Golf in the Kingdom' but with much more panache and hilarity.”
“. . . This may be the funniest book I have read in my adult life. The specific vocabulary created by the author and the terms WILL find their way into the golf lexicon, I am almost certain!”
{snip}
The Master and Margarita by Mikhail Bulgakov was v.funny, in a clever way
Hard Times by Charles Dickens was v. funny in certain places, particularly when "facts" are mentioned e/g: "In this life we want nothing but Facts, sir: nothing but Facts" and "ready to have imperial gallons of Facts poured into them.." Reminds me of an awful French teacher I used to have lol ;)
Most of the books I would mention have already been listed, A Confederacy of Dunces, Master and Margarita and I would add Bulgakov's short story, Heart of a Dog, if simply for the dog's 'human' name, Polygraph Polygraphovich and the greatest thing is when someone gets his name wrong and calls him Telegraph Telegraphovich. :lol: :lol: People have already mentioned Terry Pratchett and Douglas Adams and I would like to add a shout out to Adams' The Long Dark Tea Time of the Soul, the scene with a naked Thor with floorboard glued to his back is absolutely priceless and to add to the Pratchett thing, Good Omens, the book he wrote with Neil Gaiman is the funniest story about the apocalypse ever written. ;) Everything is Illuminated had some truly hilarious moments and Infinite Jest also had moments of comic genius.
Hmm, I think I'm the first to post this but I find many passages of Hemingway quite funny and I laugh out loud quite frequently throughout many of his novels. Particularly in 'A Farewell to Arms' mostly during the first bit of the book some of the conversations just made me laugh out loud.
Anything by P.G Wodehouse is always uplifting, and I think most of the Jeeves stories have made me laugh. Then there are a few Evelyn Waugh novels (Vile Bodies, mainly - and certain parts of Brideshead Revisited). Oscar Wilde, of course...
And then there's Bridget Jones's Diary. :)
The Hitchiker's Guide to the Galaxy by Douglas Adams....
/Claes
J.C. Jerom "Three men in a boat" is probably my favorite.
Short stories by O'Henry, Zoschenko(Russian author), Max Beerbohm
Hasek's "Good soldier Svejk" is bloody hilarious. The Russian equivalent is Voynovich's "Adventures of Chonkin"
the jungle books by rudyard kipling made me laugh last night :D
Both Don Quixote and A Confederacy of Dunces are hilarious.
Faust, Goethe.
Last one that gave me big smiles: Lady Windermere's Fan by Wilde. Hillarious :D
I laughed a lot when reading To kill a mockingbird by Harper Lee recently. The children's perspective is just too hilarious :D A great book.
puddinhead wilson by mark twain
Im glad that Heart of a Dog makes you laugh :) but imho it serious story enough. Try Ilf & Petrovs "The Golden calf". Guess you`ll be pleased. ;)Quote:
Bulgakov's short story, Heart of a Dog, if simply for the dog's 'human' name, Polygraph Polygraphovich and the greatest thing is when someone gets his name wrong and calls him Telegraph Telegraphovich.
Mark Twain and Ilf & Petrov are favourite
I realize it's a serious book and he's making some very serious points but there are humorous moments...such as the mix-up with the name. That's one of the things I enjoy about Bulgakov, in the midst of these very serious and philosophical novels and stories there are these moments, a phrase or a conversation or a scene that just kills you because they are so profoundly funny. He can go back and forth between farce and profound so seemlessly.Quote:
Originally Posted by Kameo
Midsummer's Night Dream- Shakespeare
Tristam Shandy- Laurence Sterne
Don Quixote- Cervantes
Myra Breckenridge- Gore Vidal
Miss Lonelyhearts- Nathaniel West
Tin Drum- Gunter Grass
Lolita- Nabokov
The Confederacy of Dunces- Toole
The Physicists- Friederick Durrenmatt
As I Lay Dying- Faulkner
various short stories- Flannery O'Conner
Master and Margarita- Bulgakov
The Fetishist- Michel Tournier
various tales from the Decammeron- Boccaccio
Tartuffe- Moliere
Confessions- Rousseau
A Modest Proposal- Swift
various short stories- Franz Kafka
Mason and Dixon- Thomas Pynchon
Everything is Illuminated- Jonathan Safron Foer
various short stories- Tomasso Landolfi (especially Gogol's Wife)
I don't doubt there are many more... and there are many books that can inspire laughter followed by sadness or seriousness like the graveyard scene in Hamlet or any number of the books in this list. I might also note that many of the books on my list are undoubtedly of a rather dark humor (As I Lay Dying) or more of a dead-pan irony (Kafka) than an easy guffaw.
