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.
Mark LaFlamme says:
Ah, you know who’s hilarious? Tom Robbins, author of “Even Cowgirls Get the Blues,” “Skinny Legs and All,” etc. The dude is pounding the floor, laugh until you pee funny, but there’s something poetic and eloquent about his stuff, too. He writes these intricate, epic style stories and it gets off the wall like an acid trip at times. Here’s a review I wrote for “Cowgirls:”
A young lady with fantastically large thumbs. An all female ranch. Roundabout routes to self-descovery, hitchiking and whooping cranes. The troublesome part about reading “Even Cowgirls Get the Blues” is twofold. The first is that you cannot put it down. The second is, having subjected yourself to such a large dose of Robbins trippy, meandering style, you begin to think like him. Worse, you begin to talk the way he writes. One moment, you’re having a perfectly lucid conversation with the boss about deadlines, the next, you’re babbling incongruously about the average rectal temperature of the hummingbird.
The novel moves along with the crazy, fast-and-slow pace of an acid trip. As a reader, you bounce and groove along with the story as though you were clinging to the side of a raft in rough seas.
Robbins has mastery over his readers, and “Cowgirls” is the book that welcomed me into his twisted world. The uniqueness of his writing style is apparent from page one. You might advance to page three just out of some perverse curiosity about this strange, gushing style. After that Robbins owns you. Thumbelina owns you, as she hitches away around the country with those freakishly sexy thumbs.
That’s another thing about Robbins. Things that shouldn’t be funny are hilarious. Things that shouldn’t be sexy are… well. You get my point. Read the book.
February 27, 2012 — 1:24 AM
E.Maree says:
I love Christopher Moore! Picked up his books in a charity shop thanks to the eye-catching, bright covers, and have loved him ever since.
When I’m looking for stories with a bit of well-written funny, I turn to Terry Pratchett or Jasper Fforde. 🙂
February 27, 2012 — 7:29 AM
Dan O'Shea says:
I gotta go with Carl Hiaasen. I remember reading Double Whammy many years back and laughing my ass off at the idea that he’d made up a professional bass fishing tour. Then I found out there really was one and went back and read it again, and it was even funnier. And yet, through all the laughs, you can sense his heartbreak over what’s happening to Florida – politcally, ecologically, socially. The old if-I-didn’t-laugh-I’d-cry angle. Very funny man, very good writer.
Dan
February 27, 2012 — 7:44 AM
Gloria Sigountos says:
How do I write something funny…I don’t, I’m not funny and I am always surprised if people laugh at me. because it is a fluke
February 27, 2012 — 7:45 AM
Lynne Connolly says:
Anything by Terry Pratchett. Some are better than others, but everything he writes is packed with invention and asides. One of the few writers who can make me laugh out loud instead of smiling wryly.
“Three Men In A Boat (not forgetting the dog)” by Jerome K Jerome. There are some people you only have to say “pineapple chunks” to to get them chortling.
February 27, 2012 — 7:45 AM
Christopher Gronlund says:
What Dan said about Carl Hiaasen. And along that line, Dave Barry’s BIG TROUBLE. I remember it cracking me up. I also find a lot of Kurt Vonnegut funny and love how he blended humor, heart, and serious things.
As for how to write funny: farting dogs! Put one in anything you write and watch the yucks begin! (I’m only half kidding.) As far as writing funny, I think a writer has to play to their strengths. My first novel is a humorous coming-of-age story about a family traveling cross country in a possessed station wagon. Where I’ve been told I can be funny is in the way I can look back at even a shitty situation and see the humor in it all. A narrator looking back on a trip packed into a car for more than a week with family leans toward what I can pull off when it comes to humor. I’m not sure if I could ever pull of a more high brow thing, though.
Scanning my books shelves, I don’t have too many straight up humorous novels. If I went through my comic book boxes, I’d find a lot of humor. But things like the Giffen/deMatthias run on Justice League America, the Tick, Ambush Bug, and things like that don’t seem to transfer over to novels.
