My Big Funny Summer Reading List

[Bekah]

I'm not a huge fan of Frayn but I've enjoyed what I've read.  Spies wasn't humorous (WWII childhood memories).  but Headlong (missing art work by  Brueghel) forgery) and Skios (academic identity comedy on a Greek island)  were farcical satires.  

Bekah



On Jun 3, 2013, at 3:51 AM, Paul Cray <pmcray at gmail.com> wrote:

> Michael Frayn's novel of 1960s Fleet Street
> 
> http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Towards_the_End_of_the_Morning
> 
> It made me laugh out loud on the bus. In the US, it was published
> under the title "Against Entropy". Make of that what you will.
> 
> There's quite a lot of Frayn and quite a lot of it is funny. He
> reminds me a lot of David Lodge. I very much enjoyed "Headlong", a
> farce about art and money, and am looking forward to "Skios", his most
> recent novel, a farce about mistaken identity and the academic
> conference circuit. "Sweet Dreams" is superb and was surely an
> influence on Douglas Adams, It is set in a very British and middle
> class Heaven. It takes a couple of days for the paters to arrive.
> Well, Heaven is quite a long way away...
> 
> Paul
> 
> On 3 June 2013 11:27, Laura Kelber <kelber at mindspring.com> wrote:
>> Thanks for the list, everyone. I knew i could count on you. I'm going to
>> paste all the suggestions into a master list for future reference.  Going to
>> start with Huxley's ... Dies the Swan, since I found it in my house.
>> 
>> Laura
>> 
>> On Jun 3, 2013, at 1:17 AM, jochen stremmel <jstremmel at gmail.com> wrote:
>> 
>> The Hoke Moseley books of Charles Willeford come to mind, beginning with
>> Miami Blues after which you know if they are right for you. And some crime
>> novels of Donald E. Westlake, Two Much for example. And I think, Pnin is a
>> funny book
>> 
>> 
>> 2013/6/2 <kelber at mindspring.com>
>>> 
>>> 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
>> 
>>