Recommend a book for me

HHGTTG is one of my favourites. Dirk Gently’s Holistic Detective Agency was also good fun and show’s off Adams’s sense of absurdity really well. The Red Dwarf books are funny and have some pretty good stories. Terry Pratchett is a legend and although I haven’t read any of his work for a while, I do intend to reread them all in the near future.

I read a book by Peter Jurasik, (of Babylon 5 fame), called Diplomatic Act. I remember it being pretty amusing but not laugh out loud funny.

The Stainless Steel Rat was brilliant in my childhood but I wouldn’t like to guess whether they aged well. I never did get on well with Bill The Galactic Hero.
 
Rodders said:
HHGTTG is one of my favourites. Dirk Gently’s Holistic Detective Agency was also good fun and show’s off Adams’s sense of absurdity really well. The Red Dwarf books are funny and have some pretty good stories. Terry Pratchett is a legend and although I haven’t read any of his work for a while, I do intend to reread them all in the near future.

I read a book by Peter Jurasik, (of Babylon 5 fame), called Diplomatic Act. I remember it being pretty amusing but not laugh out loud funny.

The Stainless Steel Rat was brilliant in my childhood but I wouldn’t like to guess whether they aged well. I never did get on well with Bill The Galactic Hero.
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The Retief series by Keith Laumer.
 
To truly appreciate the humor of Mark Twain, you have to read the "Sketches." Comic relief bits and hoaxes he wrote for newspapers.
And some novels and his travelogs of lesser reknown than those usually cited.
A wealth of which are available as ebooks on project gutenberg.

Look for the collections "Sketches new and old," and "More sketches new and old" for short, comedy bits. Just the thing to lift the spirits in small doses. My favorites for riotous idiocy: "Political Economy" and "Journalism in Tennessee."

"Innocents Abroad" and "A Tramp Abroad" are hilariously irreverent examinations of what the wealthy 19th, early 20th century American tourist called "The Grand Tour." The obligatory visitation upon the cultural icons of Britain, Europe and "The Holy Land."

Edit: Well... I had to look 'em up and give 'em another read.... Journalism In Tennessee

americanliterature.com

Political Economy

Political Economy by Mark Twain
americanliterature.com americanliterature.com
 
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AE35Unit said:
I must admit those titles do not entice me to read Mark Twain lol
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Ah, yes, I see what you mean.

It can also be very difficult to find a remembered story if one can't remember the title. You will never see a word about excessive lightning rods or hand grenades in a TOC. :unsure:

But then, the reason for the title becomes a pretty good joke in itself.
 
Cat's Cradle said:
One truly guilty pleasure - I somehow became a fan of a LitRPG series of books named Dungeon Crawler Carl. I LOL throughout each book... there's some tawdry humor, I'll be honest, but also some well-deserved laughs. There's also some genuinely moving stuff in the series, and an action storyline that never quits. Not for everyone, and I'm still surprised that I am reading a LitRPG series... but I love it.
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Came to post Dungeon Crawler Carl, too. Picked it up on a whim over the weekend and it's hard to put down. Fun, light and just the right amount of silly. I hadn't even heard of LitRPG until this and I'll definitely check out a few more.
 
Well, if you like Wodehouse you could try Decline and Fall by Evelyn Waugh (or Scoop, by the same author). Both very funny and not at all like the excellent but melancholic Brideshead Revisited. You could also try something by Jerome K Jerome (Three Men in A Boat would be the obvious choice).
 
Malcolm Pryce's Aberystwyth Noir series especially Aberystwyth Mon Amour
 
John Scalzi is my preferred current author He incorporates a light humorous touch with hilarious improbabilities.
His Kaiju Preservation Society & Starter Villain were each nominated for the Hugo in the past few years. Older (and longer) was his
The Android's Dream. Every one of them should put a smile on your face. Others by him are also excellent, but not really in a jugular vein.
 
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I find deliberately 'funny' books tend to run out of steam pretty quickly for me. After a few chapters I get into the rhythm of the jokes and they seem to stop being funny and settle down to somewhere between 'mildly amusing' and 'sadly predictable'. For sustained comedy I usually turn to really awful books like those by RL Fanthorpe or a Perry Rhodan. Totally unpredictably dreadful.

Having said that Bill the Galactic Hero (just the first one) and Star Smashers of the Galaxy Rangers by Harrison are still funny - maybe because they are affectionate parodies of other works rather than an attempt to create funny from scratch?
 
Someone already suggested:

Bill the Galactic Hero by Harry Harrison

But I will do it again anyway.

I thought:

Captain Vorpatril's Alliance by Lois McMaster Bujold

was pretty damn funny but it is kind of far into the Vorkosigan Saga.
 
Some of Robert Sheckly's stuff is pretty funny. I'm thinking particularly of The Tenth Victim and Dimension of Miracles (which Douglas Adams obviously read more than once).
And some of John Sladek's stuff like The Reproductive System, Roderick, and most obviously the short story parodies he wrote of then current genre luminaries.
 
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