Mostly, my shelves are lined with books with humorous moments contained within. For me, it’s often something serious that’s juxtaposed with humor that works best. I love when a writer runs with the humor to be found in something as serious as a funeral, or when a writer gets me laughing and then BOOM! they drop a serious bomb on me that stops me in my tracks.
February 27, 2012 — 8:11 AM
Thomas Pluck says:
I like Hiaasen, Wodehouse, Douglas Adams, Christopher Moore and Tom Robbins.
I love Confederacy of Dunces, but find it doesn’t affect people as much anymore, to their detriment.
Sam Lipsyte, author of The Ask, is brutally funny. I recommend that book without question.
But most bestseller comedies, to me, dance with their slip showing. They try very hard to be broadly funny, and irk me.
James Blaylock is very funny. The Last Coin and All the Bells on Earth are two of my favorite… modern fantasies? He gets pegged as horror, and there are elements of it in both, but those books are just damn funny.
My favorite crime novelists have dark senses of humor. Lawrence Block- funniest with his Burglar series- injects cynical humor into everything he does. Even Andrew Vachss, you’d be hardpressed to find harder boiled, is sly. His latest book about a bomb expert confined to a wheelchair is entitled… That’s How I Roll.
That still cracks me up. I’m a bad person.
February 27, 2012 — 8:27 AM
Steve McCann says:
In line with Hiaasen mentioned above is Tim Dorsey. He’s another writer of the wacky State of Florida. I just finished his latest novel “Pineapple Grenade.” All of his books follow pretty much the same story, but he’s so good at it that I can’t stop reading them. How can you go wrong with an acid-dropping nitwit playing duck,duck, goose with gun runners? Or killing a wife beater with giant soap bubbles and oscillating fans? And all those, who die bizarrely really deserve to die–it’s very cathartic.
And what is funny? Mark Twain said that humor is tragedy plus time. Maybe that’s it.
February 27, 2012 — 8:58 AM
Rick A. Carroll says:
One of the fumiest books I’ve read was “Bored of the Rings” by Harvard Lampoon, though I did not enjoy from start to finish, just the bits where the mockery was thick. Direct parody like that is difficult in writing, and while it had moments, I don’t think it pulled it off all around.
However, Grunts by Mary Gently (who has the most misleading surname ever), is amazing. It’s the story of a group of orcs that come across an old Marine base, and there goals to take over everything. It is absolutely worth a read, and very entertaining.
The thing to me about writing comedy is that it can’t be constant. It works best is spurts, with the rest of the scene framing the joke. That’s a long way to go for one big payoff, but it’s like tension – build and release, build and release. Having it kind-of funny 100% (or even majorly) dilutes the overall effect.
February 27, 2012 — 9:05 AM
Lydia says:
For funny: Patrick McManus. P.G. Wodehouse. Tom Wolfe. Evelyn Waugh.
I’m trying to think of a female writer that I found laugh-out-loud funny, but I can’t. I have not yet read Tina Fey. However, reading Patrick McManus I have frequently cried from laughing.
It’s easier to write non-fiction humor than it is to write a funny novel, I think. Because making other people absurd doesn’t resonate as much as making yourself absurd?
February 27, 2012 — 9:10 AM
Jerry Bloomfield says:
Not a novel, but Chuck, if you ever published Search Term Bingo, I’d be laughing all the way to the buy button. Some of the funniest shit ever.
February 27, 2012 — 9:11 AM
Lugh says:
Pratchett was the obvious go-to guy.
No mention of Robert Asprin? His Myth books, particularly the early ones, were chock full of great humor. They got pretty hacky after a while, but there were always gems in there. I also love his Phule’s Company books (but only the first two, that he actually wrote).
I’ll also put out Neil Gaiman. Admittedly, his is much more “nuggets of humor embedded in serious tales”, but his nuggets are pure gold. “Good Omens” is, quite possibly, the perfect novel, and hilarious to boot. “Neverwhere” had some fantastic moments (particularly in the miniseries, where the actors really brought the dry humor to life). He just has that stereotypical British love of the absurd, and pulls it off flawlessly.
