Humorous books...

[freebird]

The Stephanie Plum series....starts out with "One for the Money", and continues with "Two for the Dough", etc. by Janet Evanovich....very, very funny stuff. Also anything by Dave Berry.

 

[angrybuddhist]

Bill, the Galactic Hero-by Harry Harrison is hilarious. Also, The Stainless Steel Rat by the same author.

 

[The Master™]

Anything by Harry Harrison is fun... Though a little short...
Tom Holt can be a bit heavy going, but the books are short...
Terry Pratchett EVERYONE knows...
Douglas Adams works on SO MANY levels...

For adult entertainment that is non-Fantasy/Sci-Fi, try: Tom Sharpe!!!!

 

[BAYLOR]

Jurgen by James Branch Cabell

 

[Don]

I'll second Spider Robinson's Callahan Chronicles, Lem (in general), and Vonnegut. Allow me to add Wasp by Russell and Who Goes Here by Shaw.

 

[tegeus-Cromis]

David Markson's hilarious Western comedy, The Ballad of Dingus Magee (1965), aka, to give the full title as it appears on the title page, The Ballad of Dingus Magee; Being the Immortal True Saga of the Most Notorious and Desperate Bad Man of the Olden Days, His Blood-Shedding, His Ruination of Poor Helpless Females, & Cetera; also including the Only Reliable Account ever offered to the Public of his Heroic Gun Battle with Sheriff C. L. Birdsill, Yerkey's Hole, New Mex., 1884, and with Additional Commentary on the Fateful and Mysterious Bordello-Burning of the Same Year; and furthermore interspersed with Trustworthy and Shamelessly Interesting Sketches of "Big Blouse" Belle Nops, Anna Hot Water, "Horseface" Agnes, and Others, hardly any Remaining Upright at the End. Composed in the Finest Modern English as taken diligently from the Genuine Archives.

 

[Vince W]

I can't believe P. G. Wodehouse hasn't been mentioned, so I'll just add his name. Pick one, any one.

John Mortimer's Rumpole of the Bailey books are very humorous.

Dimension of Miracles by Robert Sheckley.

 

[tegeus-Cromis]

The Cyberiad by Stanislas Lem

Seconded. It's uproariously funny.

 

[Randy M.]

I'm really surprised this thread wasn't resurrected months ago.

Humor is tough. What one person laughs at, another sneers at. The Harry Potter series and the two books I've read by Christopher Moore (Practical Demonkeeping and The Stupidest Angel) are funny, but it's not sophisticated humor. Maybe lightly satirical humor. Along these lines, too, S. A. Sidor's Fury from the Tomb mingles Indiana Jones style adventure/horror with humor.

Susanna Clarke's Jonathan Strange & Mr. Norrell has a more sophisticated humor, the sort sometimes called "amusing" rather than funny. (I read Austen's Emma for a college course and have never gone back. I might be more tolerant now, certainly having read Clarke and enjoyed it, I should.)

The Athena Club novels by Theodora Goss (starting with The Strange Case of the Alchemist's Daughter) fits somewhere between, though maybe leaning a bit toward Clarke's humor.

Mainstream:
My Life and Hard Times by James Thurber (almost anything by Thurber)
The Most of S. J. Perelman
Getting Even & Without Feathers by Woody Allen

If you like mysteries, there are some rather light-hearted, occasionally funny ones by Agatha Christie and Dorothy L. Sayers. More recently, the first three novels by Louise Penny, besides their suspense, have moments of humor arising from character.

If all else fails, there's also the William Arrowsmith translations of plays by Aristophanes. It's been so long, I don't recall which ones, but they were occasionally laugh out loud funny.

Randy M.

 

[paranoid marvin]

The Red Dwarf books are fun (it helps if you've seen the tv show to picture the characters).

And of course Douglas Adams

 

[BAYLOR]

The Red Dwarf books are fun (it helps if you've seen the tv show to picture the characters).

And of course Douglas Adams

Yes to both.

Reading the Red Dwarf books made me are of the tv show. Im so glad I read them .

And for the record. I love the the 2005 Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy film. It's guilty pleasure.

 

[Don]

Harlan Ellison's The City on the Edge of Forever is full of funny snark. But it's nominally nonfictional, and may not count.

 

[BAYLOR]

Silverlock by John Myers Myers . Why this wonderful comic fantasy is overlooked by modern readers iss very puzzling . This book everything , It's positive comic joy to read.. My advice, go out and find yourself a copy of this wonderful book. You won't regret .

 

[tegeus-Cromis]

Wait, no one's mentioned Good Omens yet?

 

[Extollager]

Tolkien’s Farmer Giles of Ham.

 

[Extollager]

Much in Mark Twain’s Roughing It, like the tarantulas in the barracks.....

 

[Extollager]

Waugh’s Decline and Fall.

 

[Alex The G and T]

Aye, yes, @Extollager , I'm overdue to re-read Twain's Roughing It, and Innocents Abroad; but the best of his humor is in the "Sketches" he wrote as comic relief in the newspapers where he worked. Many collected in Sketches New and Old and More Sketches New and Old. I think they can be found at Project Gutenberg. Short bits of absurdities, satire, parodies and Tall Tales.

The man clearly had a deep love of the idiosyncrasies of the english language and had a genius for misusing words to comic effect.

****

Ayup. The arrangement of the catalogue is different than the collections to which I am accustomed; but here's a mess of 'em.

Books: Mark Twain sketches (sorted by popularity)

Project Gutenberg offers 69,994 free ebooks for Kindle, iPad, Nook, Android, and iPhone.

www.gutenberg.org

 

[hitmouse]

Waugh’s Decline and Fall.

Also, Scoop is not half bad.

 

[BAYLOR]

Bill the Galactic Hero by Harry Harrison . This is one the best and funniest space opera parodies of all time , not to be missed, its a blast from beginning to end. And the star drive system that they use to travel in their galaxy is called The Bloater Star Drive , is something I wish I could forget.