Funniest book you've read?

[ink spills]

My favorite funny book of all time is Catch-22 by Heller. If you haven't read it yet, definitely check it out. hehehee.....

[killALLyourdarlings]

My Brother Was An Only Child by Jack Douglas

Others:
Mark Twain's Life on the Mississippi
Bill Bryson's books
Catch 22, though funny, was too close to reality

[JustineDell]

Hmm....the Twilight books? Kidding. The Twilight parody book on the otherhand Nightlite...is freaking hilarious. To me anyway. Everyone who read Twilight should read it, just for the commical value. If you haven't read Twilight, you might not get the humor. If you didn't like Twilight, then you should REALLY read Nightlite.

~JD

Okay, I totally spelled Nighlight wrong before. My bad. Heehee. S

[maybegenius]

Christopher Moore's book Lamb: The Gospel According to Biff, Christ`s Childhood Pal - Hilarious and everyone should read it. I bought the collectors edition which is bound in leather with gold page trim to look like a bible. As a Catholic I had to laugh at the ideas and thoughts that were put through in this story. Wonderfully well written.

I always cite this one as one of my favorite funny books. It's very rare for a book to make me literally laugh out loud, but this one does the trick every time.

[HillaryJ]

Christopher Moore's book Lamb: The Gospel According to Biff, Christ`s Childhood Pal - Hilarious and everyone should read it. I bought the collectors edition which is bound in leather with gold page trim to look like a bible. As a Catholic I had to laugh at the ideas and thoughts that were put through in this story. Wonderfully well written.

I always cite this one as one of my favorite funny books. It's very rare for a book to make me literally laugh out loud, but this one does the trick every time.

I concur with both of you on this. Lamb is really funny, AND has the great plot, good character development etc. necesssary to go the distance.

Hitchhiker's Guide... is great, too. I started a book called Apathy and Other Small Victories, and laughed aloud repeatedly, but ended up not finishing it. The humor carried me a ways through, but the plot/characters weren't quite enough to hold my interest all the way to the end. Is it odd that I wouldn't care about the characters in a book called Apathy?

[Sommer Leigh]

I JUST finished Saving Francesca by Melina Marchetta and I have never laughed so hard when reading a book. My husband made me go into the basement to read so that he could sleep. It's a YA but I think that any age, girl or boy, could easily relate to the characters and the conversations in this book. It's about a girl in Australia who has to switch schools for 11th and 12th year because her all girls catholic school doesn't cover those grades. She goes to Saint Sebastian, an all boys school recently opened up to girls. So 30 girls embark on the first co-ed year with hundreds of boys who are gross, rude, offensive, defensive, clever, intense, hostile, misogynistic, clueless about girls, and did I mention gross? There's a lot of potty mouth-lite language from the boys who mainly do it to rile the "chicks" up, and it's just seamless. Some of the book is quite sad, and most of it has nothing to do with romance (and what little romance shows up is complicated, hysterical, and decidedly unromantic most of the time).

Sorry, I'm rambling. I'm just so in love with this book I want to make everyone read it.

[Transitoria]

The funniest book I've read is LAMB by Christopher Moore. I buy extra copies whenever I find one and pass it along to people who need a laugh. It's the untold story of Christ's childhood and teen years by his 13th Apostle and childhood friend, Biff.

Read the first page. It's a hoot!

[Daryl_Blonder]

"Baghdad Without a Map" by Tony Horwitz. It's the story of a journalist's misadventures in the Middle East right before the First Gulf War. Funny, enlightening, and a real insight into Middle Eastern life in modern times.

[dios4vida]

"Baghdad Without a Map" by Tony Horwitz. It's the story of a journalist's misadventures in the Middle East right before the First Gulf War. Funny, enlightening, and a real insight into Middle Eastern life in modern times.

Allah wanted it dead. :)

[One of the Mad Ones]

Most of Lorrie Moore's short stories, particularly from her collection SELF-HELP, as well as her novel ANAGRAMS.

On a more romantic comedy/chic lit side, I recommend Caprice Crane's STUPID AND CONTAGIOUS or FORGET ABOUT IT.

[steve]

[PaulWoodlin]

Terry Pratchett's Small Gods is my favorite funny novel. It appeals to the irreligious in me. It's a stand alone without his regular cast of characters.

Runner up is Don Quixote, but it's also a rather cruel, sad book if you think about it too much. I've read a series of lectures by Nabokov about Don Quixote, and he argues that people have been laughing and crying about the wrong things concerning it for centuries.

[PaulWoodlin]

Oh, sorry, third place goes to the Princess Dairies and Princess Bride. I had the embaressing experience of reading Princess Dairies in public and laughing my ass off. I'm not sure if this made better or worse by reading it in a cafe that catered to banned word, anarchists, and eco-feminists or not.

[One of the Mad Ones]

I've read a series of lectures by Nabokov about Don Quixote, and he argues that people have been laughing and crying about the wrong things concerning it for centuries.

I would love to read those lectures. I'm a big fan of Nabokov.

[rjkeller]

Anything by P.G. Wodehouse, but I particularly love Code of the Woosters. ("It is impossible to be unhappy while reading the adventures of Jeeves and Wooster. And I've tried." -Christopher Buckley)