February 27, 2012 — 9:14 AM
Will Entrekin says:
I think the single funniest novel I’ve ever read was The Gun Seller, by Hugh Laurie. Yeah, House. I have a theory there are, like, eleven people without any discernible talent wandering around in the world because Hugh Laurie got their rations, too. I also have an actual theory that the best satire is indistinguishable as such, and for that I refer to The Gun Seller. It’s a satire of noir that’s actually a nearly perfect noir novel (it flags a bit in the latter half. Structural issues).
Another is Nick Earls, though the caveat here is that I signed him and distribute his books digitally here in the US and in other territories. Nick’s Australian and often compared to Nick Hornby, but I think he focuses more on personal growth than personal relationships, and he mines that vein for his humor. His “Problems with a Girl and a Unicorn” is like Jorge Luis Borges doing stand-up comedy, if you can imagine that.
And of course the aforementioned Pratchett. I ended up stopping reading his books in public because they made me guffaw. Ditto Richard Kadrey.
February 27, 2012 — 9:15 AM
Stephen says:
Love Terry Pratchett, and in the genre of funny thrillers, I really liked Gary Marshall’s COFFIN DODGERS. For me, understated irony and unexpected observations in the telling of an otherwise straightforward tale make a funny novel. So you definitely need a good story, good characters, and everything else that makes a good novel. But you tell the story with a smile on your face, looking for the little quirks and absurdities of our world and human nature.
Incidentally, Gary Marshall has said that he found it impossible to sell his funny novel to publishers, so he went the Amazon route. Readers seem to like it, it’s Top 100 on the UK Kindle store!
February 27, 2012 — 9:17 AM
Federica says:
A Fraction of the Whole by Steve Toltz is hilarious and intelligent (for me the two go hand in hand) and more recently Where’d you go Bernadette by Maria Semple.
Funny is an unexpected turn of phrase something that pulls your brain back from the route it thought it was going down to, that shocks your brain in marking a new groove. Same reason why puns and jokes are funny methinks!
February 27, 2012 — 9:18 AM
Aaron Rosenberg says:
Well, first I have to plug my own work, of course. Sorry, but No Small Bills (http://tinyurl.com/6lbumo9) is a funny, funny book–at least, that’s what people tell me. Hey, it’s about a duck-headed man’s hapless galactic road trip/quest to save the universe, very much in the style of Douglas Adams or Terry Pratchett. Don’t believe me? Go take a look. 🙂
So, what funny novels have I read and why were they funny? Hitchhikers Guide, Pratchett’s books, Good Omens, those top the list. Also, Ron Goulart’s books, and Harry Harrison’s Stainless Steel Rat series. They were funny because they didn’t take themselves too seriously, they had fun, they threw off expectations and hit you with the ridiculous–all that and more. All of them had good characters, and I’d say all of them told good stories, though certainly the asides would violate some people’s ideas of good storytelling.
The question of what’s funny and how do you write it is harder, of course. But as I said, often humor is challenging expectations–you think you’re going to get a monster coming around the corner and instead you get a giant bunny rabbit with a bow tie, or a monster wearing bunny slippers, that’s funny. Snark and sarcasm are funny because they’re not the responses you expect in a situation, or not delivered the way you expect them. Being silly is funniest when it’s unexpected. But timing is everything–it’s only funny at the right moment, and only when it lasts the right length of time. It’s really tough to do right.
February 27, 2012 — 9:21 AM
Rob Smith says:
Joe Lansdale’s novels have a nasty sense of humor in them. From the Hap and Leonard series to his standalones. His characters east Texas smart ass comments to each other and in the face of adversity.
February 27, 2012 — 9:31 AM
Darlene Underdahl says:
Looking at my bookshelves…
I have both “Confederacy of Dunces” (don’t encourage him) and “Even Cowgirls Get the Blues,” and loved them both.
