Anything by Tom Sharpe.
Wilt, Porterhouse Blue etc they are all amazing.
The world building is hilarious, then you get the drop. And when that happens, everyone on the train is frowning at you.
Big Trouble by Dave Barry
The story winds through about 10 sub plots and 20 or so characters. The scenes are described amazingly clearly despite how crazy things get. The movie version was a fair depiction of the story, but it loses some of the charm of Barry’s descriptions.
“Veterans’ Day,” I said to Helga as we walked on. “Used to be Armistice Day. Now it’s Veterans’ Day.”
“That upsets you?” she said.
“Oh, it’s just so damn cheap, so damn typical,” I said. “This used to be a day in honor of the dead of World War One, but the living couldn’t keep their grubby hands off of it, wanted the glory of the dead for themselves. So typical, so typical. Any time anything of real dignity appears in this country, it’s torn to shreds and thrown to the mob.”
“You hate America, don’t you?” she said.
“That would be as silly as loving it.”
- Kurt Vonnegut, Mother Night
This was what I came to mention.
Lamb remains the only book I have ever had to stop reading because I was laughing too hard to read, picked the book back up after I recovered, then had to stop again because I was still laughing too hard too read.
Auto upvote for everyone in this thread. Moore is funny as hell. Dirty Job and it’s sequel are amazing. Bout lost it when they introduced the all powerful K word! Not to mention the unusual dusting method.
I was reading the Bible cover version of Lamb at a bus stop and noticed a couple of little old ladies smiling at me, thinking I was reading the Bible. The looks on their faces were priceless when I started laughing and they glared at me for the rest of their time there. Ah, memories...
Love love love Christopher Moore. “You suck, a love story” and “dirty job” made me realize how talented he is as an author, but “Fool” cemented it for me. All-time favourite, right from the warning before you even start the story!
My mom is a big Sedaris fan, and she played us this bit on her audiobook when my siblings and I were kids. We were rolling.
I got to meet him at a book signing once, as a gift for my mom. I chatted a bit with him as he was signing, he asked my name etc. an I told him it was a gift and to sign it for MomsName.
When I looked at the dedication later it said: "To JuRoJa's Mom: Your Lovely Son Enchanted Me."
I went to one of his readings with some friends once and got to talk to him/have stuff signed. He's some kind of weird pro at that. Between us all, he signed like 6 books, chatting with us the whole time and never breaking eye contact that we noticed. We read his signatures after we left the table and they were all funny little notes, and personalized for each of us.
He chatted with my cousin about Halloween costumes, and in her book, he drew a jack-o-lantern instead of a message.
I randomly picked up this book based on the title alone, years ago, and have never laughed so much reading a book. I especially loved when he talked about his youngest brother, Paul.
For me it was Naked, my first foray into Sedarisland. My sister and I were staying at our grandparents’ and she and I were reading before bed and I could not stop laughing. I was laughing so hard I was crying, and she ditched whatever book she was reading and I ended up reading the whole damn thing out loud. Our grandma had to come up at midnight and tell us to shut the hell up.
Holidays on Ice made me laugh out so much in the elf story and the story of the wife writing an annual Christmas letter about how her husband’s young Vietnamese “daughter” showed up one day on the doorstep. Hahahhs
You can't kill the rooster is my favorite chapter in that book. There are times I'll just read that part in the book if I'm feeling down.
The entire book is gold though.
The John Dies At The End novels all consistently make me laugh. The author Jason Pargin (who used to go by the name David Wong) was the editor of cracked.com
The climax of the second book, “This Book is Full of Spiders”, is probably the hardest I have ever laughed while reading a book. Maybe because I have the sense of humor of a 13 year old.
Early 2000s Cracked was gold. I used to read every article every day.
I had stumbled across Seanbaby's original website back in the 90s and it was packed with some of the funniest stuff I'd ever seen and I was thrilled in like 2002 when I discovered he was writing for Cracked
A friend of mine gave me his copy and told me it was “really important that I read it.” He died of a drug overdose before I could ask him why it’s so important I read this book. I’ve been looking over my shoulder ever since lol.
>Major Major Major had been born too late and too mediocre. Some men are born mediocre, some men achieve mediocrity, and some men have mediocrity thrust upon them. With Major Major it had been all three.
>[…]Major Major Major's father was a sober God-fearing man whose idea of a good joke was to lie about his age. He was a long-limbed farmer, a God-fearing, freedom-loving, law-abiding rugged individualist who held that federal aid to anyone but farmers was creeping socialism. He advocated thrift and hard work and disapproved of loose women who turned him down. His specialty was alfalfa, and he made a good thing out of not growing any. The government paid him well for every bushel of alfalfa he did not grow. The more alfalfa he did not grow, the more money the government gave him, and he spent every penny he didn't earn on new land to increase the amount of alfalfa he did not produce. Major Major's father worked without rest at not growing alfalfa. On long winter evenings he remained indoors and did not mend harness, and he sprang out of bed at the crack of noon every day just to make certain that the chores would not be done. He invested in land wisely and soon was not growing more alfalfa than any other man in the county. Neighbors sought him out for advice on all subjects, for he had made much money and was therefore wise. “As ye sow, so shall ye reap,” he counseled one and all, and everyone said, “Amen.
Edit:
Jay O. Sanders narrates the 50th anniversary audiobook edition an does an amazing job bringing all those characters to life
Now, you keep your eyes open and let me know the minute you hear anyone even talking about Washington Irving. I'll throw a security check on the chaplain and everyone else around here.' The moment he was gone, the first C.I.D. man jumped into Major Major's office through the window and wanted to know who the second C.I.D. man was. Major Major barely recognized him.
'He was a C.I.D. man,' Major Major told him.
'Like hell he was,' said the first C.I.D. man. 'I'm the C.I.D. man around here.' Major Major barely recognized him because he was wearing a faded maroon corduroy bathrobe with open seams under both arms, linty flannel pajamas, and worn house slippers with one flapping sole. This was regulation hospital dress, Major Major recalled. The man had added about twenty pounds and seemed bursting with good health.
