Amusing Books?

rune

rune

rune
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Im reading a book at present, thats not fantasy or sci-fi. Its a true life hilarious story about a woman's experiences on camping holidays as a kid
Ive laughed so hard at this book, that I thought, Id ask others if they could recommend other books that also made them laugh

The one Im reading is The Tent, The Bucket and Me by Emma Kennedy.
 
I've often found a lot of the Bill Bryson books to be witty and amusing, enough to make me laugh out loud anyway.

Notes from a Small Island being the first I read.
 
Yeah, Bill Bryson is very amusing and quite educational. There's always some small factoid to be learned in his books.

Sci fi wise, the HitchHikers Guide To The Galaxy is pure class. I'd also recommend space Captain Smith by our very own Toby Frost.
 
Humour such a subjective thing - I tried Bill Bryson and just didn't get on with Notes from a Small Island. :)

My suggestions are:

"The Cat who came in from the Cold" - Derek Longden. A writer "adopts" a kitten - the bit with the Christmas tree is especially delightful

"A Cat Called Birmingham" by Chris Pascoe

"The Unadulterated Cat" by Terry Pratchett

"An Utterly Impartial History of Britain or 2000 Years of Upper-class Idiots in Charge" by John O'Farrell

Richard Conniff - several books on wildlife research - as a journalist he meets the researchers and writes about both the research and the researchers. Not necessarily laugh out loud, but very amusing. He is not poking fun at them, but there are some delightful stories. (The entomologyst who served in the US army and his men were forever showing him the moths they'd squelched with the rifle butts when they were drawn into the searchlights.)
He has also written a fascinating book called "The Natural History of the Rich"

My Family and Other Animals and the sequel Birds, Beasts and Relatives by Gerald Durrell

George McDonald Fraser's McAuslen books, starting with The General Danced at Dawn - life as a young officer in the Gordon Highlanders just after WW2. A mix of his mistakes and the "challenges" he has in his platoon (especially Private McAuslen)
 
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Gervase Phinn Dales Series with one of them I laughed so much whilst pregnant I put myself in hospital (turned out I had flu which was developing into pneumonia). It was unpleasant I umm well no too much information - but the books were funny.

Sci-fi wise there is Smith by Mike Devlin which is similar to Hitchhikers.

I've just finished Peter Sissons' autobiography "When One Door Closes" in places it was very serious but in others laugh out loud funny.

Julian Clary's books are also brilliant.

I also find Kurt Vonnegut very funny -- I'd avoided his books for years thinking they sounded very literary and dry but the first page of Slaughterhouse Five had me laughing.

Right now I am reading Agatha Christie starting with Murder at the Vicarage and I don't know if at eight or nine I didn't get her humour or if I had forgotten it but it is amusing.
 
One of my "comfort books" is also one of the funniest books I've ever read: James Thurber's My Life and Hard Times. I find most of the early Thurber I've read funny, but he only hit this peak one more time with his children's book The Wonderful O.


Randy M.
 
Thank you folks for the recommendations, and please keep them coming. Im getting a nice list to go and check at my library :D

Its a real tonic I think to be able to laugh, and double the pleasure when its a book
 
At least with my county library service, you can sometimes make recommendations for books not on their catalogue and they buy it.

I first came across The Cat Who Came in from the Cold in the library - it did come out some years ago so may have been dropped from library catalogues as they tend to bin older books. The sort of book that is popular in libraries, so here's hoping.

Further recommendation

The Kindness of Strangers by Kate Adie (the war reporter). There is as you might expect quite a lot of sadness and tragedy, but there are some laugh out loud moments as well. Very gripping book I've read several times.
 
Starting with If Only They Could Talk, the James Herriot vet books are very amusing. Also in the same vein the An Irish Country Doctor books my Patrick Talyor keep me grinning.
 
Ulysses by James Joyce.:eek:

Kidding. I meant Finnegan's Wake. :eek::eek:

Actually, I loved Adams' Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy, and its sequels.

For non-sci-fi humour, I found James Herriot and absolute scream, if a bit dated now. There was one scene where he and Tristan have a semi-wild cat in a box in their car, and the thing gets loose. Almost peed myself I laughed so hard.

The television series wasn't near as funny.
 
Clansman said:
For non-sci-fi humour, I found James Herriot and absolute scream, if a bit dated now. There was one scene where he and Tristan have a semi-wild cat in a box in their car, and the thing gets loose. Almost peed myself I laughed so hard.

The television series wasn't near as funny.
Click to expand...

Probably be too hard to reproduce.

SPOILER



At least they did the getting towed round the field by a cow when vet didn't let go of the rope.
 
I re-read 'Another Fine Myth' to my children a few years ago and enjoyed it so much I re-read the series through 'Little Myth Marker'.

Very light, quick reads but very funny.
 
Along the "Camping," and outdoorsy line...

Patrick F McManus wrote back-page comic bits for "Outdoorsman" type magazines, for decades,

He has a series of collections of those 3-4 page bits, which are hilarious. I might call it good bathroom reading; except I'm not sure that it's good to be caught giggling, alone in the bathroom

You don't need to be a hunter or fisherman. If you've ever been camping, hiking, or did crazy schtuff in the woods when you were a kid; his humor hits a chord. (Many of his stories go back to his childhood in rural Montana)

Always good for a quick lift; when time or temperment are short.

The Titles are good for a chuckle, straight away: Never Sniff a Gift Fish, They Shoot Canoes, Don't They? Real Ponies Don't Go Oink. Google for a list. There are more than a dozen of them.
 
The Great Explosion by Eric Frank Russell (1962). From the back end of the SF golden age, this one is quite amusing as well as thought provoking.
 
Yep, Gervaise Phinn (already recommended here) is very funny. I saw him talk once at a teaching event - he was brilliant.

As Montero says, humour is very subjective - but a book that remains a personal favourite (and I don't even know if it is published anymore) is God - The Ultimate Autobiography and its counterpart, Satan's Hiss and Tell Memoirs, by Jeremy Pascall. How this never became a classic, I will never know.

And if you are looking for quick, easy, belly-laughs - then look at some of Woody Allen's short stories. If your humour is as whimsical as mine (actually, it goes beyond whimsy, in to the realms of the childishly sublime), then Tommy Cooper's writings are beyond compare!:D One-liners abound; and his appreciation of the surreal is superb.
 
In God We Trust, All Others Pay Cash by Jean Shepard was one that tickled me. It dealt with growing up in the Calumet region of Indiana where I also grew up. (Although he was some 20 or so years ahead of me. Several of the short stories in the book combined to provide the inspiration for the film A Christmas Story (1983).
 
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