What books made you weep with laughter?

[Pennies]

The school hols are taking their toll on my sense of humour. I need something to make me laugh for my holidays. Nothing chick-litty though.

Bill Bryson's Notes from a Big Country about his family's return to live in America is his funniest for me - the piece about the number of Americans injured by their clothing or folding money made me laugh so much I couldn't speak

Also 1066 & all that, & the 3 others by the same authors (W.C. Sellar and R.J. Yeatman) - And Now All This, Garden Rubbish & Horse Nonsense. They were written in the 1930s & I'm always amazed that people could be just as silly then as now.

Back to Brookmyre - The Sacred Art of Stealing follows right on from A Big Boy Did It And Ran Away. Read the latter first.

Bridget Jones Diary and The Edge of Reason both had me snorting. Defo read them even if you have seen the films.

Rachel's Holiday by Marian Keyes really made me laugh too.

I really don't find Bill Bryson that funny. Maybe I need to read him again.

If he suits your sense SoH, Jimmy Carr's book The Naked Jape will have you pysl. It's a very clever and interesting analysis of what is funny (and what isn't) and why. Read it in bed next to DP to really irritate him with your sniggering!

Also I love Jasper Fforde and Kate Atkinson is kind of wry without necessarily being laugh out loud funny.

The 44 Scotland Street series by Alexander McCall Smith. I have not read any of his ladies detective stuff as I am quite put off by it, but this other series is really very good and makes me laugh out loud. Compulsory reading if you have ever lived in Edinburgh or know people from there!

I used to love Pratchett when I was younger - esp Luggage!

This is such a great list, enough to keep me happy for years! I'm going to try a Brookmyre, The Heroic Failures one, a Janet Evanovich Stephanie Plum one, and maybe the Naked Jape. Oh and the Clive James one. That should raise my spirits for now!

Hopefully I'll have laughed so much that I'll be on here begging for some proper traegdy!

Also, isn't interesting how there seems to be a Scottish theme to so many of these books. I wonder why.

Any books by Stephen Fry and Julian Clary also make me lol.

I like David Nobbs, although he can be a bit hit-and-miss. My favourite is "Second from last in the Sack Race." It has a farting in class scene better than any other farting in class scene I have ever read. And I've read a few.

Perplexed at all the nominations for David Lodge. Is this David Lodge as in Nice Work? Never knew his books were even supposed to be funny.

One by Garisson Keillor which featured a man involved in a war of attrition with a dog made me laugh so much I could hardly walk.

Spike Milligan's Puckoon has its moments. Also the war books are fab.

Love John O'Farrell's: Things can only get better, This is your life and The Best a Man Can Get. Not the newer stuff though.

Peter Kays autobiography had me laughing out loud on the bus... (also earned me lots of funny looks from other passengers too!)

Hitler, My Part in His Downfall made me weep with laughter. I read it on a train travelling through Japan, and when I looked up realised people had moved away from me I was laughing so hard.

Willy Russell, The Wrong Boy was a good one imo. Made me giggle anyway.

The Young Visiters by Daisy Ashford made me laugh a lot - I think she was nine when she wrote it - probably even better if you have children around that age.

I think the first three Stephanie Plum novels by Janet Evanovich are great - I've continued reading them, but you get to expect the humour, whereas if you are new to them, they are so different from anything else.

Pauline McLynn (Mrs Doyle from Father Ted) has written some good comedy crime too - "Something for the weekend"; "Better than a rest" and "Right on time".

My favourite Bill Bryson is his first "The Lost Continent" - I've never been to the American mid-West, but I felt like I had.

Has anybody said Scoop? Lots of lols in that!

the thunderbolt kid by bill brsyon....i still wet myself at the thought of his superhero jumper

A Confederacy of Dunces by John Kennedy Toole. Brilliant!

MyCatIsABiggerBastardThan - The Throwback is one of my favourite books too. I used to read parts out to my mother as I wept with laughter, but she just didn't - and doesn't - see the appeal.

Bill Bryson's description of blow up dolls in Neither Here Nor There - oh God!

Douglas Adams, PG Wodehouse, Roddy Doyle and Terry Pratchett - yes to all of those, too.

I liked Stephen Fry's The Liar, but can't remember how funny it was.

More, more - tell me more!

Unreliable Memoirs is properly, laugh until tears pour down your cheeks funny. Clive James is usually funny, but that's his best by far.

Apart from Evanovitch (and Kate Atkinson who doesn't write comic novels but is described by a poster as 'wry') there are no women on these lists.

Are women unable to write funny books? Or do publishers refuse to publish funny books by women? Do readers not trust that women can write books that make us laugh?
Discuss.

And no sniggering.

Marian Keyes is funny.

I'd second that coco...they tend to be put in chicklit if they're funny. And OP said no chick lit.

Marley & Me by John Grogan surprised me with how much it made me laugh - and I'm not even a dog lover.

Bill Bryson Notes From a Small Island
High Fidelity by Nick Hornby - cried with laughter.

Alan Carr's or Frank Skinner's autobiographies both laugh-out-loud funny too if you like that sort of thing!

Bill Bryson travel books and Notes from a big country

erminturude13 - Helen Fielding, don't forget her. Jane Austin was thought to be a comic writer in her time, certainly some of her characters are quite amusing (Mrs Bennet in P&P). Marian Keyes was mentioned too.

BTW have read all the Marian Keyes ones too. I spent 13 hours tucked up in bed one wintery weekend in November about 10 years ago just giggling away at Watermelon. Before children. Obviously.