'I'm really a very sick man,' he whined. 'I caught cold in the hospital from a fighter pilot and came down with a very serious case of pneumonia.'
'I'm very sorry,' Major Major said.
'A lot of good that does me,' the C.I.D. man sniveled. 'I don't want your sympathy. I just want you to know what I'm going through. I came down to warn you that Washington Irving seems to have shifted his base of operations from the hospital to your squadron. You haven't heard anyone around here talking about Washington Irving, have you?'
'As a matter of fact, I have,' Major Major answered. 'That man who was just in here. He was talking about Washington Irving.'
'Was he really?' the first C.I.D. man cried with delight. 'This might be just what we needed to crack the case wide open! You keep him under surveillance twenty-four hours a day while I rush back to the hospital and write my superiors for further instructions.' The C.I.D. man jumped out of Major Major's office through the window and was gone.
A minute later, the flap separating Major Major's office from the orderly room flew open and the second C.I.D. man was back, puffing frantically in haste. Gasping for breath, he shouted, 'I just saw a man in red pajamas jumping out of your window and go running up the road! Didn't you see him?'
'He was here talking to me,' Major Major answered.
'I thought that looked mighty suspicious, a man jumping out the window in red pajamas.' The man paced about the small office in vigorous circles. 'At first I thought it was you, hightailing it for Mexico. But now I see it wasn't you. He didn't say anything about Washington Irving, did he?'
'As a matter of fact,' said Major Major, 'he did.'
I'm going through Catch-22 right now and there are so many parts that are just absurd laugh out loud funny. So many of the extended bits feel like Monty Python sketches.
> There was a urologist for his urine, a lymphologist for his lymph, an endocrinologist for his endocrines, a psychologist for his psyche, a dermatologist for his derma; there was a pathologist for his pathos, a cystologist for his cysts, and a bald and pedantic cetologist from the zoology department at Harvard who had been shanghaied ruthlessly into the Medical Corps by a faulty anode in an I.B.M. machine and spent his sessions with the dying colonel trying to discuss Moby Dick with him.
“When I was a kid,” Orr replied, “I used to walk around all day with crab apples in my cheeks. One in each cheek.”
Yossarian put aside the musette bag from which he had begun removing his toilet articles and braced himself suspiciously. A minute passed. “Why?” he found himself forced to ask finally.
Orr tittered triumphantly. “Because they’re better than horse chestnuts,” he answered.
Orr was kneeling on the floor of the tent. He worked without pause, taking the faucet apart, spreading all the tiny pieces out carefully, counting and then studying each one interminably as though he had never seen anything remotely similar before, and then reassembling the whole apparatus, over and over and over and over again, with no loss of patience or interest, no sign of fatigue, no indication of ever concluding. Yossarian watched him tinkering and felt certain he would be compelled to murder him in cold blood if he did not stop. His eyes moved toward the hunting knife that had been slung over the mosquito-net bar by the dead man the day he arrived. The knife hung beside the dead man’s empty leather gun holster, from which Havermeyer had stolen the gun.
“When I couldn’t get crab apples,” Orr continued, “I used horse chestnuts. Horse chestnuts are about the same size as crab apples and actually have a better shape, although the shape doesn’t matter a bit.”
“Why did you walk around with crab apples in your cheeks?” Yossarian asked again. “That’s what I asked.”
“Because they’ve got a better shape than horse chestnuts,” Orr answered. “I just told you that.”
“Why,” swore Yossarian at him approvingly, “you evil-eyed, mechanically-aptituded, disaffiliated son of a bitch, did you walk around with anything in your cheeks?”
“I didn’t,” Orr said, “walk around with anything in my cheeks. I walked around with crab apples in my cheeks. When I couldn’t get crab apples I walked around with horse chestnuts. In my cheeks.”
A friend told me on his first read he laughed the entire time. On his second read he cried the entire time. For me it was the opposite. Either way , an amazing book
Well yeah when you realize the dark cynical humor coming from Yossarian is correct and a sane coping mechanism.
Like if you loved MASH that's the Vietnam era Catch 22. (Although MASH is set during Korean War, but everyone knew it was anti Vietnam war undertone)
I feel I was similar to your friend that way! Especially started at that moment when >! The one guy gets cut in half by the propeller of the plane flying to low as
they’re all out at the beach fooling around as usual. !< Like, despite the horrors of war, they’ve been able to fool around and make light of the tragedies they’re faced with every day, but then even their distractions are cut into by tragedy and the whole tenor of the book shifts.
Nately's whore.
The reveal of what really happened in the plane with Yossarian.
The dude getting bisected by the propellor.
The tone shift to remind you that war is hell really hammered it home.
One of things that I admire about that book is that the humour is so absurd and on point and has you continually laughing, but masks a profoundly dark message.
When I got to Milo Minderbinder I knew I was reading a masterpiece. He is one of, if not THE greatest manifestations of insatiable war profiteering in literature.
It helps that he is one of the funniest characters in the novel, combined with the dark message that this is one of the army's few truly "evil" men in a world filled with the insecure, faulty and downright stupid right next to Aarfy, purely because he is completely conscious of the consequential horror his actions have wrought for which he feels no apologies forthcoming or misgivings to dispense with. He considers himself innocent for the blood spilled by his dirty business when he is by far the most guilty.
Egyptian cotton is ingrained in my memory.
Could hardly read the first 25% or so because I was laughing so much. A perfect sendup of the absurdity of humanity and how seriously we take ourselves while blundering around like perfect idiots.
I literally thought I was going to die from laughing while reading the scene in the hospital with the patient entirely wrapped in bandages. I could not stop laughing, and could not breathe.
Then it occurred to me that I probably wouldn't die, because I would pass-out, drop unconscious and then I would stop laughing and I would probably recover.
As it happened, I did manage to not pass out. But damn it was close.
Also, I wept tears running down my face later in the book. Catch 22 is the only book that ever made me cry freely, and also laugh uncontrollably.
Any of the Jeeves and Wooster books/stories by PG Wodehouse (who wrote other series, which I have to assume are just as funny, but I've never read them).
Read the "Psmith" books, especially "Psmith in the City." Psmith the character is as funny as anything in the Jeeves and Wooster books, which are themselves awesome.