Heller - Catch 22 (funniest book I've ever read)
Safran Foer - Everything Is Illuminated as well (although it seems that ultimately the book is funny as an attempt to hide the fact that it's tragic)
Eggers - A Heartbreaking Work of Staggering Genius
Dostoevsky - The Brothers Karamazov (mostly serious, but the one part that made me laugh was Madame Khohklakov's typical ramblings of an old woman; we've all heard old women going on and on and on exactly like her)
Oscar Wilde - The Importance of Being Earnest
Samuel Beckett - Waiting for Godot
Federico Andahazi - The Anatomist
Bulgakov - The Heart of a Dog
Gogol - Diary of a Madman, The Nose
Nabokov - Lolita
Shakespeare - A Midsummer Night's Dream, The Tempest (the beast with two backs is hilarious)
Voltaire - Candide
I can't say I found Miss Lonelyhearts or As I Lay Dying particularly funny books, though. Not sure where you found the humor, both of them seemed to be racked with utter hopelessness.
What's hard to explain? There's some great quotes.Quote:
Originally Posted by faintingink
VLADIMIR. You should have been a poet.
ESTRAGON. I was (Gesture at his rags.) Isn't that obvious?
Or how about Vladimir saying, after a full minute or two of silence, "That passed the time."
How about Vladimir rushing offstage to urinate? Or Lucky's "thinking"? Or the hat-switching routine? There's lots of humor in Waiting for Godot, although you have to see it rather than just read it to really appreciate the humor in it.
Most of these have been mentioned but Ill second them
Master and Margarita
Heart of a Dog
Good Omens (Monty Python meets the apocolypse)
The Importance of Being Earnest
Twelfth Night (Malvolio and Feste)
Comedy of Errors
Quixote
Tartuffe is brilliant
And to My Nephew Albert I Leave the Island What I Won Off Fatty Hagan in a Poker Game by David Forrest. I think this book may be out of print but grab this book if you can find it. It's slim like a novella but every page is hilarious, and the title just brings a smile to my face. The story begins with, you've guessed it, Albert and a tiny island off of England. The island becomes world news when the Brits, Americans and Russians all begin to buy a piece of the island.
A few of the funniest books I have ever read:
Three Men in a boat~Jerome Jerome - just hilarious from start to finish
The Importance of Being Earnest~Oscar Wilde - definitely one of his funniest works
The Undomesticated Goddess~Sophie Kinsella - I laughed till the tears came
A Midsummer Night's Dream, Twelth Night~William Shakespeare
She stoops to Conquer~Oliver Goldsmith - The confusing mix-ups are so funny.
That's all I can think of right now.
There was one part earlier on in Lolita that made me chuckle. Humbert wanted to don his army boots, take a few paces back and run at a charge to boot his cheating wife in the bum.
I find the works of P.G. Wodehouse, always make me laugh or smile.
As strange as it is, I actually can relate to some of the character archtypes.
Aside from that, I usually derrive good humour from most books. Though I can't say a book has ever had me splitting sides.
"Reason against logic. Sometimes reasonability is not logical, nor is being logical entirely reasonable."
Damon Runyon - how come no-one's mentioned him yet? He can be rolling-on-the-floor funny.
Kipling's short story "The Village that voted the Earth was flat" made me cry with laughter the first time I read it.
Richard Powell's "Tickets to the Devil" and "Don Qixote USA"
Saul Bellow's "Henderson the Rain King"
Quote:
Originally Posted by Scatterbrain
Hear hear!
But I suppose Salome must be excluded
Hi there, gang, been a while since I posted here!
I'm looking for comic novels-- something as sophisticated and/or funny as the "The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy", at least. I really dig wild humour and creative writing style.
Anyone?