HELP ME finding clean humour writers

[RIEZ!]

I love to read but somehow it seems like it has become mandatory for the entertainment in 21st century to use profanity, nudity, sex and torture as humour. I HATE IT. Therefore I have turned my back from movies and reverted back to novels. I need help in finding 'clean' humour novels. NO ROMANCE. Something like P G Wodehouse style (but i guess he wrote for kids. Did he?) I am reading Terry Pratchett now (Was he a children's book writer too?) I have read Douglas Adams Hitchhiker's Guide series. I did like it but it was too fictional.

Can someone please suggest me what to read for laughter if I am in my 40's? I don't really like fiction. Again something like PG Wodehouse.

Really appreciate your help.

Thanks
RIEZ!

[Pompey Bum]

Double.

[Pompey Bum]

Welcome to the site, Riez! Wodehouse was not a children's author, and he may be just what you are looking for. His best books are reputed to be Code of the Woosters and Joy in the Morning: both about his most famous characters, Jeeves and Wooster (with Aunt Agatha et al.). But Wodehouse was a highly prolific author; he wrote many more books about the world of Jeeves and Wooster, and other scenarios. Many readers are crazy about his Psmith books, and there are many more besides those. You could spend years reading him. Hope that helped.

[Jackson Richardson]

Actually P G Wodehouse did start writing stories for schoolboys, but his main work is humourous word for adults. I read him as a teenager, and didn't appreciate him.

He wrote a series of short stories about Bertie Wooster and his manservant, Jeeves, such as Carry On Jeeves in which Bertie is usually in fear of his Aunt Agatha.

Later he wrote full length novels. I'm not that gone on Joy in the Morning, but The Code of the Woosters is good. It is a sequel to Right Ho! Jeeves and carries on the plot. (Bertie is desperate for his hopelessly diorganised friend, Gussie Fink Nottle to marry the drippy Madelaine Bassett, because if Gussies doesn't, Madelaine will insist Bertie marries her himself. The Code of the Woosters is never to let a woman down. With lots of newts, policeman's helmets, silver cow creamers and school prize giving along the way. Aunt Agatha is absent, but even more formidable is Bertie's good aunt, Aunt Dahila, employer of Anatole, the superlative French chef, for whose cooking Bertie will do anything. "“It isn't often that Aunt Dahlia lets her angry passions rise, but when she does, strong men climb trees and pull them up after them.”)

PS The Blandings Castle series are worthwhile also, at least the early ones. Summer Lightening and its sequel, Heavy Weather are good. The later ones repeat the formula. They include the most famous pig in English Literature.

[Pompey Bum]

I see Wodehouse's early works as more British-public-school humor than children's literature, but we're probably splitting hairs. I have only read a fraction of his books, but I usually enjoy them. Because his career was so long (from youth until old age), his work is not all of the same quality. I found the earliest Jeeves stories (while fun) to be not nearly as good as those from his middle period; and the later ones to be hit or miss. There was a wonderful one near the end called Stiff Upper Lip, Jeeves (or something), but some of its near neighbors weren't as good. Still, Wodehouse books aren't too long, and they are not difficult to get through, so the best way to find out if you like one is simply to read it.

[Jackson Richardson]

I agree there is an early, middle and late period, and the middle period are the best. The early period haven't got the distinctive Wodehouse style. The late period tended to repeat earlier plots. However of the post World War 2 ones that I find as good as the middle period ones are The Mating Season - Bertie desperate to save Gussie's marriage to Madelaine and getting involved in a village concert, which I find the funniest chapter in Wodehouse - and Pearls, Girls and Monty Bodkin which is as late as 1972 and a sequel to The Luck of the Bodkins 1935. You'd never know there was a 40 year gap.

[Pompey Bum]

There was a really late one -- maybe his last book, I'm not sure -- with the hilarious Wodehousian title: Aunt's Aren't Gentlemen. I haven't read it, and unfortunately I have heard mixed things about its quality. It came out in America (under a different title) when I was in Middle School. Like Winston Churchill's death when I was a toddler, that just doesn't seem historically possible to me.

