recommendations for humorous fiction
 

i am in need of a finding a humorous laugh out loud kind of book. preferrably something fiction, but i'm not picky. any suggestions?

Catch 22 by Joseph Heller.

A Confederacy of Dunces. Seriously.

I was just talking to Marsupial the other day about Me Talk Pretty One Day by David Sedaris. Very, very funny.

Here's another one:

"How to start your own religion and still be home by 5"

By SeattleUte, the lauded author of the well-known self-help book "What Shall I Do?"

"Letters From a Nut" by Ted L Nancy.

I basically had to stop reading it on the airplane because my stomach was hurting so bad from laughing. I was finding new ways to embarrass my wife as I laughed my way out loud through the book. I even had tears coming down.

Ted L Nancy is a fictitious author who has published a few things.

The book is a compendium of actual letters Ted has written to businesses, hotels, restaurants, Fortune 500 companies, etc....the letters are ridiculous, sometimes incoherent, and complete nonsense.....the humor is in the actual responses he gets from these companies.

It is one of the funniest books I have read in a long time.

"The Book of Mormon"

Sincerely,

SeattleUte

Ted is supposedly Jerry Seinfeld. There are a couple of volumes of these and they are indeed pretty funny.

This is probably obvious, but all of Douglas Adams' HGttG books are must-reads if you're after the funny.

There are some good volumes of compilations of Dave Berry columns.

P.J. O'Rourke has some good books that are funny and give an interesting slant to things. The specific political examples are a bit dated now, but I enjoyed Parlaiment of Whores.

Yes, I have read that. In fact, it is Jerry who wrote the preface to Letters...so they could be one and the same. I like the romanticized notion of an anonymous author.

However, i think it is fair to say that the humor in LFAN is anything but what you are used to on Seinfeld. LFAN is basically complete lunacy.

Money or London Fields, by Martin Amis. I promise you'll laugh all the way through Money. Agree with Catch-22 and the Book of Mormon, although the D&C is funnier. Although ultimately they are tragic novels The Brothers Karamazov, 100 Years of Solitude, Blood Meridian, The Kruetzer Sonata, The Stranger, and Platform (Michel Houellebecq) all have hilarious moments. Woody Allen has written some funny novels.

Without feathers by Woody Allen is hilarious. I will echo Messrs. Seattle Ute and Waters in recommending Catch-22. Along with Don Quixote it is the funniest fiction that I have ever read. So I recommend Quixote as well.

You know now that I think of it, Tom Sawyer and Huck Finn were pretty funny books, too. But you've probably already read those.

Cathc 22 is funny, but I have read it and most of the others here and I ma telling you that Confederacy of Dunces is the funniest of the lot.

Really. Plus the publication of the book is an interesting story.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/A_Confederacy_of_Dunces

http://www.amazon.com/Confederacy-Du.../dp/0802130208

I confess to never having read it. It didn't seem my type. Maybe I'll give it a try. The publication story of course is legendary.

If you are new to reading, I would recommend the Great Brain series by Fitzgerald. They are not LOL funny, but they will make you grin at times.

I concur with this. Hilarious book.

Kennedy O'Toole does a great job in an offbeat sort of way. I liked it.

I'll second this.

You can't re-second a seconded motion, you must move for a vote.

Pure Drivel by Steve Martin is pretty good ... and hey he's a Mormon isn't he, so it should be ok with your book club ;)

Him With His Foot in His Mouth, by Saul Bellow.

She can be added to the list of sponsors of the proposal.

How could I forget. The Depford Trilogy by Robertson Davies. The first of these, Fifth Business, is one of the best novels I've ever read. It's one of the all-time greats that will be read and loved in 100 years, and it's got a lot of very funny stuff. The Cornish trilogy is good too.

Ditto.

These are the titles that crossed my mind but I was beaten to the punch in posting them.

The Tragedy of Pudd'Nhead Wilson
A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur's Court

both by Twain.

Amazon has a collection of short stories by Twain that are great and some of them are laugh out loud funny, such as "The McWilliamses and the Burglar Alarm". My kids love me to read that story to them, especially the two older kids.

Another great short story is The Ransom of Red Chief by O. Henry.

I read a few of Davies' books a few years ago and quite enjoyed them. It seems like he is rarely mentioned as a good recent writer; I wonder why that is? I have not read the titles SU mentions, but I would be surprised if they aren't good.

I think it's anti-Canadian bigotry. Actually, I think he's plenty appreciated by the experts as one of the greats of the Twentieth Century. As for popular success, I continue to see his novels in various forms (the trilogies single bound and individual, etc.) at book stores though he's no Dan Brown and probaby never was. You really need to read Fifth Business. It's very funny, and just a great story. It ends dramtically and satisfyingly explosive, like the Godfather.

Definitely go with Catch-22

Dirty Jokes & Beer -- Drew Carey

Good thing, or I wouldn't like him too much.

Me Talk Pretty One Day is wonderful. Hysterical. I read "Big Boy" last night and about died. Yeah, Sedaris is rampantly gay, but he's a good writer. Not that good writing and homosexuality are mutually exclusive.

After reading letters from a nut I sent wanted to see if people would take letters like that seriously.

I wrote a letter to the MGM Grand Hotel and Casino, that said my friend and I had just returned from a weekend of gambling and relaxing at their fine establishment. However on our return flight home we decided that we needed to make one more bet, just to round out the trip. So we bet $1000 between ourselves as to which one of us could pick the color closest to black out of a box of Crayola 64 crayons.

I then added a lengthy paragraph about how I had been credited with being very smart at colors from an early age, and using this color knowledge I picked out brown. And declared myself the winner. My friend picked navy blue and declared himself the winner. I then said that I was sending this letter to the Casino Manager to decide our wager and we both agreed to take their decision as binding.

I got back a letter from the MGM Casino manager that went into great detail about how she had decided our bet. It included a story about how she would often attempt to get dressed in the dark in the early morning hours so as to not wake her husband. She had three pairs of identical shoes in black, brown and navy. On these dark mornings when she was hoping to get black shoes but picked wrong she always ended up wearing blue shoes. She concluded the letter by saying that she had no idea if my letter was serious or not but it was the most interesting she had ever received.

That sounds a lot like The Lazlo Letters, a book written several years ago by Don Novello, the guy who played Father Guido Sarducci on SNL. It was a hysterical book.

For humorous fiction, I enjoy Carl Hiaasen and Elmore Leonard.

That's a great story.

i read those when i was growing up - do you know if they are still in print? i would like to get those for my sons.

Yes, they are still in print. I bought them for my boys a couple of years ago at a Barnes and Noble close to my house.

Great books.

This novel was picked by the NY Times as one of the 10 best books of the year, and I read the first chapter in the Times. It was pretty damn funny. I think I'll pick it up when it is issued in paper.

http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/031...pf_rd_i=507846

my mother just recommended this book to me. i am going to read it - thanks for the post.