Funniest Book Ever Read

[caspian]

Marki Twain's Huckelberry Finn is one of my very first books and I guess is the reason why this genre became my favorite and why I love Dickens

A Confederacy of Dunces - Kennedy

Catcher in the Rye -Salinger

The two funniest books that I can recall.

Totally agree. A confederacy of Dunces is my top pick. I don't remember anything else funnier.
I remember reading aloud funny parts of "catcher in the rye" to my sister and making her laugh too.

John Irving's "prayer for Owen Meany" and Booth Tarkington's Alice Adams made me laugh too. Both novels are poignant, pitiful but at times skockingly humorous.

and just because it was surprisingly so... Lolita

agree

[D.S. Poorman]

Yeah, Caspian, when I was reading Lolita, within a dozen pages I was just shaking my head at the hilarity of that dry sardonic self-deprecation and parenthetic boorish snobbery of Humbert Humbert as humor was the last thing I expected to discover. I found myself often thinking that I aught not read the book at the local coffee house because someone might think "That guy's being awfully obnoxious laughing every 30 seconds!" And then they'd get nosy and work in a glimpse at the cover and think "Oh, he thinks that book about the 40 year old man screwing the 12 year old girl is funny? What a black hearted cretin!" Anyhow, certainly a brilliant book from so many facets of scrutiny. The language perhaps being penultimate in the estimation after the entire inspiration for the plot itself.

[caspian]

Yeah, Caspian, when I was reading Lolita, within a dozen pages I was just shaking my head at the hilarity of that dry sardonic self-deprecation and parenthetic boorish snobbery of Humbert Humbert as humor was the last thing I expected to discover. I found myself often thinking that I aught not read the book at the local coffee house because someone might think "That guy's being awfully obnoxious laughing every 30 seconds!" And then they'd get nosy and work in a glimpse at the cover and think "Oh, he thinks that book about the 40 year old man screwing the 12 year old girl is funny? What a black hearted cretin!" Anyhow, certainly a brilliant book from so many facets of scrutiny. The language perhaps being penultimate in the estimation after the entire inspiration for the plot itself.

You sound so fresh about it. Have you read it recently? It had been long time since I've read it. I can't even recall in what language I've read it; russian or english? I agree with you. I had a lot of laughing too and was astonished when I caught myself being on the side of humberto humbert at most times and not hate him. That's only book I've read from Nabakov. I wonder if his other works are any closer to 'lolita"'s language.

[D.S. Poorman]

So are you located on the Caspian Sea? Neither here nor there but just wondering about your user name and your avatar looks like the tideland of some large body of water...

I guess it's been a couple of years since I read Lolita so I would consider that recent relatively speaking. No doubt I read it in English as I wouldn't have made it very far in Russian, haha! However the book made quite an impression on me so certain aspects won't be slipping into the undertow of time gone by. I think Nabokov did us a favor (certainly intensional regarding the structure of the book itself) by introducing poor old H.H. when he is already locked up and then flashing back to the story of his downfall. That way, knowing he and his sickness are contained from respectable society, we are free and guiltless to feel however we might care to feel about him and his compulsion for "nymphets". Thus, if you find you sympathize with any particular cognition H.H. has (other than pedophilia of course) it is a harmless endorsement because he's rotting in his jail cell (or was it a mental hospital, well, nonetheless...) I've meant to pick up some other Nabokov but have failed to do so as yet.

[bouquin]

I know literature is sometimes assumed to be dead serious, but there are a few works and authors that prove the opposite by writing a higly literary book with a very funny side. I'm reading the drama-works of Harold Pinter and it's really humoristicly written

Do you guys know any good books that also made you laugh?

Pinter's The Caretaker is on my immediate reading list. Right now I'm on Saul Bellow's Henderson the Rain King where there are a lot of funny scenes and descriptions!

[Niamh]

Sue Townsend's books make me laugh.

[lyni]

I agree with Terry Pratchett. his Discworld series of books are very entertaining.

[caspian]

So are you located on the Caspian Sea? Neither here nor there but just wondering about your user name and your avatar looks like the tideland of some large body of water...