[YesNo]

I remember reading some Wodehouse. It was enjoyable.

Another book I enjoyed was Martin Kihn's "A$$hole How I Got Rich & Happy By Not Giving a Damn About Anyone & How You Can, Too". At least I think that was the book. The cover looks different on Amazon, but the contents ring true.

Then there is Anita Loos' "Gentlemen Prefer Blondes". The book is much better than the movie.

[Clopin]

A Confederacy of Dunces by John Kennedy Toole is very hilarious, in my opinion, though it may on occasion drift into being a little profane (there are several jokes where masturbation is the punch line, for example). I also remember finding Catch-22 to be very funny when I read it years back.

[Pompey Bum]

I liked both of those, too. One of the major characters in Confederacy of Dunces is a stripper/French Quarter floozy, though, and quite a few scenes in Catch-22 take place i brothels, so they may not pass Reiz!'s smell test--I'm not sure. There is a truly hilarious early Richard Russo novel called Straight Man that mostly behaves itself. There is a (fairly non-erotic) nude scene in which the protagonist--a would-be good husband--unexpectedly finds himself in a hot tub with a sexy local reporter, but it's all part of the fun. Russo's Risk Pool and Nobody's Fool are also hilarious (and quite moving), but neither is going to keep things out of the bedroom for you--especially Nobody's Fool. They are both worthwhile, though, (much better than Russo's more famous later books), so I hope you will consider them despite their R-ratings; or at least consider Straight Man, which would only be able to manage a PG--and is actually the funniest of the three. That's all I can think of for now.

[Melanie]

If you enjoy some clever surrealism mixed in with humor then you might like Jarod Kintz, an American writer who packs a lot of imaginative power and wit into short (90page or so) books like "The Mandrake Hotel and Resort to violence if necessary". This one is a mystery with a quirky twist at the end…very funny as are all of his books. "Emails From A Madman" was his first (I think) and still a favorite. "Six Foot And Some Change" and "It Occurred To Me" are also good ones. He has about 50 books I believe.

His inspiration, he said, comes from a combination of: Mark Twain, Oscar Wilde, Monty Python, Jack Handey, Steve Martin, Gary Larson, Richard Brautigan, Ted Nancy, Dave Barry, Kids in the Hall, and Orafoura. You get the idea of his range.

Kintz, himself, admits "I have written many 'books,' and I use the term 'books' loosely. Mostly they are just compilations of my random thoughts and one-liners. But I like writing them, and people seem to like reading them...and that’s what it’s all about, right? All my books are self-published, either through iUniverse or the wonderful Amazon Kindle program. I encourage everybody to write. Share yourself with the world. If there is one thing I like to impress upon people, it’s that you can do it, even if you can’t. Just keep can’ting until eventually you can."

[YesNo]

I read some samples of Klintz' writing on Amazon. Some of the one-liners are pretty good.

My daughter gave me a copy of "Disquiet, Please" for Father's Day which is an anthology of humor from The New Yorker. I can recommend E. B. White's essay "Frigidity in Men".

[Ecurb]

Woody Allen's three early books are hilarious: "Getting Even", "Without Feathers" and "Side Effects".

[Melanie]

"The Reluctant Tuscan" is a non-fiction book I read a few years ago that I remember laughing all the way through (not to be confused with the Under The Tuscan Sun). It's written by Phil Doran, a TV writer for All in The Family (Emmy nomination), Sanford and Son, Too Close for Comfort, Who's the Boss, The Wonder Years, and episodes of The Bob Newhart Show, Tim Conway, and the Smothers Brothers. He has also written for the Los Angeles Times. He currently lives in both California and Tuscany with his wife.

"The Reluctant Tuscan is the sort of travel narrative that is both hilariously funny and informative, comic and poignant, savory and sweet.
Think Frances Mayes, Dave Barry, [Bill Bryson, and Jerry Seinfeld], sprinkle with parmesan and olive oil, and you'll soon know the irresistible quality dancing on Doran's page."
--Barbara DeMarco-Barrett, author of Pen on Fire