Funny Books?

This weekend on Twitter, I said something about blah blah blah, religion isn’t funny enough, and if I had a critique of the Bible is that it needs more jokes. And then I went on to recommend a particularly funny book about religion — Lamb: The Gospel According To Biff, Christ’s Childhood Pal, by Christopher Moore.

Moore is, of course, a funny motherfucker. I’ve seen him speak a few times at book signings. He took the people at one signing out for drinks. Another signing I went to as a component of my bachelor party (not kidding). He’s great. Very engaging. He will at times talk about animal penises. It’s just how he rolls.

And all his books are off-the-charts funny, at least to me. I still remember reading Practical Demonkeeping in high school and thinking that he was the horror equivalent of Douglas Adams.

I read him, Bradley Denton, Tim Sandlin, and I think — “This stuff is rolling in raw hilarity.”

Thing is, you don’t read many funny novels.

I hear the prevailing wisdom is, “It’s hard to sell a funny novel.”

Though, I suspect what that really means is, “It’s hard to write a funny novel.”

So, two questions:

First, what funny novels have you read? Why were they funny? Were they more than just funny? Did they have good characters, good story, all the things you should have in a proper tale?

Second, what’s funny? How do you write funny?

That second one’s an open-ended and perhaps unanswerable question.

But worth asking, just the same.

Take a crack it it.

See you in the comments.