Urban75 Home About Offline BrixtonBuzz Contact

A funny laugh out loud book suggestions

Thanks all for the suggestions. I will report back once I have chosen.

Q. for May...what was the name of that Southern Belle memoir book you suggested some time back? I bought it and loved it but left it with my friend to read. I want to buy and read it again.
 
Jitterbug perfume by Tom Robbins - Hilarious
Catch 22 - Joseph Heller - Funniest book ever (Read IT!!)
Most things by Terry Pratchet - Guards! Guards! is one of my favourites. Or try Riotous assembly by Tom Sharpe.
 
Sadken said:
No offence though, but I always think if someone doesn't like Catch 22 they probably won't like the stuff I do, although, having said that I gave up on it my first time which was when I was about 14, I think but now it's the funniest book ever imo.
Click to expand...
I feel similarly. I reread Catch 22 every now and then and it still makes me laugh out loud. But I know plenty of people who are APPARENTLY intelligent and witty who just don't like it at all. Taste is a funny thing and humour can be very subjective. That's what makes recommending a LOL book particularly difficult.

I really hate it, though, when you pick up a book that has rentaquote people on the front saying, "Made me laugh out loud several times!!" and then you read it and the book is clearly not even *supposed* to be funny, but rather tragic and moving and not even in a "black humour" kind of way. Cunts.
 
Puckoon -- Spike Milligan's only novel -- made me LOL several times, incidentally. And Pratchett, like everybody else says. And HHGTTG again. I'm being so unoriginal here.
 
moonsi til said:
Q. for May...what was the name of that Southern Belle memoir book you suggested some time back? I bought it and loved it but left it with my friend to read. I want to buy and read it again.
Click to expand...

Confessions of a Failed Southern Lady, by Florence King. I have owned three copies of that book over the years and lent+lost them all :D :mad:
 
Maybe some vonnegut? If you haven't already been there...

01frontclose.jpg
 
Louis de Bernières makes me laugh. Captain Corelli's Mandolin is hilarious in places. Particularly the beginning, with the old man who thought he was deaf and gets his ears waxed, then after a day being able to actually hear his wife wants the wax put back in again.
 
kabbes said:
Louis de Bernières makes me laugh. Captain Corelli's Mandolin is hilarious in places. Particularly the beginning, with the old man who thought he was deaf and gets his ears waxed, then after a day being able to actually hear his wife wants the wax put back in again.
Click to expand...

Ah yeh. I read his first one (i think) recently. Can't remember the name but its about a fictional south american country. Fucking hilarious. I had no idea he was such a good writer. I think I associated him with Nic Cage and that godawful movie I was forced to sit thru with the wife once.
 
Oh, I *love love love* Vonnegut. He has a brilliantly efficient prose style. He can say more in one short sentence than most writers manage in an entire chapter. He can write a phrase that is both LOLfunny and gut-wrenchingly sad at the same time. I mourn him. And so it goes.
 
gabi said:
Ah yeh. I read his first one (i think) recently. Can't remember the name but its about a fictional south american country. Fucking hilarious. I had no idea he was such a good writer. I think I associated him with Nic Cage and that godawful movie I was forced to sit thru with the wife once.
Click to expand...
Is it "The War of Don Emmanuel's Nether Parts" by any chance? Another hilarious book.

I purposely avoided the Nic Cage film because I knew that it would be an abomination. There is no way that you can do that book justice as a film. Absolutely no way. You'd need about 30 hours, not 2 hours.
 
Aside from Captain Corelli, which you really should read if you liked Don Emmanuel, there are the other two in the Latin America trilogy -- "Señor Vivo and the Coca Lord" and "The Troublesome Offspring of Cardinal Guzman". Although I have to admit that I have not read the last one of those.

He's also written some more recent books but I haven't read those either.
 
gabi said:
Maybe some vonnegut? If you haven't already been there...

01frontclose.jpg
Click to expand...



Ah someone I have never read but always been meaning to? Where shall I start?

I will read Catch 22 probably won't take it on holiday but will have a 3rd go at it. The first time I think I was too young and thought it was a serious book. The 2nd time I tried I got the black humour but got distracted by other books.
 
moonsi til said:
Ah someone I have never read but always been meaning to? Where shall I start?

I will read Catch 22 probably won't take it on holiday but will have a 3rd go at it. The first time I think I was too young and thought it was a serious book. The 2nd time I tried I got the black humour but got distracted by other books.
Click to expand...

Slaughterhouse 5 is his most famous....

I loved breakfast of champions most though. They're all good though.
 
There is no bad Vonnegut book. Funnily enough, though, the ones I enjoyed most were actually his later ones. Timequake I loved. And the autobiographical A Man Without A Country is possibly the most perfect piece of writing I have ever encountered. Simple, short sentences that somehow had the power of the most ornate rhetoric imaginable. So, so sad. And yet uplifting too. The fact that it is his last book just makes it more poignant.
 
kabbes said:
There is no bad Vonnegut book. Funnily enough, though, the ones I enjoyed most were actually his later ones. Timequake I loved. And the autobiographical A Man Without A Country is possibly the most perfect piece of writing I have ever encountered. Simple, short sentences that somehow had the power of the most ornate rhetoric imaginable. So, so sad. And yet uplifting too. The fact that it is his last book just makes it more poignant.
Click to expand...

I've just been reading his wiki entry. Such a cool man.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kurt_Vonnegut
 
The last lines that Vonnegut wrote, in that aforementioned Man Without A Country:

The Great Kurt Vonnegut said:
When the last living thing
Has died on account of us,
How poetical it would be
If Earth could say,
In a voice floating up
Perhaps
From the floor
Of the Grand Canyon,
"It is done.
People did not like it here."
Click to expand...

This still brings tears to my eyes, even as I read it again.
 
DotCommunist said:
Seconded on Milligans war memoirs

=Gaiman and Pratchett 'Good Omens'

Also the Brentford Trilogy by Robert Rankin. East of Ealing is fantastic.
Click to expand...

Any of the above *quality* suggestions...plus Clive James's Unreliable Memoirs.

In fact, Good Omens was the first book that I actually laughed out loud whilst reading.
Embarrassingly, I was on the top deck of a very full bus at the time.

:eek:
 
Thanks everyone for taking the time to make a suggestion. I just ordered Sirens of Titans and E by Matt Beaumont. And I will read Catch 22 when I get back.
 
Fup by Jim Dodge is a tiny book (can read in an hour) about a duck. Called Fup. Makes me laugh out loud and cry in equal measures.
 
Brinxmat said:
Any of the above *quality* suggestions...plus Clive James's Unreliable Memoirs.

In fact, Good Omens was the first book that I actually laughed out loud whilst reading.
Embarrassingly, I was on the top deck of a very full bus at the time.

:eek:
Click to expand...

Rankin is immense. I love his stuff.
 
You must log in or register to reply here.

Similar threads

V
Best book written by a Latin American author ever
Replies
1
Views
94
editor
editor
A
Book available if you wanna read one...
Replies
1
Views
155
AHunter3
A
editor
Last One Laughing - unexpectedly brilliant comedy
2 3 4
Replies
93
Views
3K
Saffy
Saffy
Epona
Worst/Least Appropriate Theme Music For A TV Series
Replies
28
Views
511
T & P
T & P
N
Suggest a film for me to watch this afternoon
Replies
13
Views
297
nottsgirl
N
Back
Top Bottom