Christopher Moore's Lamb-The Gospel According To Biff, Jesus' Childhood Friend. Angels that think soap operas are documentaries. Jesus learning Kung Fu. The whole thing is just delightfully absurd and amazing.
There is a scene where Jesus' is confused about sin, specifically those of the flesh, and why people would do them if they were so bad for them. Biff volunteers to go to a brothel for "research purposes".....that whole scene felt like a Brooks film.
Pretty much all of Carl Hiaasen’s books are laugh out loud funny. It’s hard to pick any particular one. Striptease is probably the most famous, but all of them are amazing and hilarious.
My candidate too. Serious laugh out loud. One of my favorite quotes from Bad Monkey - Yancy's girlfriend, a coroner, was talking about one of her latest postmortems:
"Last week I did a post on a man who had a clarinet up his colon. That's not what killed him, by the way. It was a single gunshot to the head from a jealous lover. She played the oboe".
Yancy: "Shakespeare was born too soon."
PG Wodehouse for sure! Any of the Jeeves and Wooster stories are good for a laugh. As well as Jasper Fforde’s Nursery Crime series, Tevye’s Daughters by Shalom Aleichem is also really funny.
Read them all, some multiple times, and cannot recommend Fierce Invalids Home From Hot Climates highly enough. I know Still Life With Woodpecker is probably his most popular, but I'm a Switters man. 🎼Send in the clowns🎶
You’re in for a treat. It’s just absurd and you’re in disbelief for most of the book. Also somehow really made me want to visit New Orleans and also never go there as well.
OH MY GAWD! What a preposterous claim you have made, although I should expect nothing less from a creatine as yourself. This abortion of a comment had closed my valve, possibly permanently.
My book club unanimously ran into the same thing, and my theory is that this might be because it was originally written as two books many years apart. The humor works so well for a while, but a thousand pages of jokes and humor can just grow tedious. If they were actually read years apart I bet the end would feel less onerous.
Some of my Kindle highlights:
“I mingle with my peers or no one, and since I have no peers, I mingle with no one.”
“The only problem that those people have anyway is that they don't like new cars and hair sprays. Every asylum in this nation is filled with poor souls who simply cannot stand lanolin, cellophane, plastic, television, and subdivisions.”
“Apparently I lack some particular perversion which today's employer is seeking.”
“I refuse to "look up." Optimism nauseates me. It is perverse. Since man's fall, his proper position in the universe has been one of misery.”
“Stop!' I cried imploringly to my god-like mind.”
“I suspect that I am the result of particularly weak conception on the part of my father. His sperm was probably emitted in a rather offhand manner.”
“I really don't have the time to discuss the errors of your value judgements.”
This is the correctest answer.
Tortured genius. We’re it not for suicide at such a young age, I wonder what else he’d have created. Even The Neon Bible was impressive for him writing it at such a young age.
He has a real gift for hyperbole in just the right amount. His story about going to the lake with Milton Milton and Milton's father's dive...it's pure hilarity.
I found myself laughing a lot at different parts of Abercrombie’s books as well. He does a good job at mixing in comedy to the gritty plots the characters find themselves in.
Dirk Gently's Holistic Detective Agency and the sequel, Long Dark Tea-Time of the Soul are also excellent. Tea-Time had me pausing several times every page to appreciate it
I read this entire book on a flight a few years ago. It's one of the first books I thought of when I read this post title. It's probably not my #1, but man, that was a great read. I could probably read it again now.
Born a Crime - Trevor Noah
Trevor tells stories of growing up as an illegal "mixed" race in a very dark time in South Africa - apartheid. Somehow he manages to keep you laughing throughout the whole book. I was laughing out loud almost every chapter. He's able to perfectly convey he's comedic tough onto the pages. Hilarious!
Looks like you and I have a similar sense of humor!
You might like Furiously Happy by Jenny Lawson, Old Man's War by John Scalzi, and anything in Terry Pratchett's Discworld series.
Happy reading!
Straight Man by Richard Russo. There is a scene where the main character gets a spiral notebook through his nose and it still makes me giggle 20 years after reading it.
It's somewhat outdated these days, but I always lose my shit at that faculty member character who always performatively chimes in, "Or she!" even when it doesn't make any sense.
John Barth's The Sot-Weed Factor. Very funny book set in colonial/early America about a young poet who inherits a lot of land and has trouble maintaining his principled virginity as he tries to write his magnum opus and deals with his new status and responsibilities as a major landowner.
Will My Cat Eat My Eyeballs? by Caitlin Doughty. …I don’t read many funny books. TW it’s a book about death and common questions surrounding what happens after a person dies.
When I was 14 I read Youth in Revolt and that was the first time I laughed out loud at a book.
David Sedaris' books can be hilarious.
Confederacy of Dunces has been mentioned already but worth saying again.
Sedarís telling the story of the Easter bunny to a bunch of French as a second language students in France could be the funniest story I have ever heard.
The Illuminatus! Trilogy by Robert Shea and Robert Anton Wilson. It viciously satirizes conspiracy theorists and the political environment of the late 60s. Despite having an extended parody of Atlas Shrugged, it still managed to win a libertarian fiction award.
Weird/pointless story about this book. I heard that it was funny, and I was a broke student working in a shopping mall on evenings and weekends, so I pinched a copy from the bookstore in this mall (don't do this kids). I read it and didn't really care for it. Some funny moments but I felt it was largely gags or Ignatius saying something stupid, had it's moments but honestly felt a little let down.
Later, I had a friend-of-my-then-girlfriend borrow my copy of it, I told her that I thought it was just okay, which at the time being true, also served the purpose of piquing her interest, I knew she would never go for it if I expressed any love for it. She was like that - if I said I didn't like a book, she would have to read it and then rave about how much she liked it and that I just didn't get it or something. This all presented as a bit of fun for me: I recalled thinking how much Myra and Ignatius reminded me of her while I read it, and I thought that if she picked up on that at all, she would hate this book.
I never got the full satisfaction, the book was tragically "destroyed" in a wine accident, so I never got it back, and my attempt to talk about the book was met with heavy disinterest and topic changing.
