For me, it was The Pickwick Papers.
It starts beautifully with "The first ray of light which illumines the gloom, and converts
into a dazzling brilliancy that obscurity..." (I just love this man's command of the English language) and turns into a ticklefest.

So, what book made you laugh out loud, or fall of your couch in a fit of uncontrollable abdominal spasms?

Good Omens: The Nice and Accurate Prophecies of Agnes Nutter, Witch by Neil Gaiman & Terry Pratchett.

Can't possibly pick just one.
PG Woodhouse makes me laugh out loud. So does Terry Pratchett. Definitely. I used to own a copy of The Screwtape Letters read by John Cleese what cracked me up a lot.

Really? Personally I can't stand Dickens' humour - it clunks. You can see all the places you're supposed to laugh, especially in Pickwick.
My favourite is 'Cheaper by the Dozen' by F. & E. Gilbreth or an obscure Australian book called 'The Great Gatenby' by John Marsden.

I love Dickens! I haven't read the Pickwick Papers, so I can't address the "clunkiness" of that specifically, but I think his character humor was outstanding. It's a treat for me when an author can combine an amazing way with language and be funny at the same time - like Nabokov.

No Way to Treat a First Lady ranks near the top of my list too, Koeeoaddi. Most anything Buckley has written is gold. God Is My Broker: A Monk-Tycoon Reveals the 7 1/2 Laws of Spiritual and Financial Growth had me crying.

Yes, and it is quite a return to form in my mind after Florence of Arabia (a little too dark to be funny) and Boomsday (which was funny, but really just a modern Modest Proposal).

Jilly Cooper makes me laugh out loud.....so does Erica Jong.

Flann O'Brien - The Third Policeman.

You will never look at a bicycle the same way again.

Bill Bryson and David Sedarisalways crack me up. Good Omens, as mentioned by Sherri, is very funny. So is To Say Nothing of the Dog by Connie Willis.

Bryson's A Walk in the Woods was hilarious.

James Thurber's My Life and Hard Times was downright hilarious. The funniest novel I've ever read is probably Pale Fire.

Actually, that's not really a novel, so maybe Lolita.

I think Pale Fire is a novel.

Yeah, I guess it's a novel pretending to be a poem with copious end notes. So Pale Fire is the funniest novel I've read.

Yah!

I like the word "copious."

Mmm, I like a lot of the abundance words.

Copious, abundant, exuberant, lavish, luxuriant, plenteous, generous, bountiful, prolific...

::Rolls about in the generous plenitude::
Wheee!

I hate beaucoup--not because it's French, but because it sounds glib when people say it.

Unless you're actually speaking French that is.

I think I agree. I'm all for using a word from another language if it conveys something you can't really convey in English, but we've got words that mean lots. Lots and lots of them.

I'm going to have to add to my list some of your favorites. I never read for comedy so Pickwick was a big surprise. And any book that can almost kill you is definitely something I'm interested in. I'll make sure not to be drinking when I try ...first lady.
Sorry Dickens clunks for you Sarah...he's my fave!

Just wondering...is the screwtape letters a satire of the scarlet letter and the great gatenby one of the great gatsby?
Great gatsby by the way was odious! I could not read one more vapid verbose description of random vaille-que-vaille (sorry, don't know how to translate that term except to Spanish porqueria) without hurling so I never finished it. Ugh, just thnking about that book is a total downer.

Screwtape Letters is by CS Lewis and is a novel pretending to be letters from a senior demon in hell to his nephew a junior demon who is on temptation duty on earth. Explaining how to try to lead his assigned soul astray. One funny (and wise) section I recall is when he explains that trying to get someone to do something terrible is a rookie mistake. A big sin will often scare your assignment so much that they completely turn their life around, and then where are you? Much better to get them to do a lot of little bad things, take an extra slice of toast, cheat on their taxes. You young demons have to learn patience.

Oh come on, taking an extra slice of toast and cheating on your taxes are not sins, they are life necessities.