Something no one else will mention is “Fludd” by Hilary Mantel. There’s a discussion about getting a nun from one place to another, but they cannot walk alone, so the one nun accompanies the other to her destination, but then she can’t walk back alone, so the other one has to come with, and then the other one cannot return alone, so the other one must come with…
I can write very funny, but it sort of pops out unbidden.
February 27, 2012 — 9:44 AM
Wordslinger1919 says:
How has Catch-22 not been mentioned yet? That was one of the funniest books I’ve ever read. The deadpan, ridiculous dialogue is hysterical.
Chris Moore is hilarious and Lamb, I think, is one of his better ones. I read You Suck awhile ago and wasn’t really impressed with it but I loved A Dirty Job.
February 27, 2012 — 9:45 AM
David Hadley says:
I write funny stuff. (Try this: http://littlefrigginginthewold.blogspot.com/).
What I have learnt that funny is all about timing, on the page as much as it is anywhere else, stand-up, comedy TV, film and so on. You have to get the funny bit in exactly the right place for it to work.
Also some words are funny than others: weasels and badgers are funny, wolves and foxes aren’t, for example.
In short, it is all about precision – just see how the greatest ever funny writer P.G. Wodehouse uses exact language, precise language.
I suppose it is more akin to poetry than prose. The right word in the right place, rhythm, they matter as much in funny as they do in poetry.
February 27, 2012 — 9:55 AM
Amy Severson says:
I found the Dexter novels (that the Showtime series is based on) by Jeff Lindsay very funny. It’s a dark, dry humor, instead of laugh out loud, but sometimes I prefer that.
And, it’s not a novel, but I laughed my ass off reading Packing for Mars by Mary Roach. I’ve never before laughed so hard while at the same time learning so much.
February 27, 2012 — 10:01 AM
Sara says:
“I have no doubt that you could have flung bricks by the hour in England’s most densely populated districts without endangering the safety of a single girl capable of becoming Mrs. Augustus Fink-Nottle without an anaesthetic. “
-What Ho, Jeeves, by P.G. Wodehouse
I think, in a lot of cases, for me humor breaks down thusly. The order from most to least importance:
-Language (how the situation, characters, etc are described)
-Situation (how bizarre or unusual is it?)
-Plot (how does one situation snowball or mutate into another?)
-Characters
I’ve found that I usually don’t care about the characters if a book is funny (Terry Pratchett being the exception, in some cases. I love Vimes and Susan to death, but I could take or leave Rincewind and the witches. I feel conflicted about Moist.). To take your making-a-sandwich example – a perfectly ordinary guy could make a perfectly ordinary sandwich, but if the process was described in the right way I could end up rolling on the floor with laughter. On the other hand, bizarre protagonist could make an equally eccentric sandwich, and I would be uneffected if it wasn’t described or presented properly.
February 27, 2012 — 10:05 AM
Maggie Desmond-O'Brien says:
Oh, how I wish Bill Bryson and Sarah Vowell wrote humor novels. I’d devour them. A novel by David Sedaris, too.
But since they don’t, Carl Hiaasen is my favorite. I re-read Star Island recently and it was as fantastically on-the-mark as I remembered from when I read it the first time.
February 27, 2012 — 10:18 AM
Sara says:
Oh, and google “The Unrest Cure” or “Esme” by Saki (pen name of H. H. Munro). He’s the master of hilariously twisted short stories.
February 27, 2012 — 10:20 AM
Dave Turner says:
I scrolled through the responses, ready to drop Hugh Laurie’s “The Gun Seller” and cement my reputation as a cool-hunter, only to see Will Entrekin scoop me. Everything Will says above is correct. Laurie’s only written one novel (that I’m aware of) and “The Gun Seller” is so good, it’s as though he said, “Alright, I’ve mastered that art form. Nothing left to do there.”