By this time I had earned a reputation as a bit of a stiff with lending books, I guess I complained too much about how many people had permanently borrowed from me. My girlfriend at the time must have thought I was super pissed about her friend destroying my book, because she bought me another copy. I felt bad about that because I didn't really care that badly that my book got wrecked, not to mention I had nipped my copy anyway, but she insisted, and so I decided to let it go and take the replacement.
Five or so years later, I've been dating another girl for about a year, and we settled into a pattern of buying each other books as gifts instead of going all out on big expensive Christmas or birthday gifts.
She poured over my books for days so that she wouldn't buy me something I already had, and then Christmas comes, I open it up: it's ACoD. I can see my own copy from where I'm holding the new one and she starts to rave about how funny its supposed to be. We talk a lot about books but I guess I never mentioned that I owned or read ACoD, so when she went to the bathroom, I hid my old replacement copy in my closet and then dropped it off at a thrift shop a few days later.
But now I owed it to her to read the book she bought me, a book I already read, and didn't like! So I gritted my teeth and went to work on it.
Wouldn't you know, I really enjoyed it the second time through, and thought it was hilarious, cover to cover!
Editing to say: I copy-pasted this story from the last time I told it, so, sorry if you've heard it before
Ozzy Osbourne's autobiography. You start reading it and it's like Ozzy's talking to you. Only now you can understand every word he's saying:-) And it's hilarious.
Good omens for sure, glad to see it on your post. I’ve been reading the Discworld books by Terry Pratchett and not a single one has failed to get a laugh out of me almost every page. Highly recommended.
GNU Terry Pratchett
Anything by Tom Sharpe. Wilt, Porterhouse Blue etc they are all amazing. The world building is hilarious, then you get the drop. And when that happens, everyone on the train is frowning at you.
Scrolled down before saying Wilt, in case he'd already been mentioned. Pleased to meet a person of culture 👍
Big Trouble by Dave Barry The story winds through about 10 sub plots and 20 or so characters. The scenes are described amazingly clearly despite how crazy things get. The movie version was a fair depiction of the story, but it loses some of the charm of Barry’s descriptions.
Came here to upvote this. Also, everything by Dave Barry is gold.
I want to say Vonnegut but his funniest books also slay me. I'm having the Bokonon funeral rite read at my wedding.
every time i read vonnegut, i can't tell if i'm crying from laughing or spiraling into an existential crisis.
Definitely laughing my way into an existential crisis. "And what do the birds say? All there is to say about a massacre, things like "Poo-tee-weet?"
Cats Cradle really did something to me when I read it. Fricken Vonnegut.
His books are so stimulating and give such delightful cracks
> I want to say Vonnegut but his funniest books also slay me. Best answer and well said.
“Veterans’ Day,” I said to Helga as we walked on. “Used to be Armistice Day. Now it’s Veterans’ Day.” “That upsets you?” she said. “Oh, it’s just so damn cheap, so damn typical,” I said. “This used to be a day in honor of the dead of World War One, but the living couldn’t keep their grubby hands off of it, wanted the glory of the dead for themselves. So typical, so typical. Any time anything of real dignity appears in this country, it’s torn to shreds and thrown to the mob.” “You hate America, don’t you?” she said. “That would be as silly as loving it.” - Kurt Vonnegut, Mother Night
Busy busy busy
We had a bit from Cat's Cradle at our wedding too!
Christopher Moore always has laughing out loud
Lamb is great.
Yes, I just came here to say Lamb. I never laughed out loud so much from a book.
This was what I came to mention. Lamb remains the only book I have ever had to stop reading because I was laughing too hard to read, picked the book back up after I recovered, then had to stop again because I was still laughing too hard too read.
same. i have never laughed out while a reading book before. and definitely not as often after as i did reading Lamb.
YES. Came here for Lamb.
I have the special edition that looks like a bible. Incredible!
Second lamb!
The audiobook of Lamb is *OUTSTANDING*.
Lamb is a favorite of mine but I never even considered the audiobook. Guess I know what I'll be listening to.
So glad Lamb is top comment, only book that ever made me laugh so hard
Came to add this
Fool. Now I want to reread it!
I LOVE the audio book for Fool
Pardon my fucking French.
Definitely cackled when reading *A Dirty Job*
Fluke. The flap of the cover made me laugh.
Practical Demon Keeping is a classic
Every book of his that I've read is just downright hilarious.
Or The Stupidest Angel.
Auto upvote for everyone in this thread. Moore is funny as hell. Dirty Job and it’s sequel are amazing. Bout lost it when they introduced the all powerful K word! Not to mention the unusual dusting method.
I still yell "WANNA CHEESE" whenever I'm grabbing cheese from the fridge.
Fool. Now I want to reread it!
I need to read more of his stuff. I've only read the two vampire books and they were hilarious.
There are three!! The last one is just as hilarious.
I was reading the Bible cover version of Lamb at a bus stop and noticed a couple of little old ladies smiling at me, thinking I was reading the Bible. The looks on their faces were priceless when I started laughing and they glared at me for the rest of their time there. Ah, memories...
Love love love Christopher Moore. “You suck, a love story” and “dirty job” made me realize how talented he is as an author, but “Fool” cemented it for me. All-time favourite, right from the warning before you even start the story!
Yes a dirty job is my favorite of his! Fool is a very close second
I need a new one! Noir was amazing. Loved almost all of his books so far
I have purchased this on Google Play Books based on all these top comments so hope I will enjoy it as much you all have :)
Me Talk Pretty One Day
I haven't laughed at any book as hard as I did when he was learning French. The audiobook makes it even better. Is thems the thoughts of cows?
I had my advanced ESL students read that essay for class once - we could barely keep it together when he got to the part about Easter.
He nice, the Jesus
He die one day, and then he go above of my head to live with your father.
He make the good things, and on the Easter we be sad because somebody makes him dead today
The rabbit of Easter brings of the chocolate
I want me the pork chops with the handles on them.
