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What are your definitive funnies?
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Alexander
(new)
Oct 15, 2015 01:22PM
What are the books that first made you bend double and which ones have made you repeatedly guffaw? I'll start the ball rolling by saying Me Talk Pretty One Day by David Sedaris is a firm favourite, along with (promotion to Captain of Obvious impending) The Code of the Woosters. What are everyone else's picks?
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Lamb (The Gospel According to Biff, Christ's Pal) and Fool, both by Christopher Moore. All of Moore's books have laugh out loud moments.
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And I get a kick out of Charlotte MacLeod's absurd mysteries. But, then, I'm a Gilbert and Sullivan fan.
I agree with Dave about Lamb...one of the funniest books I've ever read. My favorite book is Naked Pictures of Famous People by Jon Stewart...it's hilarious, and I've read it a bunch of times. : )
I'd never heard of that one, Crystal - I'll have to find a copy, thanks!
The only book I have ever re-read was Joel's choice- Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas. I read it back in the seventies and again in the late nineties. Some of his Rolling Stone articles were classics and typically irreverent. The movie adaption was a real disappointment. Although Johnny Depp did a fair job playing Hunter Thompson, many of the funny parts were the scrambled thoughts running through that demented mind, which you can't possibly translate to film.And another 'Thanks Crystal!" here. I have that on my TRL.
Reminiscing, two more funny reads came to mind. Nature Girl by Hiassen, the characters had me LOL but not quite ROFL and Drowned Hopes, by Westlake, also first read sometime last century.
Rebecca wrote: "I admit that silent reading seldom causes me to guffaw aloud. Sometimes listening to books does it. Sedaris has made me stop running and laugh (I listen to books when working out). Wodehouse makes ..."Sedaris is amazing, I agree. Have you read any of the Sweet Potato Queens books? I read a couple of those on a long plane flight years ago - the longer I read them, the funnier they got. I'm pretty sure the nearby passengers thought I was drugged - kept snorting and wheezing like a fool!
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I got some good chortles out of this month's read, Bloodsucking Fiends, though some of that was just the whole San Francisco thing.
A Confederacy of Dunces is absolutely brilliant. As someone who tries to write humour, it's frankly intimidating how sharp and witty John Kennedy Toole was.
Confederacy of Dunces has 1,956 reviews on amazon. WOW. I must be the only person who's never heard of it! Now I'm curious, of course :-)
You should definitely check it out, Brenda! How the book ever came to be published is quite a story in itself.
Mike wrote: "You should definitely check it out, Brenda! How the book ever came to be published is quite a story in itself."Gah! Now I'm curious about the story behind its publication, too! Is that going to be in the book, or is it written up elsewhere?
A Confederacy of Dunces is a picaresque novel by American novelist John Kennedy Toole which appeared in 1980, eleven years after Toole's suicide. Published through the efforts of writer Walker Percy (who also contributed a foreword) and Toole's mother, the book became first a cult classic, then a mainstream success; it earned Toole a posthumous Pulitzer Prize for Fiction in 1981, and is now considered a canonical work of modern literature of the Southern United States.As outlined in the introduction to a later revised edition, the book would never have been published if Toole's mother had not found a smeared carbon copy of the manuscript left in the house following Toole's 1969 suicide at age 31. Thelma Toole was persistent and tried several different publishers to no avail.
Thelma repeatedly called Walker Percy, an author and college instructor at Loyola University New Orleans, demanding he read it. He initially resisted; however, as he recounts in the book's foreword:
...the lady was persistent, and it somehow came to pass that she stood in my office handing me the hefty manuscript. There was no getting out of it; only one hope remained—that I could read a few pages and that they would be bad enough for me, in good conscience, to read no farther. Usually I can do just that. Indeed the first paragraph often suffices. My only fear was that this one might not be bad enough, or might be just good enough, so that I would have to keep reading.
In this case I read on. And on. First with the sinking feeling that it was not bad enough to quit, then with a prickle of interest, then a growing excitement, and finally an incredulity: surely it was not possible that it was so good."[10]
The book was published by LSU Press in 1980. It won the Pulitzer Prize for Fiction in 1981.
Found on Wikipedia - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/A_Confe...
Rodney, thank you so much - that was fascinating. What a shame that John Toole probably never realized what a gem he'd written. And what a hoot that his mother pestered Walter Percy into reading it - I can almost visualize the office scene there. Thank you for taking the time to post this. I hope you have a wonderful weekend.
Your welcome, but I must admit that I was curious about it as well. Since I had gotten it for me, it wasn't that much effort to share.
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Apparently very dejected. Which one, sending to one or two, or getting dejected?
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And it really sucks when Amazon rejects it.
Joel wrote: "If I recall, he also only sent his manuscript to one or two publishers, and got completely dejected when it wasn't picked up. I can't imagine any authors doing that nowadays."Oh, dear! What a shame. I suppose, back then, there wasn't as much communication between writers as there is today. If he didn't know any other writers (and since there wasn't email etc.), when he got rejected, he may have assumed that everyone ELSE was getting published and it was only him who was being turned down. I got 365 rejections before my first article was published. That would have driven me to drink if I wasn't already fully aware of how difficult it is to get published. Poor guy--writing is not nearly as isolated an experience now as it would have been for him.