There are definitely third-act structural problems, but anyone who’s a fan of “A Bit of Fry and Laurie” shouldn’t be surprised that Laurie is a superb writer. Much of Laurie’s comedy is grounded in wordplay and love of language. Let loose to write a novel, he delivers one of the best noir send-ups of all time. Reading “The Gun Seller” will humble any writer.
Will, with your bona fides established by that Laurie recommendation, I will immediately add Nick Earls to my Wish List.
February 27, 2012 — 10:24 AM
Jasmine Pahl says:
I also have to go with P.G Wodehouse as being the funniest but can I also get an amen for Sue Townsend’s Adrian Mole books? Also a favourite is the Jilly Cooper series beginning with Riders. And Susan Juby’s ‘Alice, I think’ books.
February 27, 2012 — 11:15 AM
Darlene Underdahl says:
How did I forget Lynne Truss (“Eats Shoots & Leaves”)?
She did a collection of novellas, and one was very clever. Something about a writer who carried around cupcakes, an actress, a Gabor lookalike, a rabbit who liked eating the cupcake wrappers, and a young man who dug up daffodil bulbs to “see how they were doing.” It was zany and delightful.
She’s sort of hit and miss, though. TRYING to be funny is hard. She seems to write best when the endorphins are a-pumping… I resemble that remark.
February 27, 2012 — 11:16 AM
David Starkweather says:
The funniest book I can remember is ‘Missing Links’ by Rick Reilly. It’s a sports novel so if you golf or have ever golfed, it makes it a little more relate-able but the characters are great and the story is fun.
This is also the only book I’ve ever read and literally laughed out loud.
February 27, 2012 — 11:18 AM
Arca B says:
A friend gave me a book called “Ass Goblins of Auschwitz” by Cameron Pierce, saying it was the most hilarious and fucked up piece of work he’d ever read.
By no stretch of the imagination could you call that book funny. Fucked up? Yes, a thousand times yes. A billion times yes. A jabillionty times yes.
Ass Goblins make apple cider from fermented children’s flesh and they make bicycles and sex toys out of the body parts of dead children. I can laugh at that sentence, it sounds like it has the potential to be funny; too bad it was written like an amateur Marquis De Sade. Sloppy, diluted shit that tries too hard.
I have no idea why I’m talking about the Ass Goblins. Fuck the Ass Goblins. Don’t look that shit up. (Look it up.)
Anyway. On Topic.
I picked up a book called “The Soddit” by A.R.R.R. Roberts (Adam Roberts). A parody of The Hobbit, I thought it’d read something like Bored of the Rings… Boy was I surprised. First off, the writing is fantastic, it draws you in straight away and it’s easy to read.
What set The Soddit apart from other parodies was the fact that as you read on, the story moves further and further away from the story it’s supposed to parodying until it gets so ridiculous all you can do is say “WHAT THE FUCK WHAT THE FUCK HAHAAA WHAT’S HAPPENING OH MY JESUS HAHAHAAAAAA” as you go.
I couldn’t turn the pages fast enough. I laughed so hard I cried. The absurdity is what gets me. Absurdity, when DONE PROPERLY GOD-FUCK-IT, is my laugh sauce. I can’t recommend it enough for people who like things weird and out there and all over the place like a madwoman’s shit.
February 27, 2012 — 11:20 AM
Rowan Cota says:
I’m gonna take it back to a classic, and throw Daniel Pinkwater into the ring. His books have held up over time, and were definitely some of the funniest books I read as a kid. (They’re still funny to me as an adult!)
February 27, 2012 — 11:20 AM
ER Pierce says:
For Me…Shelly Laurenston/G.A. Aiken makes me laugh until I cry. Every book. Though her humor is subjective (and often violent and bloody)
The first few Stephenie Plum Novels by Evanovich. But only the first 8 or so.
February 27, 2012 — 11:25 AM
mattw says:
I’ve only ever actually laughed out loud at a Christopher Moore book. Other funny authors that I like are A. Lee Martinez, Jim C. Hines, John Scalzi.