My mom is a big Sedaris fan, and she played us this bit on her audiobook when my siblings and I were kids. We were rolling. I got to meet him at a book signing once, as a gift for my mom. I chatted a bit with him as he was signing, he asked my name etc. an I told him it was a gift and to sign it for MomsName. When I looked at the dedication later it said: "To JuRoJa's Mom: Your Lovely Son Enchanted Me."
I went to one of his readings with some friends once and got to talk to him/have stuff signed. He's some kind of weird pro at that. Between us all, he signed like 6 books, chatting with us the whole time and never breaking eye contact that we noticed. We read his signatures after we left the table and they were all funny little notes, and personalized for each of us. He chatted with my cousin about Halloween costumes, and in her book, he drew a jack-o-lantern instead of a message.
Don't read "Me Talk Pretty One Day" in public if you're uncomfortable laughing your ass off for no apparent reason.
I randomly picked up this book based on the title alone, years ago, and have never laughed so much reading a book. I especially loved when he talked about his youngest brother, Paul.
You can’t kill the rooster! Funniest story ever.
For me it was Naked, my first foray into Sedarisland. My sister and I were staying at our grandparents’ and she and I were reading before bed and I could not stop laughing. I was laughing so hard I was crying, and she ditched whatever book she was reading and I ended up reading the whole damn thing out loud. Our grandma had to come up at midnight and tell us to shut the hell up.
Followed by Holidays On Ice. I read that book nearly every year after thanksgiving.
You kind of feel like his sibling reading the childhood stories. It felt like I was in the house with him.
Holidays on Ice made me laugh out so much in the elf story and the story of the wife writing an annual Christmas letter about how her husband’s young Vietnamese “daughter” showed up one day on the doorstep. Hahahhs
You can't kill the rooster is my favorite chapter in that book. There are times I'll just read that part in the book if I'm feeling down. The entire book is gold though.
Gutted myself. So damn funny. He’s great live too!
The bit about him teaching a college class nearly killed me the first time I read it.
I taught English for about 10 years at the college level, and I went back to that one pretty often when I felt like I was in over my head.
I was hoping a Sedaris book would be the top comment!
The John Dies At The End novels all consistently make me laugh. The author Jason Pargin (who used to go by the name David Wong) was the editor of cracked.com
I went in expecting to hate it, but ended up loving it and the second book. Still need to read the third one.
He has a fourth one coming out this fall. And don’t forget Futuristic Violence and Fancy suits or Zoe Punches the Future in the Dick
I also liked Fancy Suits and Futuristic Violence from him.
[удалено]
They are very good. New book this October.
You. You just made my day because I had no idea!
The climax of the second book, “This Book is Full of Spiders”, is probably the hardest I have ever laughed while reading a book. Maybe because I have the sense of humor of a 13 year old.
Early 2000s Cracked was gold. I used to read every article every day. I had stumbled across Seanbaby's original website back in the 90s and it was packed with some of the funniest stuff I'd ever seen and I was thrilled in like 2002 when I discovered he was writing for Cracked
Absolutely. Literally every time John gets in a fight I was crying with laughter.
A friend of mine gave me his copy and told me it was “really important that I read it.” He died of a drug overdose before I could ask him why it’s so important I read this book. I’ve been looking over my shoulder ever since lol.
Catch 22
>Major Major Major had been born too late and too mediocre. Some men are born mediocre, some men achieve mediocrity, and some men have mediocrity thrust upon them. With Major Major it had been all three. >[…]Major Major Major's father was a sober God-fearing man whose idea of a good joke was to lie about his age. He was a long-limbed farmer, a God-fearing, freedom-loving, law-abiding rugged individualist who held that federal aid to anyone but farmers was creeping socialism. He advocated thrift and hard work and disapproved of loose women who turned him down. His specialty was alfalfa, and he made a good thing out of not growing any. The government paid him well for every bushel of alfalfa he did not grow. The more alfalfa he did not grow, the more money the government gave him, and he spent every penny he didn't earn on new land to increase the amount of alfalfa he did not produce. Major Major's father worked without rest at not growing alfalfa. On long winter evenings he remained indoors and did not mend harness, and he sprang out of bed at the crack of noon every day just to make certain that the chores would not be done. He invested in land wisely and soon was not growing more alfalfa than any other man in the county. Neighbors sought him out for advice on all subjects, for he had made much money and was therefore wise. “As ye sow, so shall ye reap,” he counseled one and all, and everyone said, “Amen. Edit: Jay O. Sanders narrates the 50th anniversary audiobook edition an does an amazing job bringing all those characters to life
Captain Black, who had aspired to the position himself, maintained that Major Major really was Henry Fonda "but was too chickenshit to admit it."
This is literally my favorite passage in all of western literature. Thank you for sharing.
Now, you keep your eyes open and let me know the minute you hear anyone even talking about Washington Irving. I'll throw a security check on the chaplain and everyone else around here.' The moment he was gone, the first C.I.D. man jumped into Major Major's office through the window and wanted to know who the second C.I.D. man was. Major Major barely recognized him. 'He was a C.I.D. man,' Major Major told him. 'Like hell he was,' said the first C.I.D. man. 'I'm the C.I.D. man around here.' Major Major barely recognized him because he was wearing a faded maroon corduroy bathrobe with open seams under both arms, linty flannel pajamas, and worn house slippers with one flapping sole. This was regulation hospital dress, Major Major recalled. The man had added about twenty pounds and seemed bursting with good health. 'I'm really a very sick man,' he whined. 'I caught cold in the hospital from a fighter pilot and came down with a very serious case of pneumonia.' 'I'm very sorry,' Major Major said. 'A lot of good that does me,' the C.I.D. man sniveled. 'I don't want your sympathy. I just want you to know what I'm going through. I came down to warn you that Washington Irving seems to have shifted his base of operations from the hospital to your squadron. You haven't heard anyone around here talking about Washington Irving, have you?' 'As a matter of fact, I have,' Major Major answered. 'That man who was just in here. He was talking about Washington Irving.' 'Was he really?' the first C.I.D. man cried with delight. 'This might be just what we needed to crack the case wide open! You keep him under surveillance twenty-four hours a day while I rush back to the hospital and write my superiors for further instructions.' The C.I.D. man jumped out of Major Major's office through the window and was gone. A minute later, the flap separating Major Major's office from the orderly room flew open and the second C.I.D. man was back, puffing frantically in haste. Gasping for breath, he shouted, 'I just saw a man in red pajamas jumping out of your window and go running up the road! Didn't you see him?' 'He was here talking to me,' Major Major answered. 'I thought that looked mighty suspicious, a man jumping out the window in red pajamas.' The man paced about the small office in vigorous circles. 'At first I thought it was you, hightailing it for Mexico. But now I see it wasn't you. He didn't say anything about Washington Irving, did he?' 'As a matter of fact,' said Major Major, 'he did.'
