What's the most humorous book you've ever read?
guess what …neither confederacy of dunces nor cache 22
>>7780856
To Kill a Mockingbird
>>7780867
top kek
>>7780856
Twelve Chairs.
>>7780866
then what is it, friend?
>>7780875
one book I found really funny was fleisch ist mein gemüse by heinz strunk
>>7780856
svejk
>>7780856
Good soldier svejk
Don Quixote
>>7780856
Anything written by a female, then I can laugh at how hilariously shit it is.
>>7780856
Top tier choice my friend
>>7780873
Slava Ukraina
>>7780856
bumping for any additional responses!
I think I may have a pretty childish sense of humour since the real intelligent, heavily referential stuff doesn't really get to me but stuff like Confederacy of Dunces made me laugh a lot.
Funniest book I read in a while is The Young Hitler I Knew by August Kubizek. It's not intended to be funny but the Hitler he portrays is such a slapstick and Ignatius-esque character that I couldn't help grinning the entire time.
>>7780856
Neal Stephenson worked humour into The Big U and Snow Crash really well.
Anything from Bukowski is disturbingly humorous.
>>7781649
any particular favorite?
I read 'Lucky Jim' in January. Man, I must say I was disappointed by the book. Amis's prose seemed too 'geometric' for my taste, and although some punch lines were quite humorous I found his satire of academia to be too over the top and not discrete enough to be of any real value.
>>7781790
It's really not that funny. It's Wodehouse-lite. It's a meme book that people reference for cred.
>>7781639
Snow Crash was lame-o and unfunny as hell. The humour was Ready Player One-tier.
>>7781783
I'm not the guy you're replying to, and I wouldn't call it "disturbing" humor by any stretch of the imagination, but Post Office is his funniest book and had me loling, which maybe 4 books have done for me (confederacy of dunces, of course, and probably fear and loathing in Las Vegas when I was younger).
Gravity's Rainbow, of course, and Moby-Dick were both loaded to the brim with humor, I was smiling the entire time I read them but it's very different from the aforementioned.
>>7781819
It really depends on your sense of humour. I am: >>7781599.
"Confederacy of Dunces" is a sure laugh.
Houellebecq is funny: "Whatever" is darkly humorous and the sex-addict brother in "Elementary Particles" is very funny although the book itself is very sad IMO.
I found "The Young Hitler I Knew" by August Kubizek very funny because it caught me off-guard. If you found Elliot Rodgers' "My Twisted World" funny then this is very similar although more formally written.
"An Evening of Long Goodbyes" by Paul Murray is pretty popular and it's humorous in a way that makes you (me) go "oh I get that reference, that's clever" kind of way. I found it too safe and detached for my liking.
Most comedy books suck because they are written as comedy books and marketed as comedy books. They fail therefore in the same way tryhard comedians fail: they give too much of a fuck about whether or not their audience finds them funny. It's why I "don't get" the appeal of Thomas Bernhard. He's just too much of an entertainer and it gets boring fast. Confederacy is different in this sense because despite being written as a comedy there's a real investment in their from the author into the character and his worldview.
"Notes from the Underground" is funny, again because of an intensity of expression which is hard for any author to fake. Dosto's short stuff (White Nights etc) is also funny even when it doesn't try to be, simply because he is good at depicting spergs trying to function in the real world.
More clever humour includes "Leaving the Atocha Station" because of the subtlety of its humour, which isn't deadpan humour in the style of Tao Lin ("Richard Yates" on second reading was for me a pretty funny book). "Chilly Scenes of Winter" is also funny in a clever, controlled way which doesn't try too hard. It's the sort of comedy that both makes light of and draws attention to the sadness of the characters' lives, which is a great skill because it neither over-characterizes them (i.e. makes them 2D and has them deliver 'lines' which is just *so* something they would say teehee) nor treats their lives as a series of setups with the author rather callously delivering the punchlines at their expense. Ann Beattie is a very humane writer in this sense.
If you like Wacky humour then try "Generation X" by Douglas Copeland, which sort of hordes a bunch of cliches about the 80s/90s and throws them at you all at once in a way that is occasionally funny. "Snow Crash" (Stephenson) and "Ready Player One" (Cline) is also good for this in a more sci-fi sense.
"Welcome to the N.H.K." is often dismissed as weaboo trash but it's a pretty funny story (available for free online in PDF - 7chan I think) about a Hiki guy and his Otaku buddy who sperg out a lot. Despite being pretty surreal throughout I found it well-written and enjoyable.
>>7781888
Hm Confederacy of Dunces seems to be the people's pick here, so I'll check it out. I've been trying to get more into comedy books, so I thought I would inquire. Thank you for your extensive response. Know that I found it helpful.
>>7781813
it came out in 1992 you turbopleb
>>7781926
CoD is astonishingly funny
>>7781926
it's not as good as three men in a boat.
The once and future king.
Merlin is a funny old wise ass.
Pellinore is totally retarded.
The questing beast is a joker.
Lancelot is kinda retarded also.
Funny scene with a unicorn.
>>7781790
When I first read Lucky Jim a few years ago I thought it was hilarious. I re-read it recently and found it only mildly amusing. It must be a case of needing to be in the right frame of mind for it.
I found Philip Roth's Zuckerman Unbound funny when I read it earlier this year. No idea how it'd stand up to a re-read.
