Comedy books, S/D

As many folk here know already, Flann O'Brien was one of the funniest, wryest writers of the past century. My favorite is The Hard Life, although it is dry humor and doesn't go for the big punchline. His Third Policeman and At Swim-Two-Birds are more popular.

Pick up some James Thurber and see what he does for you. When he manages to drive his plots into the realm of farce he really shines.

Or were you more in the market for heavy-handed irony? Plenty of that around for the discriminating reader.

Equal best, in my opinion, is "Uncle Fred in the Springtime". I like his short stories, too: the best original collection is, I'd say, "Eggs, Beans, and Crumpets. There is also a selected Penguin collection called "Lord Emsworth Acts for the Best" which is extraordinary. All this stuff, apart from "Birth of a Salesman" in the Emsworth collection, is from Wodehouse's golden period, the late thirties.

A book that made me laugh out loud again and again recently was "The Young Visiters" (sic) by Daisy Ashford.

Then, of course, there's Dave Barry "Worst Songs" book, whose section on Neil Young fans makes me cry with laughter.

'The Goon Show' scripts are pretty good, but nothing close to the live recordings.

Also: "The Groucho Letters: Letters to and from Groucho Marx" is funnier than a lot of their movies.

Also: S.J. Perelman "Westward Ha!"

Can't get any funnier than Kingsley Amis' "Lucky Jim," which my brother turned me on to...and I am forever grateful.

Wow! I was going to mention this book but I certainly didn't expect anyone else to. I haven't enjoyed any other Douglas books I've tried, though (and the comedy record I found was atrocious)...

i've been meaning to re-read some wodehouse,i used to read loads of them,but i don't remember one being better another-i always think of them as being like seinfeld-you know roughly what is going to happen,ie some really convoluted awkard situation you can kind of see coming,but really its all about the style...

also second hitchhiker,confederacy of dunces,woody allen,and flann o brien...
one person who hasn't been mentioned is beckett,who can be hilarious at times...

-Catch-22

How about Tony Horwitz's Baghdad Without a Map or Confederates in the Attic? (His Blue Latitudes has some hillarious moments, too, come to think of it.)

1. Martin Amis: The Rachel Papers
2. Augusten Burroughs: Sellevision (*)
3. Barry Hughart: Bridge of Birds
4. Harmon Leon: The Harmon Chronicles
5. Ann Patchett: Bel Canto ([scratching head] I remember thinking some parts were so funny, but there are sad parts, too. It's a often laughing/sometimes serious book like so much Ruchard Russo.)
6. C.D. Payne: Youth in Revolt (*)
7. Richard Russo: Straight Man
8. David Sedaris: Me Talk Pretty One Day (*), Naked (*)
9. John Kennedy Toole: A Confederacy of Dunces

*: I pissed my pants laughing while reading these.

Thanks for all the funny book recommendations! I'm always looking for something funny to read. The last recommendation I got was Little Green Men by Christopher Buckley (haven't read it yet).

Parts of The Corrections made me laugh out loud, but I generally thought this book overrated (I found it a bit of a book of dumb ideas, made worse by the fact that Frantzen seems to take himself seriously). This may've also been due to the fact that I'd previously been limiting myself to Sebald & Faulkner; not too many giggles there.

*Especially this one which is 'can't put it down' comedy up until the very end, which kind of drags. But even then I found myself thinking it's still really funny.

My Cousin, My Gastroenterologist

and

The Tetherballs of Bougainville

a comedy library (think I've only read 4 in toto)

http://splitsider.com/2013/02/the-ultimate-comedy-library-54-books-every-comedy-fan-should-read/

Pretty lame list. There's some essential stuff there (I've reread Live From New York and And Here's The Kicker a ridiculous number of times), but the better part of it was published in the last five years. And they didn't dig particularly deep. Any list like that without at least one Jack Handey book is crippled out of the gate.

That said, I guess I own/gave read about a third of their selections.

HAVE read

yeah, most of that list seems so tame. should've included albert goldman's 'ladies and gentlemen, lenny bruce!!!', or at least bruce's autobio.

Anybody read Patton Oswalt's book??

Ugh. Were there no books about comedians written in the previous millennium? Or just none that merited inclusion on this list. Never mind, you know, other types of comic writing.

Saw Jonathan Ames walking out of BookCourt last Wednesday. Think he been doing a reading with some others.