I've read too many sad books...recommend me something clever but funny please

[BoogleMcGroogle]

I manage about a book a week. They seem to be getting incrementally darker. Having last week lost myself in Gary Younge's incredible One Day in the Death of America, I thought I'd try light relief and just finished The Beekeeper of Aleppo. Great book, not exactly light relief. I now feel really quite sad.

Please, please recommend me something sharp and very funny to brighten my weekend. Fiction or nonfiction. For reference, my absolute favourite books of all time are Tales of the City, with most of Updike coming a close second. I have a history of incontinence on public transport when reading David Sedaris.

Help! 🙂

I've preordered Be More Keanu for this reason (and that I had a huge crush on him at school)
Letters To My Fanny by Cherry Healy made me laugh most recently but I've not read much for months due to home schooling.

I'll look the Keanu one up. I loved him a lot in about 1993.

Came on to suggest David Sedaris - he's back on R4 at the moment and we chortled our way through making supper last night.

I quite liked The Tent, The Bucket and Me by Emma Kennedy.

There are quite a few 'older' books which I find funny - Cold Comfort Farm, Auntie Mame and Travels with Auntie Mame - not like the sanitised film versions at all. Three Men in a Boat. Wodehouse.

My A level english teacher introduced us to a writer no-one else ever seems to have heard of, Lillian Beckwith who wrote very unsentimentally about her life in the Hebrides, and her early life when her parents ran a grocers in the Black Country.

Pratchett, if you like that sort of thing, Bill Bryson.

I always have a chuckle while reading anything by Liane Moriarty.

I didn't know he was back on the radio. That'll cheer up my afternoon doing boring admin alone in my office this afternoon ( I may not come home...)

It's not exactly funny but where the Crawdads sing is delightful.

I generally read something proper naff when I've read something deep. Give me a couple of hours with a Jenny Colgan!! Then I come to my senses and read something better.

Totally light comedy series. Why mummy drinks, Why mummy swears, & Why mummy doesn't give a %&*# by Gill Sims. Her 4th book will be out Sept/Oct. I have laughed & sometimes shed a tear through them & couldn't put them down.

My Family and Other Animals or any Durrell.
Not funny as such but Enchanted April and Cranford are good books that I would describe as ‘heartwarming’ if that wasn’t such an overused marketing term for publishers.

I just finished The Keeper of Lost Things, which has been my favourite read this year. Some sadness but in a poignant way, and the whole thing is warm and lovely, with some funny bits. Recommend it.

Pretty much anything by Bill Bryson. Easy to read (I managed and I’m such a non reader lol) and very funny in places.

I really enjoyed the Rosie Project, quirky and feel good.

The Rumpole books are my go-to cheering books. Esp good as they’re mostly short stories so you can dip in and out.

Pratchett (if you haven’t read any then possibly Guards Guards or Witches Abroad would work as introduction.)

If you’re more into classics, Diary of a Provincial Lady, Diary of a Nobody, or Miss Pettigrew Lives For a Day?

I’ve started reading Agatha Christie for light relief.
Also Magpie Murders by Anthony Horowitz.

I read a string of (excellent, worthy) depressing books and couldn’t take it anymore.

Following for the same reason

The Queen of Bloody Everything by Joanna Nadin is lovely and fun

Wilt by Tom Sharpe had me laughing out loud. I go back to Wodehouse time and again for light relief.

Thanks so much- I'm pocketing all of these ideas for the summer.

Just bought The Rosie Project for the weekend

I also just found Heartburn by Norah Ephron on my shelf. I read it years ago and figure it's good for another go now.

Early Bill Bryson. The lost continent and neither nor there had me laughing out loud.

Currently reading The Things I Know by Amanda Prowse which was free on my Kindle. It’s not funny, nor clever, but it is light & uplifting.

Lots of people recommending Bill Bryson. I read them in my teens/ twenties when they first came out but will dig them back off the shelf. I'd love him to update The Lost Continent now, it would be fascinating ( if maybe not quite as funny...)

Anything by Carl Hiaasen

This is going to hurt by Adam Kay was very funny and easy to dip in and out of. I have a clingy baby so reading is pretty few and far between but I did manage that x

Nancy Mitford books are very funny, as is Cold Comfort Farm. But Wodehouse is my favourite cheerful read. The prose sparkles with wit. Love it.

Jasper fforde?

Jonas Jonasson made me laugh a lot with very darkly comic relentless gags and if you like silly fantasy I'm reading through Jodi Taylor's chronicles of Saint Mary's. They are easy reading which I need when I'm low/sad