Sometimes it's great to read something laugh out loud funny. A really funny book can be hard to find, though!

The funniest books I've read include:

Lady's Hand, Lion's Heart : a story about a midwife in the US. It has some sad parts too, but man, some of the birth stories are hysterically funny, tears in my eyes funny!

P.G Wodehouse's stories : Some of Wodehouse's stories are really wet your pants funny. They are silly comedies, written about a hundred years ago, about an aristocrat and his butler Jeeves.

Thursday Next stories : These are weird speculative fiction books set in an alternative 1980s. Very, very funny in parts, especially if you are a reader - but Jasper Fforde also specialises in very bad puns!


OK, these are 3 off the top of my head. Share your funny books!

My goodness, I'm on a bit of a Jasper Fforde kick at the minute, so when I saw your post for "Funniest Book You've Read", I thought I was going to add something new - but there you go - snap. I've just finished: "Lost in a Good Book" and "The Eyre Affair".

I've also enjoyed several P. G. Wodehouse stories.

I must hunt down "Lady's Hand, Lion's Heart", since we seem to be on the same wavelength.

My favourite book of all time is probably also the funniest book I've read.

Catch 22 by Joseph Heller.

It makes me cry too.

the Myth series by Robert Asprin always makes me laugh it up

the Red Dwarf omnibus was brilliant too

DH mentioned his two are Hitchhikers Guide and Catch 22

Hitchhikers guide etc.
And Holy Cow by Sarah Mcdonald. Not all the content is funny, but she is, the book is great.

ETA: how could I forget "My family and other animals" by Gerald Durrell. An oldie but a goodie.

Well I was LOL'ing all through the bit in Jasper Fforde's Lost in a Good Book, where Thursday is involved in a car chase with Miss Haversham from Great Expectations (who had a terrible case of road rage). What a way to further develop a character that's been so conservatiley stuck in the Dickensian classic.

Or, in The Eyre Affair, when a Japanese tourist is caught loitering in the background of a scene from Jane Eyre.

I love the rampant imagination and dry humour of that author

Also, must be my strange sense of humour, but Augusten Burroughs 'Running With Scissors' made my sides hurt.

Oh yeah, Hitchhiker's guide series and Gerald Durrell's books are both brilliant! Also the "all creatures great and small" books (james herriot) are great, too. Actually, there's also Cold Comfort Farm (Stella Gibbons), one of my favourite books ever - now that's funny.

Ok, so its a kid's book but I love love love The Muddleheaded Wombat. There are drawings in that book that make me laugh out loud when reading along.

Marley and Me was hilarious but also sad and also a book called Plane Insanity but can't remember the author but you could google it. It was about an ex male air hostess and his life in the air and the going on's of his passengers... PMSL the whole way through.

I was coming to say this one too. A challenging read, hard to keep all the characters straight! But laugh out loud funny.

I haven't laughed at a book so hard since reading A Heartbreaking Work of Staggering Genius.

Another vote for Hitchhikers guide and Catch 22 (the section of the book where he has the dead man in his tent is hilarious). And, I also really, really love Snow Crash by Neal Stephenson. There are some descriptions in there that have me in hysterics every time

hitchhikers and "my uncle oswald" by roald dahl [one of his adult books - most definately not for kiddies]

Douglas Adams "Dirk Gentlys Holistic Detective Agency" and the sequel "Long Dark Tea Time of the Soul" are amazing. Anything by Terry Pratchett is likely to be a win, though some more than others. Love both:)

Edit to add: Bridge of Birds by Barry Hughart, one of my favourite books ever and so clever and funny!

Letters from a Nut. Too funny.

http://www.amazon.com/Letters-Nut-Ted-L-Nancy/dp/0380973545

Or anything by David Sedaris

http://www.amazon.com/David-Sedaris/e/B000...t_athr_dp_pel_1

I remember laughing aloud to Vanity Fair by William Thackeray

I think all mine have already been mentioned - Catch 22, everything by Douglas Adams, Jasper Fforde.

I would also add:
Anything by Lynne Truss, who wrote 'Eats, Shoots & Leaves', which is hysterical itself - her novels are brilliant.
Anything by Carl Hiaasen - I'm slightly biased because he writes about South Florida, where I lived for 3 years, so the locations are dear to me, but his books are incredibly funny and all have an environmentalist slant. Probably sounds weird but he's great.
All the Adrian Mole books (Sue Townsend).
A Short History of Tractors in Ukrainian by Marina Lewycka (We Are All Made of Glue is great too).

Most of mine have been mentioned, ie Douglas Adams, Wodehouse, Fforde

but wanted to add that "Small Gods" by Terry Pratchett not only was hysterically funny but changed my life as well.



And I can't believe someone else knows "My Uncle Oswald" - loooved this book (actually Dahl has a seriously macabre sense of humour)

Another one that loves Jasper FForde (though haven't had much success getting through Shades of Grey) and Terry Pratchett (just finished Jingo and it had me laughing out loud)

Yeah, I like Jasper Fforde's "Thursday Next" books, but his Nursery Crime series and the new Shades of Grey were both disappointing - too many bad puns!

Yes! I'd forgotten this book. The new wife with her big red lips. What a character.



Orr is one of my favourite characters (Are those apples in your cheeks? No, they're crabapples and they're not in my cheeks, they're obviously in my hands) It's too good.

Memorable scene: When Yossarian is being both prosecuted, defended and judged by Leuitenant Scheisskopf. (Is that your foot on my foot? Are you telling me to move my goddamned foot? Oh no, sir!)

I don't think I've ever laughed so much as some of the scenes in ZigZag Street, by Nick Earls.