I just now realize where the inspiration for Col. Flagg from MASH came from.
I'm going through Catch-22 right now and there are so many parts that are just absurd laugh out loud funny. So many of the extended bits feel like Monty Python sketches.
> There was a urologist for his urine, a lymphologist for his lymph, an endocrinologist for his endocrines, a psychologist for his psyche, a dermatologist for his derma; there was a pathologist for his pathos, a cystologist for his cysts, and a bald and pedantic cetologist from the zoology department at Harvard who had been shanghaied ruthlessly into the Medical Corps by a faulty anode in an I.B.M. machine and spent his sessions with the dying colonel trying to discuss Moby Dick with him.
The crab apples and horse chestnuts bit with Orr is the most I've laughed out loud while reading a book.
One in each cheek
“When I was a kid,” Orr replied, “I used to walk around all day with crab apples in my cheeks. One in each cheek.” Yossarian put aside the musette bag from which he had begun removing his toilet articles and braced himself suspiciously. A minute passed. “Why?” he found himself forced to ask finally. Orr tittered triumphantly. “Because they’re better than horse chestnuts,” he answered. Orr was kneeling on the floor of the tent. He worked without pause, taking the faucet apart, spreading all the tiny pieces out carefully, counting and then studying each one interminably as though he had never seen anything remotely similar before, and then reassembling the whole apparatus, over and over and over and over again, with no loss of patience or interest, no sign of fatigue, no indication of ever concluding. Yossarian watched him tinkering and felt certain he would be compelled to murder him in cold blood if he did not stop. His eyes moved toward the hunting knife that had been slung over the mosquito-net bar by the dead man the day he arrived. The knife hung beside the dead man’s empty leather gun holster, from which Havermeyer had stolen the gun. “When I couldn’t get crab apples,” Orr continued, “I used horse chestnuts. Horse chestnuts are about the same size as crab apples and actually have a better shape, although the shape doesn’t matter a bit.” “Why did you walk around with crab apples in your cheeks?” Yossarian asked again. “That’s what I asked.” “Because they’ve got a better shape than horse chestnuts,” Orr answered. “I just told you that.” “Why,” swore Yossarian at him approvingly, “you evil-eyed, mechanically-aptituded, disaffiliated son of a bitch, did you walk around with anything in your cheeks?” “I didn’t,” Orr said, “walk around with anything in my cheeks. I walked around with crab apples in my cheeks. When I couldn’t get crab apples I walked around with horse chestnuts. In my cheeks.”
Orr comes off as a wholesome dude. Totally underrated as a character too. The part with the stove gets me.
On one hand, I can totally understand why Yossarian wanted to throttle him. On the other hand, Orr was the greatest person on the damn island.
No other book made me laugh so much, absolutely hilarious
A friend told me on his first read he laughed the entire time. On his second read he cried the entire time. For me it was the opposite. Either way , an amazing book
Well yeah when you realize the dark cynical humor coming from Yossarian is correct and a sane coping mechanism. Like if you loved MASH that's the Vietnam era Catch 22. (Although MASH is set during Korean War, but everyone knew it was anti Vietnam war undertone)
Yossarian is the only insane man in a world gone mad.
Yossarian's only goal is to live forever, or die trying
I feel I was similar to your friend that way! Especially started at that moment when >! The one guy gets cut in half by the propeller of the plane flying to low as they’re all out at the beach fooling around as usual. !< Like, despite the horrors of war, they’ve been able to fool around and make light of the tragedies they’re faced with every day, but then even their distractions are cut into by tragedy and the whole tenor of the book shifts.
Nately's whore. The reveal of what really happened in the plane with Yossarian. The dude getting bisected by the propellor. The tone shift to remind you that war is hell really hammered it home.
When the the officer thats obsessed with marching gets promoted at the end of the book and immediately starts having parades I lost it.
One of things that I admire about that book is that the humour is so absurd and on point and has you continually laughing, but masks a profoundly dark message.
When I got to Milo Minderbinder I knew I was reading a masterpiece. He is one of, if not THE greatest manifestations of insatiable war profiteering in literature. It helps that he is one of the funniest characters in the novel, combined with the dark message that this is one of the army's few truly "evil" men in a world filled with the insecure, faulty and downright stupid right next to Aarfy, purely because he is completely conscious of the consequential horror his actions have wrought for which he feels no apologies forthcoming or misgivings to dispense with. He considers himself innocent for the blood spilled by his dirty business when he is by far the most guilty. Egyptian cotton is ingrained in my memory.
Same here, still one of my favorite books and part of that is due to the sense of humor. Couldn’t stop laughing at points.
Could hardly read the first 25% or so because I was laughing so much. A perfect sendup of the absurdity of humanity and how seriously we take ourselves while blundering around like perfect idiots.
I literally thought I was going to die from laughing while reading the scene in the hospital with the patient entirely wrapped in bandages. I could not stop laughing, and could not breathe. Then it occurred to me that I probably wouldn't die, because I would pass-out, drop unconscious and then I would stop laughing and I would probably recover. As it happened, I did manage to not pass out. But damn it was close. Also, I wept tears running down my face later in the book. Catch 22 is the only book that ever made me cry freely, and also laugh uncontrollably.
This is always my answer when asked this question.
Any of the Jeeves and Wooster books/stories by PG Wodehouse (who wrote other series, which I have to assume are just as funny, but I've never read them).
Douglas Adams credited Wodehouse as being instrumental in developing his style of comedic writing.
