June ClassicsCAT - Humour

Humour comes at many levels: Jane Austen won’t elicit gales of laughter but has enough witty badinage to create merriment. There are many literary classics dispensing humour. Here are some:

P.G. Wodehouse
Stella Gibbons
Jonathan Swift
Mark Twain
Lewis Carroll
Jane Austen
Evelyn Waugh
Geoffrey Chaucer
William Shakespeare
Roald Dahl
G.K. Chesterton
Alexander Dumas: The Three Musketeers
E.F. Benson: Mapp and Lucia
George Grossmith: Diary of a Nobody
Oscar Wilde: The Importance of Being Earnest
Douglas Adams: The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy
Jerome K. Jerome: Three Men in a Boat (To Say Nothing of the Dog)
James Thurber: My Life and Hard Times
Gerald Durrell: My Family and Other Animals
H.E. Bates: The Darling Buds of May
Nancy Mitford: The Pursuit of Love and Love in a Cold Climate

If you wish add your reading to the WIKI

Published in 1952 and tagged as "humor", I am going to read Bramton Wick by Elizabeth Fair.

>1 VivienneR: Ive read so much of the other authors listed,,but the only Mitford Ive read are some letter collections, would like to read Love in a cold climate. And I can use it for the Reading Thro Time quaterly Between the Wars as well. Whats not to love

someone mentioned the pursuit of love from the same author. wonder which one might like better

>2 DeltaQueen50: Good choice! I've enjoyed Elizabeth Fair's books.

>3 cindydavid4: Mitford's books are fun.

I think I'll read something by Wodehouse that I've been saving for a CAT like this.

I thoroughly recommend Cold Comfort Farm for this one - I have read it multiple times.
But I think I feel like some Wodehouse.

For fans of classic British comic novels, here is the humour thread from the sadly defunct Anglophiles group. Some of Vivienne's suggestions are on it, but there are others as well. https://www.librarything.com/topic/32809#n5093218

>4 VivienneR:, >5 JayneCM: Another Wodehouse fan.

I think a visit to Blandings would be a good idea for this one

I loved E. M. Delafield's The Diary of a Provincial Lady, and several of the other books in the "Provincial Lady" series. Also fun are the Miss Buncle books by D. E. Stevenson.

Ogden Nash's poems are always a treat.

Some possibilities for me from my TBR shelf are a volume of Ring Lardner stories or Mark Twain stories and essays. Or I might just give in and re-read Lady Susan, by far Austen's funniest work.

>5 JayneCM:, >6 pamelad:, >7 Robertgreaves: Good to see so much love for Wodehouse. Blandings stories are my favourites.

Wodehouse might well be my choice for this as well.
Must have a think though.

Joining the Wodehouse fans here. I am thinking of Jeeves and the Tie that Binds.

I've never read a Wodehouse yet so thinking here is my chance!

>1 VivienneR: That is such an excellent list! I am not really into 'humorous books' so I thought I wouldn't have anything on my tbr for this month, but reading your post it turns out that I have several choices.

This is one of my favourite genres, so I've checked my library and come up with some more suggestions:
Barbara Pym
Margery Sharp
Rose Macaulay
Henry Green
William Gerhardie's The Polyglots
Kyril Bonfiglioli's The Mortdecai Trilogy
Joseph Heller's Catch 22
Elizabeth Gaskell's Cranford
Lawrence Durrell's Esprit de Corps
Stephen Potter's One-Upmanship
C Northcote Parkinson's Parkinson's Law

There are more, but I will stop now.

I've heard good things about James Thurber's My Life and Hard Times...may have to find a copy for this challenge!

>6 pamelad: Oh I wish that thread wasn't dormant, so many of my fav funny books and authors there !

shel silverstein was a fav poet in college. Not a big of a fan of his Giving Tree, but his poems were laugh out loud funny Where the Sidewalk Ends: Poems and Drawings,
A Light in the Attic: Poems and Drawings

speaking of kids humor, the phantom tollbooth is a perfect book for reading together. Hilarious on so many levels

>16 cindydavid4:. You can still look at a thread even if it is dormant

>17 cindydavid4: I loved The Phantom Tollbooth, it's good for kids and adults!

Hey! Would I Didn't Come Here to Argue by Peg Bracken qualify?

I've just finished A Handful of Dust by Evelyn Waugh.

I would like to read The Pursuit of Love by Nancy Mitford.

I read Jeeves and the Tie That Binds which was another hilarious romp with Jeeves and Bertie.

I read Sheep for Beginners: A dip into the world of wool by John K.V. Eunson This book was just outrageously funny! Took less than 1 hour to read. Highly recommended! 63 pages 5 stars

Not going to put this in the Wiki...I don't think it's a classic!

I finished Service with a Smile. Not a laugh out loud funny, but amusing enough.

July thread is up: https://www.librarything.com/topic/351567

I read one of my favourites by P.G. Wodehouse: Something Fresh.

My embarrassing entry is The Unicorn by James Thurber. It is a short story of 2 pages----June is getting away from me and this is probably all I can complete!

I have completed my read of Bramton Wick by Elizabeth Fair, and while not written strictly as humor, there were many amusing incidents throughout the book and I really enjoyed the light, witty story.

Getting ready for Jane Austen July, I listened to Lady Susan. An epistolary novel, it has some of the funniest lines in all of Austen, including this line in a letter from Lady Susan to Mrs Johnson:
"My dear Alicia, of what a mistake were you guilty in marrying a man of his age!--just old enough to be formal, ungovernable & to have the Gout--too old to be agreeable, & too young to die."

>30 kac522: If you haven't seen the Whit Stillman adaptation (confusingly called Love and Friendship), I highly recommend it!

>31 christina_reads: Many times! It's the best.

I finished The Girls (1921) by Edna Ferber. It's a charming, funny novel, and yet doesn't ignore the seriousness of its setting: Chicago, 1916, with a Great War hovering in the background. It's the story of 3 generations of "spinsters": Aunt Charlotte, in her 70's; her niece Lotte, in her early 30's; and Lotte's niece, Charley, about to turn 19. Their inter-weaving stories of joy and struggle and attempting to break with convention to be their own person have a light touch, but always giving us something more to think about. I especially loved all the descriptions of early Chicago, through a flashback of Aunt Charlotte's early years during the Civil War.

Ferber was known for her light-hearted novels (So Big, Giant) and her plays (ShowBoat). The edition I read of The Girls is a 2023 re-print by Belt Publishing: https://beltpublishing.com , a Midwest publisher, and this book is a recent selection in their "Revivals" series.

I think anyone can enjoy this story of 3 independent women, but it will be especially meaningful for those who love Chicago and its history.

COMPLETED Pigs Have Wings by P. G. Wodehouse

Sorry about my very late update. Like many others on this thread, I went with Wodehouse and finished Thank You, Jeeves, which was a lot of fun.