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Books that made you Laugh - Recommendations

T

thebigfredc

pfm Member
In way of a respite from these politically-charged times, I thought it might be nice to start a thread recommending books that made you laugh.

I instantly thought of High Fidelity and White City Blue but I would rather go with my current read: The Sellout by Paul Beatty. I know PF members are terribly sophisticated and well-read (it won the Man Booker prize in 2016) but just in case it passed you by, here is my synopsis.

It begins with the narrator up before the US Supreme Court charged with bringing back slavery and segregation to modern day America. The narrator is, however, an African American and both the slave and the citizens of his segregated city are willing participants in his scheme. The story then retraces the events that have led him to this state of affairs, starting with his childhood when his father - a prominent Social Scientist - used him as the subject for his latest theories and experiments.

It's a very sharply observed and funny satire. Enjoy.

Roy
 
Three Men in a Boat - Jerome K Jerome, Diary of a Nobody - George and Weedon Grosmith, The Collected Journalism of Miles na Gopaleen (Flann o Brien), Viz Profanisaurus, Hons and Rebels & A Fine Old Conflict - Jessica Mitford.
 
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Gotta be Myles na Gopaleen (Flann o' Brien). Peerless wit and verbal dexterity. Here he is on the supposed richness of the Irish language:
A lady lecturing recently on the Irish language drew attention to the fact (I mentioned it myself as long ago as 1925) that, while the average English speaker gets along with a mere 400 words, the Irish-speaking peasant uses 4,000.

Considering what most English speakers can achieve with their tiny fund of noises, it is a nice speculation to what extremity one would be reduced if one were locked up for a day with an Irish-speaking bore and bereft of all means of committing murder or suicide.

My point, however, is this. The 400/4,000 ration is fallacious; 400/400,000 would be more like it. There is scarcely a single word in the Irish (barring, possibly, Sasanach) that is simple and explicit.Apart from words with endless shades of cognate meaning, there are many with so complete a spectrum of graduated ambiguity that each of them can be made to express two directly contrary meanings, as well as a plethora of intermediate concepts that have no bearing on either.

And all this strictly within the linguistic field. Superimpose on all that the miasma of ironic usage, poetic licence, oxymoron, plamás, Celtic invasion, Irish bullery and Paddy Whackery, and it is a safe bet that you will find yourself very far from home. Here is an example copied from Dinneen and from more authentic sources known only to my little self.

Cur, g. curtha and cuirthe, m. –act of putting, sending, sowing, raining, discussing, burying, vomiting, hammering into the ground, throwing through the air, rejecting, shooting, the setting or clamp in a rick of turf, selling, addressing, the crown of cast-iron buttons which have been made bright by contact with cliff-faces, the stench of congealing badger’s suet, the luminance of glue-lice, a noise made in an empty house by an unauthorised person, a heron’s boil, a leprachaun’s (sic) denture, a sheep-biscuit, the act of inflating hare’s offal with a bicycle pump, a leak in a spirit level, the whinge of a sewage farm windmill, a corncrake’s clapper, the scum on the eye of a senile ram, adustman’s dumpling, a beetle’s faggot, the act of loading every rift with ore, a dumb man’s curse, a blasket, a “kur”, a fiddler’s occupational disease, a fairy godmother’s father, a hawk’s vertigo, the art of predicting past events, a wooden coat, a custard-mincer, a blue-bottle’s “farm”, a gravy flask, a timber-mine, a toy craw, a porridge-mill, a fair-day donnybrook with nothing barred, a stoat’s stomach-pump, abroken –

But what is the use? One could go on and on without reaching anywhere in particular.
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Not laugh-out-loud funny, but also wonderful, is this obscure gem:

https://www.amazon.co.uk/dp/1841954934/?tag=pinkfishmedia-21

Wherein the author imagines the romantic trials and tribulations of a variety of non-human creatures (pigs, mice, snails...). Great fun!
 
This site contains affiliate links for which pink fish media may be compensated.
A Confederacy of Dunces by John Kennedy Toole.

Only half way through but finding it hard not to laugh out loud sometimes. Recommended by Billy Connolly on some tv prog.

Bloss
 
Donovan's autobiography. He was the greatest, the Beatles owed most of it to him and he invented Led Zeppelin. Apparently.

Also The Most of SJ Perelman. And Robertson Davies' Marchbanks diaries (surprise, surprise.)
 
Martin Amis ‘Money’. Then ‘Experience’ has some funny bits too like when expecting his dad over he would “put two cans of ‘vandal strength’ lager in the freezer” for him.
 
In common with Tom Sharpe, a number of the books by Garrison Keillor have made me laugh out loud - a lot.

A couple of favourites are Radio Romance and The Book of Guys.
 
MVV said:
Martin Amis ‘Money’. Then ‘Experience’ has some funny bits too like when expecting his dad over he would “put two cans of ‘vandal strength’ lager in the freezer” for him.
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'Money' is one of my favourite novels, and as you say, laugh out loud funny. The set pieces like the infamous tennis match, or the Lorne Guyland moments, are superb. IIRC Kirk Douglas threatened to sue because Guyland is clearly based on him, and much of the book is based on Amis's experiences in writing the abysmal Saturn 3 screenplay in 1979/80.

If it has a down side it's that the 'voice' is so overwhelming that the plot is almost incidental.
 
blossomchris said:
A Confederacy of Dunces by John Kennedy Toole.

Only half way through but finding it hard not to laugh out loud sometimes. Recommended by Billy Connolly on some tv prog.

Bloss
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You beat me to it.

But his other book is definitely NOT a laugh riot.
 
The Hitch-hikers guide to the galaxy.

Anything Tom Sharpe, but Riotous Assembly and Indecent Exposure are good to start with.

Cats Cradle and Galapagos by Kurt Vonnegut.

More recently, try ‘Why mummy drinks.’
 
As mentioned above, "Viz Profanisaurus". EXTREME bad taste...

"Milk, Sulphate and Alby Starvation" by Martin Miller

51HwpzJkMeL._SL500_SX321_BO1,204,203,200_.jpg
 
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