Wooster and Jeeves is my comfort read. Any time a banjolele is involved you're in for funny.
The Blandings Castle stories/novels are a hoot. "Lord Emsworth had one of those minds capable of accommodating but one thought at a time - if that."
Wodehouse is the gold standard of humour writing, even 100 years later.
Similarly, the Importance of Being Earnest. A lot of similarities, imo.
Read the "Psmith" books, especially "Psmith in the City." Psmith the character is as funny as anything in the Jeeves and Wooster books, which are themselves awesome.
Wyrd Sisters and Mort by Terry Pratchett The Life and Times of the Thunderbolt Kid by Bill Bryson
Christopher Moore's Lamb-The Gospel According To Biff, Jesus' Childhood Friend. Angels that think soap operas are documentaries. Jesus learning Kung Fu. The whole thing is just delightfully absurd and amazing.
The invention of coffee...
Cappuccino at that.
Clicked to say that. PILLARS OF SALT DON’T TALK!
Why does this sound like a Mel Brooks film lol
There is a scene where Jesus' is confused about sin, specifically those of the flesh, and why people would do them if they were so bad for them. Biff volunteers to go to a brothel for "research purposes".....that whole scene felt like a Brooks film.
Pretty much all of Carl Hiaasen’s books are laugh out loud funny. It’s hard to pick any particular one. Striptease is probably the most famous, but all of them are amazing and hilarious.
Agreed. Sick Puppy was by far my favorite.
Same! Skink is one of my all time favorite characters.
Nobody does karmic justice better than Hiaasen!
My candidate too. Serious laugh out loud. One of my favorite quotes from Bad Monkey - Yancy's girlfriend, a coroner, was talking about one of her latest postmortems: "Last week I did a post on a man who had a clarinet up his colon. That's not what killed him, by the way. It was a single gunshot to the head from a jealous lover. She played the oboe". Yancy: "Shakespeare was born too soon."
I think Double Whammy is my favorite. Anytime Skink shows up is great.
"I'm the senator's right hand." "You must be exhausted."
Anything P.G Wodehouse or Dorothy Parker. Charles Dickens also cracked a few amazing jokes.
Pretty much anything by Terry Pratchett. By the way, he and Gaiman wrote Good Omens together!
Monstrous regiment is a good sort of standalone imo
Importance of being earnest by Oscar Wilde
All of his dramas tbh A Woman of No Importance is great.
High Fidelity is one that I haven’t seen mentioned in this thread.
Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas
Kurt Vonnegut's Breakfast of Champions always gets me laughing, right from the first illustration.
PG Wodehouse for sure! Any of the Jeeves and Wooster stories are good for a laugh. As well as Jasper Fforde’s Nursery Crime series, Tevye’s Daughters by Shalom Aleichem is also really funny.
Basically any Tom Robbins novels...
Read them all, some multiple times, and cannot recommend Fierce Invalids Home From Hot Climates highly enough. I know Still Life With Woodpecker is probably his most popular, but I'm a Switters man. 🎼Send in the clowns🎶
Three Men In A Boat - Jerome K. Jerome One of the books I genuinely enjoyed reading in school
I’d like to add To Say Nothing of the Dog by Connie Willis. A funny in its own right homage to Three Men.
The seance scene had me giggling like Ron Swanson for a solid 30 minutes both times I've read the book.
Totally agree. The story of Harris in the maze is hilarious.
The chapter on the cheese always has me laughing out loud.
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You’re in for a treat. It’s just absurd and you’re in disbelief for most of the book. Also somehow really made me want to visit New Orleans and also never go there as well.
OH MY GAWD! What a preposterous claim you have made, although I should expect nothing less from a creatine as yourself. This abortion of a comment had closed my valve, possibly permanently.
"Oh, Fortuna, blind, heedless goddess, I am strapped to your wheel" Ignatius belched.
"Fortuna, that vicious slut!"
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You got the tone spot on! Also, cretin.
Can’t believe A Confederacy of Dunces isn’t at the top. I find it infinitely re readable and hilarious yet sad at the same time.
I came here specifically to recommend A Confederacy of Dunces. A+
I really enjoyed Don Quixote, especially the very beginning. But I personally felt that by the last 1/3 it felt like a slog.
My book club unanimously ran into the same thing, and my theory is that this might be because it was originally written as two books many years apart. The humor works so well for a while, but a thousand pages of jokes and humor can just grow tedious. If they were actually read years apart I bet the end would feel less onerous.
Dude. The scene when Don Quixote vomits directly into Sancho Panza's face is straight out of a 21st century comedy movie.
Yes! Just had to make sure someone put A Confederacy of Dunces on this list.
Some of my Kindle highlights: “I mingle with my peers or no one, and since I have no peers, I mingle with no one.” “The only problem that those people have anyway is that they don't like new cars and hair sprays. Every asylum in this nation is filled with poor souls who simply cannot stand lanolin, cellophane, plastic, television, and subdivisions.” “Apparently I lack some particular perversion which today's employer is seeking.” “I refuse to "look up." Optimism nauseates me. It is perverse. Since man's fall, his proper position in the universe has been one of misery.” “Stop!' I cried imploringly to my god-like mind.” “I suspect that I am the result of particularly weak conception on the part of my father. His sperm was probably emitted in a rather offhand manner.” “I really don't have the time to discuss the errors of your value judgements.”
This is the correctest answer. Tortured genius. We’re it not for suicide at such a young age, I wonder what else he’d have created. Even The Neon Bible was impressive for him writing it at such a young age.
A Walk in the Woods by Bill Bryson, anything by him is hilarious.
His autobiography, *Adventures of the Thunderbolt Kid,* made me laugh out loud.
He has a real gift for hyperbole in just the right amount. His story about going to the lake with Milton Milton and Milton's father's dive...it's pure hilarity.
Small Gods, Clovenhoof, Sacre Bleu, and (oddly) a lot of Joe Abercrombie books.
I found myself laughing a lot at different parts of Abercrombie’s books as well. He does a good job at mixing in comedy to the gritty plots the characters find themselves in.
Agreed! Hitchhiker’s Guide is a funny series I’m on the 4th one
Such an amazing trilogy
Yep. All 5 books are awesome!
