I have just finished reading
Wilt.
It was absolutely one of the funniest book I've ever read.
This is the kind of books I really enjoy reading when I'm looking for a good laugh.
Another example is
The inimitable Jeeves I recently read.
I'm not familiar with many British authors so I'd love to get some recommendations.
If you share this feeling, do you know other books to add to this list?
You might get suggestions by posting also in
BritWit, though I expect the members watch this group too.
Message edited by its author, Jun 29, 2009, 4:50pm.
Stephen Fry has written a couple of novels that are pretty good. I'd also like to mention Christopher
Brookmyre as you specified British rather than just English. The Jack Parlabane books are cracking reads though some of the Scottish dialogue might need an interpreter. Someone I haven't tried yet but am wanting to is
Colin Bateman as he's been getting some good reports recently. Another that you might not immediately think of is
Nick Hornby.
These are great advices.
Thanks people!
YOu can always try a tag search for Humour rather than the USians humor. the tags are ket seperated just to preserve the difference between US and UK writings.
More Tom Sharpe, such as
Porterhouse Blue, would be an obvious recommendation. And have you tried Terry Pratchett's
The Colour of Magic?
Message edited by its author, Jun 30, 2009, 11:36am.
There's a huge amount. Apart from all the things mentioned above, you might be interested in Evelyn Waugh's early novels (
Decline and Fall,
Scoop, etc., up to but not including Brideshead) - the same sort of black humour as Tom Sharpe, if a bit less outrageous.
In the field of campus fiction, Malcolm Bradbury goes very well with David Lodge (and was a colleague of W.G. Sebald...).
The History Man and
Stepping Westward are the funniest. Michael Carson's Benson novels fall into this category too.
On the more Jane-Austenish gentle irony side,
Barbara Pym is excellent, as are E.F. Benson's
Mapp and Lucia novels.
Ronald Firbank is a bit like Benson, but a hundred times camper - probably too camp for most people.
The late John Mortimer's
Rumpole stories send up the English legal system with a great deal of affection.
If you want to follow the Douglas Adams direction, then Terry Pratchett and Jasper Fforde are the most obvious paths to follow.
Other Immortal Classics, which you won't necessarily find funny but many people do, include
Zuleika Dobson (still the leading undergraduate-mass-suicide-comic-novel after a hundred years),
England, their England (a very funny description of a cricket match and a lot of depressing post-WWI-angst),
Three men in a boat and
Three men on the Bummel (alternately hilarious and tediously purple),
The Pickwick Papers,
Whisky Galore,
The secret diary of Adrian Mole ...
...but why bother trying new writers when there are more than 90 books by P.G. Wodehouse? :-)
I must admit that's a good point.
But still, it's good to know there's such a vast and amusing choice.
And thanks to thorold for the mention of
Pickwick Papers. It's easilly forgotten how funny Dickens was at his best. Dombey and Son is another one that particularly hit my funny bone but you can take your pick really.
Thanks for these great advices!
One of my favourite british authors is Wiliam Boyd - and his
Stars and Bars is really hilarious.
>13
I think we'll have to do a separate thread on Victorians-who-are-still-funny, otherwise poor Elik will be altogether swamped with suggestions!
#14 I love William Boyd, have you read
Brazzaville Beach? That's my favourite of his. Wouldn't call it funny but would call it an absolutely absorbing, gripping book.
Dear Thorold,
Thanks for the consideration :)
Now I have another question:
Do you think those still-funny-Victorians will be indeed funny for readers such as myself for whom English is not a mother tongue?
I admit I never tried reading those books becase I imagined their homour and language will not be accessible enough.
I mean that in
Wilt there must have been funny things I failed to notice due to my partial familiarity with British culture, so I imagine it is even more so with Victorian-era writers?
Message edited by its author, Jul 1, 2009, 5:51am.
#17> elik82, I am not a native speaker of English, but I find them VERY funny!
Ben Elton writes som pretty funny novels - though a bit light.
Popcorn is about a reality show, and involves both a male rock star turned supermom and the heir to the british throne - prince Charles? as well as a myriad of other weird characters. He is the writer of the book/movie
Maybe Baby as well as tv shows like Mr. Bean and Blackadder.
the tags are ket seperated just to preserve the difference between US and UK writings.
Actually, that's not the reason. A humour can refer to one of the four humours in medicine (black bile, yellow bile, phlegm, and blood). The tags are kept separate in case someone has tagged a book humour to refer to the medical aspect and not the funny ha-ha aspect.
>17,18
I think it's very difficult to generalise about. If you haven't read 19th century writers (in whatever language) before, then at the beginning you'll obviously find some unfamiliar words and cultural references that trip you up, but that's a problem for native speakers too: some people find it easy to get past that hurdle and others don't. If the humour depends on very specific social or political allusions, then you might find it hard to see the jokes (e.g. Punch, and some of Trollope's novels), but most of the time Victorian humour is about much more basic things we can all laugh at, like vanity, folly, greed and social pretension (early Dickens, most of Thackeray, Surtees, etc.).
If you're not sure, Project Gutenberg is an easy way to look at a chapter or two and see how you get on before committing to a whole book.
thorold: That is a brilliant suggestion. Wish I'd thought of it!
You also have to bear in mind that a lot of Victorian English humour is based on satire (and quite a bit of the modern stuff too). Jane Austen, in particular, derives most of her humour from gently poking fun at the society she lives in. The best one of hers to start with is Northanger Abbey where the humour is a little more obvious than in many of her other books.
Cold Comfort Farm by Stella Gibbons is in a similar vein. Dickens, on the other hand, puts a lot of humour into his descriptions, as at the beginning of
Dombey and Son where he described the baby sleeping in front of the fire
'as if his constitution were analagous to that of a muffin, and it was essential to toast him brown while he was very new' There are times when you may not be sure whether a book or passage is actually supposed to be funny until you get more used to it; give it the benefit of the doubt and you might find it even funnier than it was meant to be!
Thorold's suggestion is quite brilliant of course. I wish I'd thought of it too.
> analagous to that of a muffin
There's a cultural reference that would be lost on a lot of non-British readers! :-)
Ah yes - (real) muffins (as eaten in England) and 'English' muffins (as eaten in America! It's a funny thing, language.
#24:What do you mean lost on a lot of non-British readers. It's lost on many of those as well. When I was at school in Bury (Lancashire) remember going out to the local "corner shop" and getting a tuppeny buttered muffin. And when many years later in the 1970s asked for a muffin in Tetbury (Gloucestershire) and was told they were "out of season". And for most the muffin/teacake distinction is pretty obscure although I'd be hard put to put it into words myself. Up here in Inverness (Scotland) you might as well ask for Jovian cuisine.
(back to top)
