I've just finished a book I found at the bottom of a heap in a W.H. Smith sale box. It's 'Tales from the Country' by Brian Viner, a columnist in 'The Independent' newspaper, and it's the first book in a long while that has had me laughing out loud. It's the story of how he and his family moved to Herefordshire from London, and I recommend it both as a highly amusing series of anecdotes, and an insight into life in the English countryside. I've just discovered he's written another - 'The Pheasant's Revolt' and I look forward to that immensely.

Bill Bryson, Dave Barry and Erma Bombeck come to mind. I read a lot of Roald Dahl books to my son when he was little, and some of his books are funny, as well.

2 Books from years ago come to mind:
The Mouse That Roared
Cheaper By The Dozen

Jonathan Stroud books are sometimes really funny. For older books there's The Night the Bed Fell on Father, and Trishdom Shandy.

I remember donkeys years ago reading the late David Nivens two auto-biographies The Moon's a Balloon and Bring On the Empty Horses, they were hilarious !

hi there
Peter Pook was my teacher at school - real name john miller (google him) and he also has a peter pook site where you can buy his books again!

unfortunately i heard he died in 1978

he is sadly missed by hundreds of kids xx

Catch-22 by Joseph Heller

I actually laughed out loud many times while reading it.

And that's unusual for me.

The Porridge King by RD Winfrey
Hilarious, and exceptionally strange, especially if you like a more Pythonsque type of humor.

http://www.smashwords.com/books/view/28821

Probably the one I laughed the most at was "The Good Ship Venus", by John Winton.......he "predicted" a mixed-sex crew for a warship years before it happened in reality.
"Witches Abroad" and "Lords and Ladies" by Terry Pratchet also rate high.

Funniest ever : Bororo - By Lenos Christides, he is a greek author. Unfortunately, none of you probably knows of it! (very funny, but I read it in greek ages ago!)

Stephen Leacock-"Sunshine Sketches of a Little Town"

A very funny literature situation is when Thor, the God of Thunder, walks among us again, has to book a flight on an airline and his father Odin has been admitted to a nursing home. From The Hollistic Detective Agency installment, "The Long Dark Tea-Time of the Soul", by the Hitchhiker's Douglas Adams. I was so impressed with the inane situations, I decided not to 'not write' this bit.

I cannot choose one book, but Zuleika Dobson, by Max Beerbohm, may be my favourite satirical novel. The illustrated version is wonderful. This is one funny story and also very, very strange.

Oh yes!! You are so right It was so very good, great fun. I shall read it again...

I enjoy Kinky Friedman's books. They always make me laugh.

If you're talking about "excerpts" that are included in books, then I have to say Dave Barry is one of the funniest guys on the planet. Back in the days when hubby and I used to travel to and from work together, I'd have the newspaper and would "try" to read the Dave Barry article to him. I don't think I ever made it 100% of the way through one without breaking into tears of laughter. As for the hubby, he just shook his head and wondered what I found so funny (since I never did read the final bits out loud). It's a miracle he's put up with me for 36 years lol.

I have a long list of actual novels I've loved for the humourous bits. Will come back when I've finished compiling it (wouldn't want to miss a particular "treasure" lol)

While, like many others, I would probably go for Catch-22, I have to give an honorable mention to a few others - Scoop by Evelyn Waugh, Spares by Michael Marshall Smith and several of Carl Hiaasen's novels.

Confederacy of Dunces by John Kennedy Toole is the greatest laugh-out loud novels I've ever read. It's about the misadventures of a quirky hot dog vendor with delusions of grandeur set in New Orleans in the early Sixties.

Role Models a snarky book of essays by the notorious indie film director John Waters. I was surprised at Water's droll humor and his talents as an essayist. One of the essays is a wry "nudge & wink" profile on the private life of singer Johnny Mathis, in the clever observational style of Oscar Wilde.

The Dortmunder novels are a funny series of 14 comic/crime novels written by mystery writer Donald Westlake between 1970 & 2009. In those novels, ex-con John Dormunder leads a gang of inept crooks who are always planning the perfect heist; but inevitably, everything that can possibly go wrong happens, despite all of their well laid plans.

David Sedaris is a scream & all of his collections of essays are hilarious. His essay on being a Christmas elf at Macy's Department Store was one of the funniest comic essays I've ever read.

The chapter about Major Major jumping out of the window of his office to avoid appointments was hilarious.

Jake, have you read Dave Barry's novels? Quite a lot of fun.

Looking forward to your list Jakeroo!

Ren: Good heavens. I seem to have forgotten this thread for several months - along with the list lol.

Agony: I've read a few. But I think the last one I picked up was "Dave Barry Turns 40" (or similar title), so it's been a number of years! I'll have to go online and see if they have more recent ones at the public library.

Has anyone here read anything by Spider Robinson? He's known as a serious sci-fi writer (with Hugo and Nebula Awards to his credit), but he also wrote some "light-hearted" and empathetic short stories that were compiled into what is now known as the "Callahan" series. If you're one of those folks who adore puns, along with very off-beat story lines, you might enjoy them (especially the first 3 or 4).

Speaking of bad puns, I think I also own every one of Robert Asprin's "MythAdventure" series (except the ones he wrote with Jody Lynn Ney). I remember them as being quite amusing. I'm sure I'd still find them funny (I may be getting shorter with age, but my warped sense of humour hasn't dimished over time lol)

If you hate puns, but love cats, then any of Deric Longden's books should make you laugh in many parts. He's written about 5 or so cat-related books, but I highly recommend "Enough to Make a Cat Laugh" (1997). As far as I know, it's also the only one of his books that you can get "on tape" (in his own voice, which adds alot to the various characters). I had it playing (while I was alone) in the car one summer (windows were rolled down and I was giggling out loud) and the people at the stop light were giving me VERY strange looks lol.

Snowman: I heartily agree with "Scoop" as a choice. I think many folks would be amazed that the humour/satire in a book written in 1938 still stands up today (as with many of the essays/pieces of work from Stephen Leacock - nice surprise to see his name mentioned up there george : )

A Confederacy of Dunces(still not 100% why..), hitchhikers series, david sedaris(in general, "me talk pretty one day" specifically), Ambrose Bierce's "The Devils Dictionary, ..., I know there's another one, it's not coming to me though. I would put a few George Carlin collections, but they're mostly re-hashes of his stand-up, which is infinitely better.

I think one of the funniest authors out there is Peter Lefcourt. I started with The Dreyfus Affair (a major league baseball player falls in love with his teammate), then The Deal (a great Hollywood send-up), Di and I (a completely fictional book about Princess Di falling in love with an American) and there are at least 4 others that I can't remember right now. I highly recommend looking up this guy. Very funny in a very skewed way.

I am having great fun with "Lamb" by Christopher Moore, the story of Jesus in the years we haven't read about, between the ages of about 6 and 30. It is a long time since I laughed out loud on the train. Such a clever book!