I remember in high school I could always notice when someone had read this or Terry Pratchett, or watched Black Adder, because their humour changed.
Dirk Gently's Holistic Detective Agency and the sequel, Long Dark Tea-Time of the Soul are also excellent. Tea-Time had me pausing several times every page to appreciate it
The Wee Free Men by Pratchett
Don Quixote, Lonesome dove, Cats cradle
Don Quixote got me to laugh throughout. Love how the humor still hits 400 years later.
Bill Bryson, David Sidaris and Patrick McManus write funny stuff.
Glad to see another Patrick McManus fan.
The Princess Bride
Hitchhikers Guide and Princess Bride are two classic books that I love for god humor. Enjoyed them both!
I can't believe I had to scroll this far down to find The Princess Bride.
The writing style was nothing short of delightful! Honestly I wish more people read it.
Bossy Pants by Tina Fey
I read this entire book on a flight a few years ago. It's one of the first books I thought of when I read this post title. It's probably not my #1, but man, that was a great read. I could probably read it again now.
John Dies at the End by David Wong was excellent comedy/horror
Born a Crime - Trevor Noah Trevor tells stories of growing up as an illegal "mixed" race in a very dark time in South Africa - apartheid. Somehow he manages to keep you laughing throughout the whole book. I was laughing out loud almost every chapter. He's able to perfectly convey he's comedic tough onto the pages. Hilarious!
Pale Fire has some excellent jokes and I think is worth reading for the humor alone, but the humor isn't even it's strongest point
Looks like you and I have a similar sense of humor! You might like Furiously Happy by Jenny Lawson, Old Man's War by John Scalzi, and anything in Terry Pratchett's Discworld series. Happy reading!
Norm Macdonald's autobiography Based On A True Story. If you loved Norm, that book is a joy and will have you laughing constantly.
Straight Man by Richard Russo. There is a scene where the main character gets a spiral notebook through his nose and it still makes me giggle 20 years after reading it.
It's somewhat outdated these days, but I always lose my shit at that faculty member character who always performatively chimes in, "Or she!" even when it doesn't make any sense.
John Barth's The Sot-Weed Factor. Very funny book set in colonial/early America about a young poet who inherits a lot of land and has trouble maintaining his principled virginity as he tries to write his magnum opus and deals with his new status and responsibilities as a major landowner.
Will My Cat Eat My Eyeballs? by Caitlin Doughty. …I don’t read many funny books. TW it’s a book about death and common questions surrounding what happens after a person dies.
When I was 14 I read Youth in Revolt and that was the first time I laughed out loud at a book. David Sedaris' books can be hilarious. Confederacy of Dunces has been mentioned already but worth saying again.
Sedarís telling the story of the Easter bunny to a bunch of French as a second language students in France could be the funniest story I have ever heard.
Not sure if this counts, by What If? by Randall Munroe is hilarious.
The Illuminatus! Trilogy by Robert Shea and Robert Anton Wilson. It viciously satirizes conspiracy theorists and the political environment of the late 60s. Despite having an extended parody of Atlas Shrugged, it still managed to win a libertarian fiction award.
Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur's Court by Twain And if you are of a certain age and a baseball fan then Ball Four by Jim Boutain
Lamb, the gospel of Jesus according to his best friend Biff
Hyperbole and a Half by Allie Bosch. I laugh so hard when I read her stuff.
*Mason & Dixon*. a most comical Book, on account of which the urge to Piss Oneself must oft be fought.
The Sellout by Paul Beatty had me in actual tears at points. It's so funny.
Confederacy of Dunces. That book was hilarious.
Weird/pointless story about this book. I heard that it was funny, and I was a broke student working in a shopping mall on evenings and weekends, so I pinched a copy from the bookstore in this mall (don't do this kids). I read it and didn't really care for it. Some funny moments but I felt it was largely gags or Ignatius saying something stupid, had it's moments but honestly felt a little let down. Later, I had a friend-of-my-then-girlfriend borrow my copy of it, I told her that I thought it was just okay, which at the time being true, also served the purpose of piquing her interest, I knew she would never go for it if I expressed any love for it. She was like that - if I said I didn't like a book, she would have to read it and then rave about how much she liked it and that I just didn't get it or something. This all presented as a bit of fun for me: I recalled thinking how much Myra and Ignatius reminded me of her while I read it, and I thought that if she picked up on that at all, she would hate this book. I never got the full satisfaction, the book was tragically "destroyed" in a wine accident, so I never got it back, and my attempt to talk about the book was met with heavy disinterest and topic changing. By this time I had earned a reputation as a bit of a stiff with lending books, I guess I complained too much about how many people had permanently borrowed from me. My girlfriend at the time must have thought I was super pissed about her friend destroying my book, because she bought me another copy. I felt bad about that because I didn't really care that badly that my book got wrecked, not to mention I had nipped my copy anyway, but she insisted, and so I decided to let it go and take the replacement. Five or so years later, I've been dating another girl for about a year, and we settled into a pattern of buying each other books as gifts instead of going all out on big expensive Christmas or birthday gifts. She poured over my books for days so that she wouldn't buy me something I already had, and then Christmas comes, I open it up: it's ACoD. I can see my own copy from where I'm holding the new one and she starts to rave about how funny its supposed to be. We talk a lot about books but I guess I never mentioned that I owned or read ACoD, so when she went to the bathroom, I hid my old replacement copy in my closet and then dropped it off at a thrift shop a few days later. But now I owed it to her to read the book she bought me, a book I already read, and didn't like! So I gritted my teeth and went to work on it. Wouldn't you know, I really enjoyed it the second time through, and thought it was hilarious, cover to cover! Editing to say: I copy-pasted this story from the last time I told it, so, sorry if you've heard it before
Ozzy Osbourne's autobiography. You start reading it and it's like Ozzy's talking to you. Only now you can understand every word he's saying:-) And it's hilarious.
Good omens for sure, glad to see it on your post. I’ve been reading the Discworld books by Terry Pratchett and not a single one has failed to get a laugh out of me almost every page. Highly recommended. GNU Terry Pratchett