Um, must add, IRS, if you're reading, I am totaly kidding ;)

I didn't say they were sins, I said little bad things. That's his point. You don't start with sins, you start with little lazinesses, or petty unkindnesses, or little bits of rudeness. Then you build on that gradually until you've got a person who makes everybody around them miserable.

A Confederacy of Dunces is about the funniest.

Ah...yes.

Oh humbug...it's not available for free online. I'm in a financial bind so only free online books for me for now. Too lazy to go to my second home "the library" but I may just have to overcome that little laziness to get it today.

SOmething about reading books online though just doesn't sit well. I miss holding the thing and flipping the pages. Clicking just does not even come close. Oh and the smell of books, especially old ones...not the moldy smell but the well loved well perused smell.
There's nothing so lovely a picture as a woman sitting in an alcove, propped on a decorative pillow, her head slightly cocked towards the window resting on a lace curtain, her legs covered with the softest blanket, an open book in her hand, a soft smile on her face, and a soft light falling upon the scene. Ah!

That reminds me of a story in The Magazine of Fantasy & Science Fiction a few years ago about a guy whose fortune cookie message leads him to discover the factory where an alien is attempting to drive humanity mad little by little. I don't remember all of his techniques, but they involved stuff like making lettuce wilt too quickly, and planting fake horoscopes and fortune cookie messages, and using up the last toilet paper.
Anyhow, maybe the demon and the alien could team up.

How did you guys get your books to be listed in the "Books mentioned in this topic" tab?

See on the upper right-hand corner of the comment box, Carlie? There a link for "add book/author." Click on that and type in the book you want to add.

Once my exhusband and I got exactly the same fortune in our fortune cookies. *oooo-weee-oooo*

Thanks Mindy

Oh Sarah 11.00100100001111110110, that was funnny!!

(That's pi in binary, since I was letting my SF geek self out for a moment)

So now I'm binary? A girl could get a reputation.

You are also irrational and transcendent. What can I say?

Remember the Binars from TNG?! *squee*

Have any of you ever played the board game "Apples to Apples"? My friends like to make everybody display their collected green-card-adjectives at the end and see how they match up with the actual person. That's what this reminds me of...I'm well-rounded, irrational, transcendent, and binary, not that there's anything wrong with that.
Somebody else's turn :)

What do you mean "could" get a reputation?

Are we supposed to describe ourselves or let someone else do it? If I'm doing myself (based on my own experience and the observations of friends): OCD, eclectic, shy, brainy, freaky, compassionate.

I would have never thought of you as shy, that is why it is so hard to make judgements on people from the very little that you get to see them online.

Well, in the game, the adjectives that you collect are not necessarily meant to describe you, so the fun is in seeing if they actually fit. The ones I collected above were all of the things that I have been called since my surprisingly public name change two days ago. I feel like Prince, honestly.
But if you want to adjectivize yourself, go ahead :)

ps "Adjectivize" appears to be the noun "adjective", transformed into a verb.

I love when nouns become verbs.

Yeah, Jim, online is EASY for socialphobes!

So if we started a group titled Socialphobes Anonymous would anyone show up?

"Tall, Dark and Cajun" by Sandra Hill had me laughing--out loud--numerous times. Most of the books that I've read by her have been funny. A few stinkers though.

"Eats, Shoots and Leaves" by Lynne Truss had me chuckling throughout it also. Enjoyed the author's sense of humor.

Can the group have activities like clapping one hand, and listening for trees falling in faraway forests?

So if we started a group titled Socialphobes Anonymous would anyone show up?

Only if we did it online!

Aw man, Kathrynn, I gotta start doing the add as a cover option b/c that just looks cool!

We're online, O Transcendent One (I mean Three.Fourteen)! We can do ANYTHING!

*clapping one hand now*

(Hear it?)

Hey I just heard a tree fall in a forest in Belarus. This is fun.

*high fives Jim*

(See, we can do that with one hand!)

Oh, a whole new world has been opened.