Funny can be really hard to write. I try to do it. Sometimes it’s successful and I’ll get some chuckles in a workshop; other times it bombs and I have to go back to the drawing board.
February 27, 2012 — 11:33 AM
Kathlyn H says:
The Redemption of Althalus by David Eddings. Part of this book are so funny, I love it as a humorous fantasy book. Poor Althalus!
February 27, 2012 — 11:37 AM
Kate says:
Christopher Moore and Jim Hines never fail to crack me up at all the appropriate places in their writing, and also make me think while doing it – and enjoy the characters and plot, too.
Terry Pratchett is, of course, the godfather of hilarious, thoughtful, thought-provoking fantasy.
Scalzi’s AGENT TO THE STARS is right up there, too.
Leonard Richardson’s CONSTELLATION GAMES cracks me the hell up in a similar way – great plot, great characters, great writing, and it’s talking about a video game dev nerd who’s making first contact. Yeah. Total package.
I cannot read Wodehouse in public, for fear of laughing myself silly and being carted off to an institution.
February 27, 2012 — 11:37 AM
Kate M says:
One of the funniest books I’ve read lately is “How I Became a Famous Novelist” by Steve Hely. It’s about a guy who writes an Oprah-like bestseller by exploiting nearly every genre in Barnes and Nobles. It’s a biting parody of modern publishing, and a hilarious read for any writer or wannabe writer.
February 27, 2012 — 11:39 AM
David Kazzie says:
Will agree with prior posters about Carl Hiaasen. His recent stuff doesn’t have quite the same pop, but the early books were brilliant. I thought Sick Puppy was genius.
I’ve learned a lot from reading his work too.
Catch 22 is another one I remember tickling my funny bone in high school. Haven’t read it since though.
February 27, 2012 — 11:42 AM
Jen Donohue says:
I’m glad Wordslinger1919 and David Kazzie up there mentioned Catch-22…I too was scandalized that it hadn’t yet been mentioned!
I only read A Dirty Job by Christopher Moore, but remember being surprised and delighted that somebody else in the world used the word “fucktard”.
David Sedaris is typically funny…Me Talk Pretty One Day is the funny book of his that I like the best.
In Non fiction, Stiff: the curious life of the human cadaver, by Mary Roach, was improbably funny at times.
And, to go completely mainstream, One for the Money by Janet Evanovich had me snickering several times. The subsequent books…well, I gave up. But the first one was pretty good.
February 27, 2012 — 11:53 AM
Darlene Underdahl says:
Since children’s books came up:
Shel Silverstein, “A light in the attic” and “Where the Sidewalk Ends.”
(I’m paraphrasing since my daughter has the actual book.) “Daddy is taking a nap on the couch. Daddy needs a haircut, but he spends all his money buying me oatmeal. Poor Daddy. Where is the scissors?”
February 27, 2012 — 11:55 AM
Casz Brewster says:
Everyone has mentioned Robbins, Wodehouse, Sedaris and Hiassen already — they immediately sprung to mind. But, I’m currently reading WEST OF HERE by Jonathon Evison. I’m laughing my ass off, but its much more subtle than the already mentioned. Yet, I think it’s funny.
February 27, 2012 — 12:24 PM
Stevie says:
In modern novels, I thoroughly enjoyed “To Say Nothing of the Dog”, a great book by Connie Willis that is full of humor, while also being a great time-travelling science fiction/historic piece. Its companion, “Domesday Book”, is also excellent, but I don’t remember laughing as much while reading it.
For classics, I was surprised and pleased when I discovered that Charles Dickens is a master of humor. I heartily recommend “Great Expectations”. I found myself laughing almost every other page at his sometimes subtle, but always charming, wit.
February 27, 2012 — 12:49 PM
Pete says:
It’s already been said, but it’s worth saying again, but Terry Pratchet is one hoopy frood, and a happening dood.
And funny as hell.
