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
Hanlon's Razor: "Never attribute to malice that which can be adequately explained by stupidity."
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
"Life is a journey, not a destination"
Currently Reading: Catcher In The Rye, Siddartha
Both Don Quixote and A Confederacy of Dunces are hilarious.
Faust, Goethe.
"I don't care what you believe in, just believe in it."
Shepherd Book, Serenity.
"The whole problem with the world is that fools and fanatics are always so certain of themselves, but wiser people so full of doubts."
-Bertrand Russell
"The no-mind not-thinks no-thoughts about no-things"
-The Buddha
Last one that gave me big smiles: Lady Windermere's Fan by Wilde. Hillarious
I laughed a lot when reading To kill a mockingbird by Harper Lee recently. The children's perspective is just too hilarious
"Where mind meets matter, both should woo!"Currently reading:
* Paradise Lost by John Milton
puddinhead wilson by mark twain
Im glad that Heart of a Dog makes you laughBulgakov'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
"The reading of all good books is like a conversation with all the finest men of past centuries."
Rene Descartes
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.Originally Posted by Kameo
Im glad that Heart of a Dog makes you laugh
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.
Beware of the man with just one book. -Ovid
The man who doesn't read good books has no advantage over the man who can't read them.- Mark Twain
My Blog: Of Delicious Recoil
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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.
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.
"In the sunset of dissolution, everything is illuminated by the aura of nostalgia, even the guillotine."
- Milan Kundera, The Unbearable Lightness of Being
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
"Well, God give them wisdom that have it; and those that are fools, let them use their talents."
- Feste, Twelfth Night
"...till human voices wake us and we drown."
- Eliot
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.
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