I guess it's been a couple of years since I read Lolita so I would consider that recent relatively speaking. No doubt I read it in English as I wouldn't have made it very far in Russian, haha! However the book made quite an impression on me so certain aspects won't be slipping into the undertow of time gone by. I think Nabokov did us a favor (certainly intensional regarding the structure of the book itself) by introducing poor old H.H. when he is already locked up and then flashing back to the story of his downfall. That way, knowing he and his sickness are contained from respectable society, we are free and guiltless to feel however we might care to feel about him and his compulsion for "nymphets". Thus, if you find you sympathize with any particular cognition H.H. has (other than pedophilia of course) it is a harmless endorsement because he's rotting in his jail cell (or was it a mental hospital, well, nonetheless...) I've meant to pick up some other Nabokov but have failed to do so as yet.

I think it was jail and he dies there(if I remember correctly)
You're right. and I think if it wasn't for its amusing language it would be impossible to read Lolita. Though it didn't make it any less disturbing, Some of those disturbing scenes are just carved in my memory, I just can't forget. Lolita is one of those books I will never read again.

You guessed my location correctly. My avatar is doing great. I probably stuck with it just for one reason -to avoid to be related to Prince Narnia.

[WICKES]

Evelyn Waugh for me, closely followed by P G Wodehouse and Oscar Wilde. Evelyn Waugh's Decline and Fall is the funniest novel in the English languge.

Here's a challenge- name me a funny German writer!

[Emil Miller]

Evelyn Waugh for me, closely followed by P G Wodehouse and Oscar Wilde. Evelyn Waugh's Decline and Fall is the funniest novel in the English languge.

Here's a challenge- name me a funny German writer!

Erich Kaestner who wrote 'Emil and the Detectives' among others.

Thomas Mann is also very funny in 'Felix Krull'

Incidentally, Wodehouse is just as funny in German as in English.

[ktr]

There are a lot of great writers mentioned in here - great writers have a way of being humorous without trying, it's just natural.

I picked up "how i became a famous novelist" by steve hely - because, you know, i'm awesome. i sat down at barnes and noble (they didnt have the book at the library) and started reading - there was a quote a few pages in (spoiler, stop reading now if you're not interested) ---- (this is not a direct quote btw, im going from drunken memory)

"the professors, instead of liking perfectly good books like moby dick, where the ****ing whale eats everybody, pretended to like pretentious bull**** like boring middlemarch and jerk off ulysses"

i decided to buy it right then, im a huuge moby dick fan

anyway, the book itself, while it has a ton of "characters" - id say it lacks character, in the end, you're left feeling a bit empty - but ****, it's a god damned funny book.

if funny is enough for you, pick it up - great travel book

[DougSlug]

"Lucky Jim" by Kingsley Amis. Brilliant laugh-out-loud stuff. Few morsels:

[upon waking up hungover] "His mouth had been used as a latrine by some small creature of the night, and then as its mausoleum."

"Each of you belongs to the two great classes of mankind, people I like and people I don't."

[inner thoughts of protagonist] "What would I do afterwards? Teach in a school? On dear no. Go to London and get a job in an office. What job? Whose office? Shut up."

"The piece was recognizable to Dixon as some skein of untiring facetiousness by filthy Mozart."

[kasie]

My Family and Other Animals - Gerald Durrell.

Warning - This book is Laugh Out Loud funny: do not read it on Public Transport - you will get funny looks from your fellow passengers and maybe will fall off your seat. (She speaks from personal experience.)

[monaghme]

I am so glad several others included Confederacy of Dunces by John Toole Kennedy. It's my favorite book of all time. I fell in love with the characters and it is very funny.

(for a truly funny book, it's ironic...the story of how it got published is an actual book in itself. Terribly sad story...the author committed suicide years before his mother finally got the book published).

While these are not novels but personal essays, I would say that David Sedaris books are laugh out loud funny as well.

I am off to locate some of the other recommendations to pile onto my summer reading pile! Thanks.

[wokeem]

As previously stated, anything by Vonnegut is always going to be filled with some fairly absurd and hilarious moments; Bluebeard is often overlooked but I greatly enjoyed that one.

A satirist that doesn't get nearly enough recognition would be Ambrose Bierce. Do yourself a favor and try and find The Devil's Dictionary at a library. He redefined almost every word in your standard dictionary and put a very cynical and often times very hilarious spin on its definition. Some examples being;

Admirability-My kind of ability, as opposed to your kind of ability

and

Ocean-A large body of water taking up two thirds of a world made for man, who has no gills.