I dont really laugh when reading ..do you?

I laugh a lot at The Stranger Times series by C.K McDonnell.
I listen to them on audible though and the narrator is brilliant. I dont know if it would be the same if I read them.

@REP22 I love Jill! I love the one when they go on the trek and one of the Cholly-Sawcutt girls is running through her list of food. Also Ann’s travails with her fussy mother, and cousin Cecelia with her flower pressing ‘unknown little yellow flower, found by our tennis court’ and lightly boiled eggs. If you haven’t read Barabara Pym, you should probably try her - Some Tame Gazelle, her first book, is very silly and funny.

I can't recall a time I've laughed while reading a book. I prefer more impromptu type of reading... like reading the comments here on MN or Reddit. They usually have me laughing out loud regularly.

I laugh at posts on here, the last book I laughed when reading was 'The Satsuma Complex'

Occasionally I’ll have a good laugh, Adrian Mole of course. Heartburn by Norah Ephron, Cecil Beatons Diaries have some really funny moments and recently Treasure by Gina Davidson (also known as Michele Hanson)

Another vote for Adrian Mole - I remember laughing a lot at the bit where he came home unexpectedly early from school to find his dad watching Playschool and pretending to be an acorn growing into a tree. I was lucky enough to be in a stage version of the musical of The Secret Diary of... (aged up considerably to play Grandma Mole) and that was funny too. I also laughed aloud at one of Sue Townsend's other books, The Queen and I.

I've also laughed at bits in Jane Austen, the Famous Five, and "Jill's Riding Club" (I had quite a lonely and unhappy childhood, perhaps that explains it), and involuntarily gasped out loud while reading a Harry Potter book on the bus once, much to the amusement of my fellow-travellers.

I'm no "screamer in the Sistine Chapel" by any means, but I was fortunate enough to find myself on the Harry Potter Leavesden Studios Tour a few days ago. Not so much laughter, but I let fly a very loud expletive in the Forbidden Forest bit when the bl~~dy giant spiders unexpectedly descended from above. Fortunately there were no little children in the vicinity.

Time and a place though - I've been to a few RSC things; memorably a performance of Richard II (very definitely NOT a comedy) and there was a lady in the audience loudly fake-performance-laughing to anything she perceived to be mildly witty in order to telegraph her higher intelligence to the rest of us plebs. It was visibly annoying the poor s~ds in the cast. I do prefer to keep myself to myself, especially when reading, but sometimes a chuckle comes out before I can censor or stifle it.

Some of us are just more outwardly expressive than others, I guess. It doesn't mean that you don't enjoy and delight in books as much as other people @Sidebeforeself - you just love them in your own way, and that's brilliant.

For crying at a book try Story of a Heart. It’s about the history of heart transplants and the central real people involved are two kids, it’s about one heart being given from one to the other. I sobbed, a lot. It was a very well written and interesting but it broke me a bit.

Yes it was! Because of You.

I'll be sure to download A Tiny Bit of Marvellous.

I use kindle unlimited, which whilst often a bit sparse, in anything too deep, serves my insomnia.

I'm on book 7 of 9 about Black Ops agent Reed Montgomery. I know I don't need to worry if I do finally nod off 🤣.
They're actually not a bad read. I'm yet to laugh or cry though!

Adrian mole never fails to make me properly laugh

Oh yes and the Just William books

I often find myself snorting about things in a very undignified manner. A turn of phrase will tickle me and I'll make myself look a weirdo on the bus or in a cafe.

PG Wodehouse, Jerome K Jerome and the Adrian Mole books are my top ones for laughing out loud. also The Diary of A Nobody, I laughed uncontrollably on a train at the bit when Lupin shouts ‘see me dance the polka’. I love Barbara Pym too, and the Mah Jong scene in The Murder of Roger Ackroyd cracks me up every time. My DH thinks I am easily amused - I think I have a keen appreciation of the absurdity of everyday life which I enjoy to the full!

Was that the one about the adopted daughter? Yes that was very moving. I found her earlier book A Tiny Bit Marvellous hilarious

The last Dawn French I read had me on tears at the end. I'm not really a soppy person but... Oh, it opened those floodgates!

I read The Restraint of Beasts on a sun lounger on holiday and laughed so much people went over to see what it was while I was in the pool!

Bill Bryson, in one book, about the plumbing. I wish I remembered the details. So funny.

I definitely have.

Another Bill Bryson fan here. Just re-reading Down Under and laughing out loud especially his description of cricket, I had to keep putting the book down.

Only if it’s really funny. I did laugh at Bridget Jones diary.

I've got this and haven't read it yet. Need to put my bloody phone down...

I read the first Bridget Jones book and got to the blue soup bit when sat in a cafeteria on a ferry quite late at night.
I was trying my best not to laugh out loud but the laugh kept bursting out and people were looking at me.

K.J. Parker got me when describing an ambush where they started running down a hill but it had been raining and they sort of couldn't stop.
It was very unexpected as the book is absolutely not a comedy.

Terry Pratchett, Tom Sharpe, Craig Shaw Gardener have all made me laugh many, many times, although most of it only raises a smile on a second readthrough.

Maeve Binchy mixes moments of real comedy in some of her books although they aren't meant to be comedies.
A lecture one character gave her kids about looking after their tortoise made me laugh, as did one younger child trying to defect to a different religion to avoid paying for breaking something in his parish church.

Ben Elton made me laugh back when he first published his books, but rereading them they seem very shallow so I think they didn't age very well.

There are others I can't recall at the moment, but those moments, expected or unexpected when a book can cause me to laugh out loud are one of the greatest joys I find in reading.

That thread is great !

I agree with Bill bryson I love his books , I also really like Gerald durral .
@Sidebeforeself I think a lot of it depends on your mood at the time and I think sometimes if your expectations are set to ' you will make me laugh ! ' it will be disappointing.
It's a bit like sitting down to a full Sunday roast that you have spent ages cooking and you no longer want it.

@Sminty2 I came here to mention that very book! I was laughing so much in Waterstones I had to buy it. Glad I did, I've read all three in the series but that was my favourite.

Also 'Gold Coast' by Nelson de Mille. Very, very funny.