Come tell me what the funniest line is you've ever read in a book :-D

[Jacksmania]

Have just been reading "Silken Prey" by John Sandford, and laughed so hard at this line I woke up DH who was not very pleased with me :o

In the book, Lucas Davenport says something to another police officer about the police commissioner (I believe that's her title), Rose Marie Roux, and the other cop shouts "Fuck a bunch of Rose Marie! I'm going to put wheels on that bitch and roll her right into the Mississippi!"

:o

Yours?

Aw... really?
Just not that funny, huh? :(

"It was the day my grandmother exploded" opening line of the Crow Road. I had to just go check it, but I remember reading that for the first time and spitting my tea out!

Really? :o :o :o
I think I must find that book - who's the author?

I love you Glaikit for posting on my thread :)

The dearly departed Iain Banks wonderful Scottish author.

I am going to have to read it again now for the eleventy millionth time

Ohh, The Crow Road and The Wasp Factory are both only 99p on Kindle at the moment.

I'm going to go and have a hard think about books that have made me laugh. I have laughed out loud at lots of books, but I can't remember exact lines.

Ooh are they obtuse?! My crow road is very well thumbed but would buy it on a kindle so I can read on the go!

"'Chip, more appropriate name,' said Kimi dismally, inspecting it."

I know it doesn't sound that funny but I had to lie down on the floor when I was reading this. I like comic authors who write in long paragraphs with a zinger at the end, but they're hard to quote. It's from The Plague and I by Betty MacDonald.

And I've posted these ones before but they still make me laugh:

'Plato would have jumped out of his sandals at the mere thought of a human being looking like Arnold, i.e. like a brown condom full of walnuts'. (Clive James, Flying Visits)

'God! those rhododendron buds had a phallic, urgent look!' (Stella Gibbons, Cold Comfort Farm)

Robert Rankin's Brentford books make me laugh out loud all the way through. Will have a look and see if I can find a particular quote.

"A brown condom full of walnuts" :o :o :o

Brilliant!

I have to admit I shocked another mum at kindergarten drop-off this morning, I was talking to a good friend who doesn't mind a bit of swearing she's a reformed potty mouth like me and I was complaining about DS's kindy teacher who has scheduled a field trip to the pumpkin patch tomorrow - on Hallowe'en, so they will miss dressing up for school, there will be no pumpkins left, or if there are, they will be the sad tiny little rejects, and of course we won't have time to carve any pumpkins between pick-up time and when it gets dark enough to go trick-or-treating... all because she has certain religious beliefs and doesn't like Hallowe'en, which is fine, but imposing her beliefs on the little ones is not fine - they were all excited to dress up for kindy, and now will be slogging around a stupid empty pumpkin patch... and breathe... sorry for rant ...

Anyway.... the three of us were standing around after the kids went in, bitching talking about this, and I said "Fuck a bunch of Mrs Kindergarten Teacher" which made my good friend choke on her coffee :o and the other mum look at me like before she warmed up to :o

Must watch language around untried mums

PG Wodehouse, Bertie speaking:

"Very good," I said coldly. "In that case, tinkerty-tonk."
And I meant it to sting.

poppy

Terry pratchett was the first author to make me laugh out loud in a public place. Can think of any examples now because my brain is very leaky. The best line I ever read was in a crime thriller. Last line in the book. 'The mineshaft was empty'. Can't remember the book or the author but Harrison Ford was in the movie.....
Best line recently was solesorceress and involved swearing and plucking. I think. Jeez I might be menopausal. I can't remember anything!

From "the 100 year old man who climbed out of the window and disappeared"

"And they all lived happily ever after" which was the piss mistake in the rejected bibles which one of the characters read ALL THE WAY THROUGH comparing each line against another copy.

There's a Garrison Keillor story where he describes a woman with dyed black hair wearing a purple jumpsuit as something like "she was seventy, but could pass for a sixty year old who had had a hard life". Most of "Lake Wobegon Days" et al can make me snort out loud.....

How could I forget HGTTG! So many wet your pants funny lines!

One I remember, "they hung in the air, exactly the way bricks don't"

'She climbed nimbly onto the bus, like a mountain lion. Well, like a sobbing mountain lion wearing a miniskirt, so not really like a mountain lion at all.'

These are great :o

Another one who adored The 100-year old man. Very very funny.

Loads of good lines in Hitch-hiker's - I am particularly fond of:

Ford: "It's unpleasantly like being drunk."
Arthur: "What's so unpleasant about being drunk?"
Ford: "You ask a glass of water."

'It is never difficult to distinguish between a Scotsman with a grievance and a ray of sunshine," observed P G Wodehouse.

There's loads of great one liners in Lucky Jim

"Feather footed through the plashy fen passes the questing vole" from Evelyn Waugh's Scoop

'Into the face of the young man who sat on the terrace of the Hotel Magnifique at Cannes there had crept a look of furtive shame, the shifty, hangdog look which announces that an Englishman is about to talk French' - opening sentence of The Luck of the Bodkins by P.G. Wodehouse.

Some of the best I've read come from Janet Evanovich's Stephanie Plum novels - example from Seven Up -

"Is that a bulletproof vest? See, now that's so insulting. That's like saying I'm not smart enough to shoot you in the head".