Another one for 'The Red Dwarf Omnibus'. Actually, that's probably the only book where I've laughed out loud. Going to have to check out these other ones!

Absolutely anything by David Sedaris...DH and I go off in gales of laughter when discussing his stories.

Also A Confederacy of Dunces is beyond funny.

I also love all the Carl Hiaasen books. They are slightly left of centre, but absolutely laugh out loud funny.

Another Carl Hiaasen fan here - very black humour, just my style.

I love Shane Maloney's Murray Whelan novels. Also in the Australian genre, Ross Campbell's collected newspaper and magazine pieces about life in Oxalis Cottage are wonderful.

Spike Milligan's war autobiographies are a hoot (albeit with some sad bits). Some PG Wodehouse is superb, especially the Blandings Castle series, and a gem called 'Love Among the Chickens'. You can read them for free online at the Gutenberg site.

The first dozen or so Janet Evanovich books were very funny, but I think she has gone off the boil a bit.

My all time favourite - sadly out of print - is 'The Straight and Narrow Path', by Honor Blackman, about the clash between Church, State and Science in Catholic Ireland in the 1950s. I have read it at least a dozen times and it still tickles me immensely.

Sadly, literary critics almost never credit these kinds of books as being great writing. It is rare that these pompous pontificators acknowledge how hard is is to write a genuinely funny book that stands the test of time.

Oh, almost forgot 'The Good Soldier Schweik' another almost forgotten classic.

Oh, yeah! I have "Gunner. Rommel Who?" It's hilarious.

Not laugh out loud but Nancy Mitford's Love in a Cold Climate and The Pursuit of Love are very funny.
They are my all time favourite books and I read them regularly....a bit like comfort food.

I am so happy to see some more Hiaasen fans! I didn't think he'd made much of a mark in Australia.

There are a few Reginald Hill books that I found very funny - Pictures of Perfection and Arms and the Women. They were before he got all dark in the later Dalziel & Pascoe books.

Jonathon Coe's What a Carve Up.

Most particularly though, that I've read recently are Miss Buncle's Book by JE Stevenson and Miss Pettigrew Lives For a Day by Winifred Watson - both of which are published by the wonderful Persephone Books

Thumbs up to Jasper Fforde and Terry Pratchett, but the absolute funniest, LOL book ever is "A Girl, A Smock and a Simple Plan" by Chris Daffey.

Just the opening paragraph made me snort my tea;


"Julian Crower was a large child. Not large enough to be considered fat, but fat enough to be considered large. At five feet and three inches, he towered above your average sixth grader and represented the kind of shambling, slow-witted menace that no primary school could be without . . . In a poll conducted at the beginning of grade six, Julian Crowler was voted the second most frightening sight in the playground. Julian Crowler eating a meat pie was voted first."

If you went to an australian primary school, this book will make you laugh.

Im so uncultured and daggy but I really love The Adrian Mole series. I first starting reading them when I was 13 so I feel like Ive grown up with him

There are 8 books in the series (so far) and they still make me giggle out loud (when Im not cringing at his stupidity!)

PG Wodehouse is very very funny and He died with a felafel in his hand by John Birmingham was hysterical.

huncamunca, Reginald Hill is a wag. The Dalziel and Pascoe books would be a lot less interesting if it were not for Dalziel's black humour. One I read recently featured a passage where the (massive) DL explained to a colleague, firstly, how much he loathed bad manners, and secondly, how he had been lecturing a recently deceased friend about his weight and lifestyle.

RH is also a seriously good writer.

Nothing at all to be ashamed about! They're brilliant.

I have it too. Found it in the back of a secondhand book shop (miss that shop so much now we've moved!).

I love Olivia Joules and the Overactive Imagination by Helen Fielding who wrote Bridget Jones. One of the best and funniest books I've read (found at local markets for $2!). Her other books are great, but this is the best.

Anything by Bill Bryson.

Also just recently read a v old short story by an American author, sending up Holmes & Watson detective stories, cacked myself. Jane Austen's send-up of gothic romances is also good (Northanger Abbey?)

Are they really? Every time I see them I cringe. I don't want to read them and have it ruin the originals as I adore Austen.

The Bride Striped Bare.

Last Chance to See by Douglas Adams (of Hitch Hikers' Guide fame) and Mark Carwardine (a zoologist).
It's the only non-fiction book that Douglas Adams ever wrote, and the only book to have me in tears of laughter to the point that I could no longer see the print! It's also got a vey serious side in parts, and a huge conservation message that I think everyone should read.

How to Kill Your Husband (and other handy household hints) by Kathy Lette's

Particularly the first few chapters.

Can't remember which ones but a couple from Nick Earles earlier collection (could have been ZigZag street) I found extremely funny.

funniest book I've read recently was the latest Stephanie Plum (the 15 one, whatever it is called) by Janet Evanovich - the whole series is funny, but I was in tears with laughter with this one.

anything by Douglas Adams too

I'm not really into non fiction reading outside of txt books, but "Don't tell mum I work on the rigs, she thinks i'm a piano player in a whore house" had me really LOL. Fantastic, entertaining (and some what educational) read.

here

ETA; OMG I read Douglas Admas (everything he had ever written) and the Red Dwarf series sooooo long ago I had forgotten about them, must dust off some of the books in storage.....

Obesa cantavit - that looks great! What a title * Off to buy it this week *

funniest would probably be (it's old!!!!) 'Some of my friends have tails' by Sara Henderson.

'All that happened at number 96' by Denise Scott was good too.

My favourite book of all time and soooo funny is:

'Three Men in a Boat' by Jerome K. Jerome.

I couldn't tell you how many times I have read this, but was first given it as a teenager (15 or 16 yrs), so have been reading it for about 35 years now. Still makes me laugh out loud.