My Big Funny Summer Reading List

[David Morris]

http://www.goodreads.com/book/show/258096.The_Child_Garden

In a semi-tropical London, surrounded by paddy-fields, the people feed off
the sun, like plants, the young are raised in Child Gardens and educated by
viruses, And the Consensus oversees the country, 'treating' non-conformism.
Information, culture, law and politics are biological functions. But Milena
is different: she is resistant to viruses and an incredible musician, one
of the most extraordinary women of her age. This is her story and that of
her friends, like Lucy the immortal tumour and Joseph the Postman whose
mind is an information storehouse for others, and Rolfa, genetically
engineered as a Polar Bear, whose beautiful singing voice first awakens
Milena to the power of
music.(less)<http://www.goodreads.com/book/show/258096.The_Child_Garden#>

On Sunday, June 2, 2013, wrote:

> Been dealing with some emotionally rough stuff lately, and need some
> diversion. I can handle reading about Nazis, torture, toxic waste, and
> Man's inhumanity to Man during the days, but at night I need some reading
> matter that won't keep me lying awake in agony until dawn. Only it's damn
> hard to find books that are both intelligent and genuinely funny. There's
> plenty of humor in Pynchon, or in books like Catch-22, say, but it's
> accompanied by stuff that's too dark for me in my present fragile-minded
> state. I can think of plenty of funny movies and TV shows (Arrested
> Development, Season 4, being the latest). And years later, I still laugh at
> the Mad Magazine offerings I loved as a kid - heavy on parody and cranky
> sarcasm. But it's really hard to think of many laugh-out-loud books.
> Offhand, I'm thinking David Lodge (Nice Work, Small World, etc.); Alison
> Lurie (Imaginary Friends. Probably should read more of her); Kingsley
> Amis's Lucky Jim; No Name, by Wilkie Collins. I'm sure we can all recommend
> lots of great books, but how many at the top of our lists are genuinely
> funny, with no depressing elements [NOT Pale Fire, for example]. Tangent to
> the is-or-isn't-literature-morally-edifying conversation, is there
> something about humor (wordplay, parody, genuinely funny insights about
> character) that's too lowbrow for high-minded literary types to bother with?
>
> So, any recommendations of really funny books that aren't Shakespearean
> comedies of error (sorry), and that don't remind one even obliquely of
> genocide or cruelty to animals or toxic waste?
>
> Laura
>
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