February 27, 2012 — 1:27 PM
Pete says:
Another author that gets me to laugh is Robert Rankin. A friend of mine got me “The Hollow Chocolate Bunnies of the Apocalypse”, saying that the name had a humour to it that reminded him of me.
Other novels by Rankin are The Toyminator, The Brightonomicon, Sex and Drugs and Sausage Rolls, Raiders of the Lost Car Park… the list just goes on. And they’re all crazy, humourous stories about things that seem absurd on first blush, but they kind of grow on you…
February 27, 2012 — 1:32 PM
Jennie says:
Echoing everyone else who said Good Omens because, duh – Gaiman and Pratchett.
I also loved Three Bags Full by Leonie Swann. It’s a detective novel, but the detectives are SHEEP, set out to solve the murder of their shepherd.
February 27, 2012 — 1:46 PM
WG says:
Here’s a little love to “Apathy and Other Small Victories” by Paul Neilan.
February 27, 2012 — 1:52 PM
Kate says:
I’m reading The Three Musketeers right now and it’s hilarious. Tried to read it in high school (?) and didn’t get the jokes at all, mostly because they’re all making fun of the adolescent mindframe. I also thought Catch-22 was funny when I first read it, but now I’ve picked it up again and am feeling it’s more tragic than anything. :/ Perspective is important!
February 27, 2012 — 2:39 PM
Lynna Landstreet says:
I find I’m most apt to enjoy humour in novels when it’s balanced with serious parts and the same qualities that would make me enjoy a non-funny novel: an absorbing plot, interesting characters, etc. For instance, when it comes to Pratchett, I’m not crazy about the earlier Discworld novels, which were pretty much nothing but humour. The later ones, which often tackle serious issues in a humourous context, appeal to me more.
A sudden funny bit in an otherwise serious novel is much more likely to make me actually laugh out loud than a novel that’s funny all the way through. One writer I’ve discovered recently who does this very well is Ben Aaronovitch, author of Rivers of London/Midnight Riot (titled differently in the UK and North America for some odd reason) and Moon Over Soho. His books are mostly serious, suspenseful supernatural detective stories, but with occasional gems of hilarity sprinkled throughout. A couple of examples:
“Martin gave the body the ‘London once-over’ – a quick glance to determine whether this was a drunk, a crazy or a human being in distress. The fact that it was entirely possible for someone to be all three simultaneously is why good-Samaritanism in London is considered to be an extreme sport, like BASE jumping or crocodile wrestling.”
“Inside, the mortuary was much the same as the rest of the hospital, but with fewer people complaining about the state of the NHS.”
February 27, 2012 — 2:43 PM
Shawn McGee says:
Piers Anthony could write humorously. His Xanth novels would slap you around with silliness every now and then and sometimes the puns would get me cracking. I still chuckle when I think of the plot behind Crewel Lye.
I think like Adams’ Hitckhiker, the story and characters were already there and the humor was an organic part of the books.
February 27, 2012 — 3:10 PM
Laura W. says:
John Green actually writes hilarious stuff when he isn’t being melodramatic. He’s a YA author, and I read his books for the funny element rather than for all the mopeyness he manages to throw in.
Sherman Alexie is another author whose work is at once profound and humorous. Unlike John Green, I think he manages to pull of the cross between funny and depressing. His voice is more authentic, whereas Green puts in lots of cerebral philosophizing about life and themes and shit. I like Green’s humor because it sounds more authentic than when he has teenaged guys go off on pages-long speeches about Leaves of Grass and the significance of life in order to explain the moral of the story before the book ends. It’s very heavy-handed — but his humor is natural, funny, and often laugh-out-loud. :/
February 27, 2012 — 3:26 PM
Laura W. says:
Oh yeah, Dianna Wynne Jones (British YA fantasy author) is very funny, in her British way. So is Jane Austen. It is kind of sad how often I lol’d while reading Pride and Prejudice. Austen mercilessly observes and comments on people’s fallacies and quirks. 🙂
February 27, 2012 — 3:29 PM