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In search of a little levity...
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When I think about laughing out loud at a book I will always remember the time I actually got kicked out of my fourth grade class durring "silent reading" for an uncontrolled fit of the giggles while reading The Mad Scientist Club by (I think) Donald Sobol.
In more recent years the Wizzard in Rhyme series by Christopher Stasheff probably made me laugh most often.

Most recently I laughed my tuckus off at "The Big Year: A Tale of Man, Nature, and Fowl Obsession". But I think you might have to be a birder yourself to see as much humor in it as I did.


What about a P. G. Wodehouse? I'm on vacation and don't have access to my copies to give titles and narrators, but how about Jeeves and the Mating Season as narrated by Jonathan Cecil?

Sarah Vowell's Assassination Vacation is superb - funny and American History all in one. If you are a liberl, then John Stewart's America is also good listening, though much more political.
I just listened to Bill Bryson's Life And Times Of The Thunderbolt Kid, which is a funny memoir of the 50's in Iowa.
I've heard good things about Amy Sedaris's I Like You and the group effort with her and others called Wigfield ... but I haven't listened to them yet.
Often comedians that you already know have books - Ellen Degeneres and Eddie Izzard both have books out there that are basically their standup routines that I have enjoyed a lot. I've seen George Carlin has several books, if you like him.
I still think that the two Bridget Jones Diary books are very funny, and the Stephanie Plum series (bumbling Jersey girl bounty hunter) by Janet Evanovich is always good for a happy pick-me-up.
Oh! And the Ramona books by Beverly Cleary are brilliantly read by Stockard Channing - yes, they're kid books but we were kids once too :)


You Got to Dance With Them What Brung You: Politics in the Clinton Years
Nothin' But Good Times Ahead
Molly Ivins Can't Say That, Can She?

A second for "A Girl Named Zippy", though I may have only chuckled.
Also, "Running With Scissors" and the following memoirs by Augusten Burroughs

Apathy and Other Small Victories by Paul Neilan
Crooked Little Vein by Warren Ellis
These are the ones that most come to mind becasue they are either recent reads or just always hilarious. It doenst take much to make me laugh out loud but these succeeded in spades.

A lot of books claim to be funny, but this one really was.

DOG OF THE SOUTH - Charles Portis
CRACKPOT: THE OBSESSIONS - John Waters
CONFEDERACY OF DUNCES - John Kennedy Toole
A SUPPOSEDLY FUN THING I'LL NEVER DO AGAIN - D.F. Wallace
LIFE AMONG THE SAVAGES - Shirley Jackson
RAISING DEMONS - Shirley Jackson
PURSUIT OF LOVE - Nancy Mitford
THE PUSHCART WAR - Jean F. Merrill


What did Portis's niece think of him? As I recall, my husband said he was a bit quirky, conducting all of his correspondence on a manual typewriter. Heard he is a bit of a recluse, too. Hey, whatever works. If I were able to write books of his caliber, I'd become a shut-in, too!

I think most of my Portis editions are Overlook editions!


1. Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas by Hunter S. Thompson
(made me positively CRY with laughter - on a plane!)
2. Body, by Harry Crews
3. Me Talk Pretty One Day, David Sedaris
4. Any of Fran Leibowitz's essays, collected in the Fran Leibowitz Reader, in which she waxes poetic about hating kids and loving smoking
5. Motherless Brooklyn, by Jonathan Lethem
(also made me laugh uncontrollably at inappropriate moments)


Anything by Patrick McManus
Exploits of a Reluctant (But Extremely Goodlooking) Hero by Maureen Fergus
The Adrian Mole diaries, by Sue Townsend

Flann O'Brien's The Third Policemen, The Hard Life, The Dalkey Archive, At Swim Two-Birds.
John Barth's The Sot-Weed Factor, The Floating
Opera
J.P. DonLeavy's The Unexpergated Code






Also i thought "The Princess Bride" was a riot...how the author add notes.