Books that made you laugh out loud?

[tedlit]

Bad Vibes: Britpop and my part in its downfall by Luke Haines. One of those "so honest it's funny" books. Made several long train journeys pass much, much quicker!

 

[thedonkeycentrehalf]

Penguins Stopped Play: Eleven Village Cricketers Take on the World by Harry Thompson is a very good read,highly entertaining if a little sad at the end:

Penguins Stopped Play: Eleven Village Cricketers Take on the World: Amazon.co.uk: Harry Thompson: 9780719563461: Books

 

[Phat Baz 68]

Dont know about laugh but Eurotrash one of the short stories in Irving Welsh's Acid House nearly made me spew up !!

 

[Gwylan]

Y
For younger readers (teenaged I woulda thought), Ronald Searle I found amusing with 'Whizz for Atomms': A Guide to Survival in the 20th Century for Fellow Pupils, their Doting Maters, Pompous Paters and Any Others who are Interested, 1956 (Published in the U.S. as Molesworth's Guide to the Atommic Age)
and 'Back in the Jug Agane'

Ooh, nice reminder. Not so sure about teenagers, I was reading them again last year and they're still excellent.

One small point, they're not by Ronald Searle, although he did the superb drawings. They were actually written by a guy called Geoffrey Willans who died rather young, before we could write more of these comic masterpieces.

 

[HantsSeagull]

Anything by Tom Sharpe. Good old fashioned British farce.

this, this and errr.....this.

 

[Seagull on the wing]

Crystal Palace book of Good Manners and Class.....seriously though....'Ginger Man' was very funny

 

[Lady Gull]

Love, sex and Tesco's finest cava by Steve Carter made me laugh out loud all the way through it

 

[Dave the OAP]

Penguins Stopped Play: Eleven Village Cricketers Take on the World by Harry Thompson is a very good read,highly entertaining if a little sad at the end:

Penguins Stopped Play: Eleven Village Cricketers Take on the World: Amazon.co.uk: Harry Thompson: 9780719563461: Books

Really brilliant book and terribly sad at the end.

 

[The Sock of Poskett]

McCarthys travels and Road to McCarthy by former Brighton resident Pete McCarthy who is sadly no longer with us.
Brilliantly written and both very funny

Thoroughly agree with those - along with Pratchett, Bryson, Clive James, Alan Coren, Woody Allen, and the excellent 'Welsh noir' spoofs of Malcolm Pryce.

 

[The Sock of Poskett]

Hitchhikers Guide To The Galaxy made me snigger when I first read it in 1980. I reckon I've read it at least 50 times since and it still makes me chuckle. Gutted when Mr Adams passed..

Yup, Douglas Adams was a legend. Also enjoyed his Dirk Gently detective books and the very silly Meaning of Liff book he did with John Lloyd, where they used lots of obscure place names and invented other words for things that didn't have a word for them. Hilarious and very cleverly done.

 

[00snook]

Frank Skinner's autobiography

Yep absolutely.

This and all the Karl Pilkington books. Geniusly funny.

 

[NMH]

Ooh, nice reminder. Not so sure about teenagers, I was reading them again last year and they're still excellent.

One small point, they're not by Ronald Searle, although he did the superb drawings. They were actually written by a guy called Geoffrey Willans who died rather young, before we could write more of these comic masterpieces.

Ah, well I had an inkling they were collaborative works, but don't know how much would have been his work vs the co-writer. You're saying he just did the cartoons then.
His name stuck in my mind anyway, over anyone else he was working alongside.
Interesting that you still get something out of them, perhaps worth another look as I'd assumed the humour was primarily related to by school-aged people like I was when I read it.

 

[Ludensian Gull]

Bill Bryson books have made me laugh out loud on trains, trams, metro etc...

Me too ,' A Walk In The Woods' was one of his funniest IMHO.

 

[Doc Lynam]

Hunter S Thompson's Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas.

RIP

 

[KNC]

The Green party manifesto is hilarious.

 

[Spider]

I can't believe there's been this many replies and no one has even mentioned P.G. Wodehouse - only the finest comic writer of all time!

(Code of the Woosters is my favourite!)

 

[catfish]

I can't believe there's been this many replies and no one has even mentioned P.G. Wodehouse - only the finest comic writer of all time!

(Code of the Woosters is my favourite!)

Good call. I love the Blandings/Lord Emsworth ones.

 

[crasher]

I can't believe there's been this many replies and no one has even mentioned P.G. Wodehouse - only the finest comic writer of all time!

(Code of the Woosters is my favourite!)

Exactly that. Some of his short stories are comic perfection. Check out a few random Wodehouse lines http://www.drones.com/pgw.cgi


I would also recommend Lucky Jim by Kingsley Amis for those that haven't tried it. It's savagely hilarious.

And maybe even better is this (out of print) book about a likeable upstart young journalist being sent to cover events in a post-colonial African state. If you can find a copy I can't recommend it highly enough, it had me in hysterics.

An Unimpeachable Source - David Wheeler - Google Books

 

[Danny-Boy]

A paperback I found once called "The Next To Last Train Ride".

I lent it to someone else and never saw it again, got no idea who wrote it, it was about some bloke travelling around the USA, in search of his girlfriend.

At one stage he gets picked up by two happy hookers in the MidWest and gets freebies on tap.

Anybody know who wrote it?

 

[JOLovegrove]

Me too ,' A Walk In The Woods' was one of his funniest IMHO.

Haven't read that one, but 'Notes from a Small Island' is very very good. Well worth a read if people haven't!