Thanks Gary. I've put Getting Even on my list.Currently enjoying Crystal's suggestion- Naked Pictures Of Famous People, which I've enjoyed so far. Loved the Last Dinner narrative.
Gary wrote: "CartoonistAndre wrote: "Thanks Gary. I've put Getting Even on my list.Currently enjoying Crystal's suggestion- Naked Pictures Of Famous People, which I've enjoyed so far. Loved the Last Dinner na..."
I will respond once I've had the pleasure, Gary.
Although I suspect this will make most of you shake your heads in disgust, but I've had a glass of wine so I'm feeling brave: The Sweet Potato Queens have a bunch of books out, some of which were funny enough to make me "LOL" in public :-)
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Not at all. I heard some of the guys just yesterday saying that they love ChickLits, especially the spearmint flavor.
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The Sweet Potato Queens are a group of fun-loving women (yep, those are actual women) who wanted to be in a St. Patrick's day parade in the U.S. one year. They were refused admission, because they were just a group of fun-loving women wanting to stomp down a street being silly. So they decided to form an actual bona fide group, called themselves the Sweet Potato Queens, created rather ridiculous outfits to wear (here they are on their first book cover:http://www.amazon.com/Sweet-Potato-Qu...
They then signed up to be in the parade, had their own float and threw raw sweet potatoes at people watching the parade (I'm assuming no ambulences were involved - perhaps "tossed" would be a better word than "threw")
They were such a huge hit that they've been a mainstay in that particular St. Paddy's day parade for years and from what I've heard, a lot of people show up for the parades because they want to see this group. They have a huge organization with all sorts of hilarious rules, and have written quite a few "advice" books for women (I use the word "advice" very loosely - they're more the sort of thing you read when you want to sit back with a glass of wine and try not to pee yourself laughing while reading).
And, just in case I haven't swamped you with more information than you could possibly want, they also do a fair bit of fundraising, and have a fun website:
http://www.sweetpotatoqueens.com/
You'll see they have quite a few chapters - a new one is the Lutheran Women's Drinking Club of Wichita, Kansas.
Does that help? :-)
Brenda
They look to be a fine bunch of queens to party with. Are those costumes enhanced with sweet potatoes as well? I'll have to check out a bit more later, thanks Brenda.
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Never heard of him until I googled the name. The plots and characters feel like a British version of our Donald Westlake, maybe more upper crust. Not that Dortmunder and friends could be considered as lower crust!
Brenda wrote: "They then signed up to be in the parade, had their own float and threw raw sweet potatoes at people watching the parade."OK, now I'm envious. I wish I had thought of finding a way to bop people with a vegetable from a parade float.
CartoonistAndre wrote: "They look to be a fine bunch of queens to party with. Are those costumes enhanced with sweet potatoes as well? I'll have to check out a bit more later, thanks Brenda."They use an impressive amount of padding sewn into the sequined dresses to produce the awesome breast and bum measurements that you see in their photos. Sweet Potato Queens do NOT stuff with sweet potatoes - that would be too low-class for them...
Brenda wrote: "CartoonistAndre wrote: "They look to be a fine bunch of queens to party with. Are those costumes enhanced with sweet potatoes as well? I'll have to check out a bit more later, thanks Brenda."They..."
Well they're aces in my book. Or is it my deck? Anyway, it looks like a lot of fun.
I've threatened my kids that if they ever embarrass me in public I'll sign up as a Sweet Potato Queen and make them pose with me for a photo that I'll post on Facebook, Twitter etc. etc. It's amazing how well-behaved they are in public.
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Jay wrote: "Wow! That's so nice. I just told my kids that I'd sell them to Arab slave traders."That's good too, Mine was always wandering Gypsies!
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That's good too, Mine was always wandering Gypsies!"
Yup: "Be quiet, or I'll leave you on the side of the road for the gypsies!"
NB: I have never seen a gypsy, in the traditional sense, on our highways.
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They..."
You mean those yams are real?
Rebecca wrote: "NB: I have never seen a gypsy, in the traditional sense, on our highways. "
I agree, I suppose circus carnies would be a more realistic threat.
Rodney wrote: "Jay wrote: "Wow! That's so nice. I just told my kids that I'd sell them to Arab slave traders."That's good too, Mine was always wandering Gypsies!"
We must remain somewhat pc in certain circles. Gypsies and Arab slave traders do have feelings and rights, you know!
CartoonistAndre wrote: "Gypsies and Arab slave traders do have feelings and rights, you know! "
And they are more than welcome to try and offend me!
I loved the Arte Johnson and Ruth Buzzi skits when they were dressed as old people.https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qhL6I...
Let's not forget Mel Brooks-
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Funnier than "Blazing Saddles"... That's a tough call. I enjoyed them both, but I didn't have a laugh meter handy.
Solution: Watch them both and let us know what you think.
Joel wrote: "Brenda wrote: "CartoonistAndre wrote: "They look to be a fine bunch of queens to party with. Are those costumes enhanced with sweet potatoes as well? I'll have to check out a bit more later, thanks..."They're enhanced with 100% real stuffing. Does that count?
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Frankly, I don't think it matters all that much to the guys unless they have a hand in it.
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Books mentioned in this topic
A Confederacy of Dunces (other topics)The Last Will & Testament of Zelda McFigg (other topics)
Skippy Dies (other topics)
Bloodsucking Fiends (other topics)
