Great Comedy Works

[Paige]

I want to spend some time on comedy writing and literature for Senior Year. I plan to pick a few of Shakespeare's comedies and A Confederacy of Dunces, but I'm not sure what else to consider. Three Men is a Boat may be good but it's not a personal favorite. What are the funniest books you've read that aren't just memoirs? We've already done The Importance of Being Earnest. 

[Kassia]

I haven't read them but DH loves Wodehouse books and I've seen them recommended here many times as well.

[Lori D.]

British
2006 = Eats Shoots & Leaves (Lynne Truss) -- nonfiction, about grammar/punctuation, but with extremely humorous anecdotes
2001 = The Eyre Affair (Jasper Fforde) -- novel; speculative fiction, with a lot of humor
2001 = The Thief of Time (Terry Pratchett) -- or other Discworld book; novel; humor/fantasy
1979 = The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy (Douglas Adams) -- novel; humor/sci-fi
1958 = Our Man in Havana (Graham Greene) -- short novel; realistic/humorous
1949 = Farmer Giles of Ham (JRR Tolkien) -- longer short story; humorous mock epic
1938 = Scoop (Evelyn Waugh) -- novel; satire of sensationalistic journalism of the day
1938 = Miss Pettigrew Lives for a Day (Winifred Watson) -- novel; comedy of errors
1934 = Right Ho, Jeeves (PG Wodehouse) -- or short story collection: Wodehouse on Crime (satire of detective tales)
1932 = Cold Comfort Farm (Stella Gibbons) -- comic novel
1930 = Diary of a Provincial Lady (EM Delafield) -- satire of a British lady's journal
1905 = The Club of Queer Trades (GK Chesterton) -- 6 connected short stories; "queer" = "odd or unusual", NOT LGBTetc.
turn of the century - The Open Window, or short humorous stories by Saki (H.H. Munro)
1989 = The Reluctant Dragon (Kenneth Grahame) -- short story
1848 = The Book of Snobs (William Makepeace Thackery) -- collection of short sketches; biting satire
1836 = The Pickwick Papers (Charles Dickins) -- series of comic sketches
1803 = Northanger Abbey (Jane Austen) -- humorous take on the gothic novels of her day

American
1954 = Lucky Jim (Kingsley Amis) -- novel; biting comedy about the university setting and grad students
1941 = Arsenic and Old Lace (Joseph Kesselring) -- play
1925 = Gentlemen Prefer Blondes (Anita Loos) -- satire of a show girl's journal accounts about her sugar daddies
1914 = Penrod (Booth Tarkington) -- series of short comic sketches
turn of the century - The Ransom of Red Chief, or other short humorous stories by O. Henry
1879 = The Adventures of Tom Sawyer (Mark Twain) -- novel; humorous/realistic
1869 = The Innocents Abroad (Mark Twain) -- series of humorous short sketches

Edited June 23, 2022 by Lori D.

[Farrar]

I think this list is a pretty good one:

https://www.penguin.co.uk/articles/2019/sep/best-funny-books.html

If I was structuring a course, I'd definitely want to do some funny scifi or fantasy, like Hitchhiker's Guide, a Kurt Vonnegut, or The Princess Bride. And I'd also definitely want to do a comedic memoir or two. And some David Sedaris. Is it really a course on funny writing without David Sedaris? 

From that list above, some that struck me included Adrian Mole (gosh, such a funny YA book), Tales of the City (love it, but you'd need to be comfortable with LGBTQ content, obviously), and Curious Incident of the Dog in the Nighttime, which isn't one that people think of as a "comedic" book, but is definitely very funny.

[Porridge]

Mark Twain short stories:

A Medieval Romance

A Story Without And End

There's also Trevor Noah's memoir, Born A Crime, if you are open to memoirs.