The Funniest Books of All Time

I read this book on my year abroad at Uni when I was in Canada/Australia and it basically changed my outlook on life at that point. On reflection, I was always a negative whinger who never wanted to be social or go out and do things and after reading this very funny account of Danny saying yes to everything, I started to try it out a bit for myself and it for sure opened me up to experiences that I wouldn’t have done before. I probably should read it again since I’ve gone back to being grumpy after 10 years living in Paris!

The Stinky Cheese Man and Other Fairly Stupid Tales by Jon Scieszka and Lane Smith

Elys Dolan:

This book, a memoir about growing up with a father who is a married Catholic priest (he got special permission from the Vatican) and then moving back in with him as an adult, is the funniest thing I have ever consumed. Funnier than any book, TV show, movie, a stand-up hour — anything. Is it illegal that Patricia Lockwood, a poet, is more hilarious than the people I know who work in comedy? Probably!!! I read this book on a plane and tried not to laugh because I didn’t want to annoy every single other person on the flight. So instead I silently rocked back and forth sobbing quiet tears of laughter, looking very normal.

My first nomination for one of the funniest books I’ve read is A Confederacy of Dunces. Ignatius J. Reilly is certainly one of literature’s unforgettable characters, and so are many of the supporting cast of this farcical morality play, written by a writer who committed suicide in his 32nd year, winning the Pulitzer posthumously. Ignatius, a self-proclaimed genius, is lazy, opinionated, hypochondriacal, idealistic, flatulent and sexually scared, content to relieve himself with solo performances in his room. There is an ending reminiscent of the movie “The Graduate.” We are left wondering if Ignatius, now re-united with Myrna, and free of the confederacy, will step out of his comfort zone finally and have that one explosive orgasm with her that will restore him to normalcy and retire him from the pages of literature as one heck of an unforgettable guy! We shall never know, for John Kennedy Toole, like Ignatius, made a hurried and unexpected departure from the literary stage, much to our loss.

A Year in the Merde by Stephen Clarke

Paul Taylor:

I remember reading this when I first moved to France. My wife (new French girlfriend at the time) bought it for me and while I don’t remember any of it, I remember finding it hilarious, because I could relate to a lot of what was being said. This is another book I need to re-read because, after my stand-up show #FRANGLAIS, I would get audience members asking me if I’d read the book, so it seems we went through similar experiences.

The device of the patient on the couch ranting to his shrink about all that’s wrong with him: his parents, his rabbi, his community, the rest of the world, and is an interesting device for the author to jettison his own beefs and get his rocks off on the human race. And Portnoy seems to be Roth’s boldest character. I now see where the Seinfeld series got its inspiration from; George Costanza is a balder shoo-in for Roth’s masturbating monster. The writing brims with vitality, and yet the repetition of the rant wears thin after a while and we wonder, whose side is this guy on? This is a great book for young men emerging into a hostile world and protesting about everything they see in it and blaming their parents for the mess they are in.

Gotta include a token man on this list! Obviously, if you’re out to read a book by a funny man you should just read anything by David Sedaris. His whole thing is he’s funny. But, I guess, continuing on my theme of incredulously learning people can be funny and ALSO incredibly good at literally anything else, I was shocked by how funny Jeff Tweedy (lead singer of Wilco)’s memoir was. I read this when I was a researcher at The Late Show with Stephen Colbert and Tweedy came on to promote it. I pitched a bit where, because Tweedy is so funny, he writes for our show for a day and our grumpiest writer, Glen, had to be the lead singer of Wilco for a day. No one else liked this idea.

A Funny Thing Happened on the Way to the Cemetery by Carl Muller

Shane Joseph:

A ribald collection of recollections, essays, stories and exaggerations from Sri Lanka’s own Baron Munchausen.Whether it is winking at the queen, wrestling with a 20-foot python, sitting out the graveyard shift with a corpse that refuses to stay dead, or transporting a viper inside a plastic bag in a bus full of inquisitive commuters, Muller is up to the task of finding the most hilarious angle in each event and exploiting it to the fullest, providing the reader with a belly ache by the end of every story. To the first time reader of Carl Muller, this is a great primer on the author who has been mainly responsible for depicting, in a humorous and unflattering manner, the lives of the Ceylon Burghers with his Jam Tree trilogy, and who has captured and frozen a way of life that has all but disappeared in contemporary Sri Lanka.