# What is the Funniest Book You Have Read?



## VirginiaHuguenot (Dec 20, 2008)

In terms of good, clean, wholesome humor, what is the funniest book you have read?


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## Backwoods Presbyterian (Dec 20, 2008)

My entire Calvin and Hobbes collection.


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## Christusregnat (Dec 20, 2008)

VirginiaHuguenot said:


> In terms of good, clean, wholesome humor, what is the funniest book you have read?



Supergeddon.


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## toddpedlar (Dec 20, 2008)

Backwoods Presbyterian said:


> My entire Calvin and Hobbes collection.



I was going to say that...


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## jawyman (Dec 20, 2008)

Forest Gump.


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## toddpedlar (Dec 20, 2008)

Btw, I love the fact that Westminster Philly's Bookstore sells the complete Calvin and Hobbes!


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## Backwoods Presbyterian (Dec 20, 2008)

toddpedlar said:


> Btw, I love the fact that Westminster Philly's Bookstore sells the complete Calvin and Hobbes!



I do not know what is funnier that they sell that or that they sell zero books by Gordon Clark...


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## VirginiaHuguenot (Dec 20, 2008)

Interesting choices so far, thanks everyone! _Calvin and Hobbes_ and _The Far Side_ have always kept me in stitches. 

I think my top 2 funniest books are P.G. Wodehouse _The Crime Wave at Blandings_ and James Herriot, _All Creatures Great and Small_.


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## Zeno333 (Dec 20, 2008)

The entire Peanuts cartoon collection by Schultz is being released 2 times a year over many years in a multi-volume set...(I have all that so far have come out.)
If one sits back and and opens oneself to their full potential, they are obsoletely hilarious.


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## JBaldwin (Dec 20, 2008)

While I'm sure there are other books that have made me laugh more, the first one that comes to mind is Homer Price by Robert McCloskey. I first read the book when I was 11 years old, and I've read it many times since. Just thinking about some of the stories in that book brings a smile to my face.

-----Added 12/20/2008 at 01:56:45 EST-----

Just thought of another one, the compilation of Jean Shepherd's stories, A Christmas Story (Yes, it was a book before it was a film).


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## TimV (Dec 20, 2008)

Robert E. Howard the Sword and Sorcery fantasy writer wrote a book about a guy named Breckenridge Elkins "A Gent from Bear Creek" that is crazy funny.


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## Nate (Dec 20, 2008)

VirginiaHuguenot said:


> James Herriot, _All Creatures Great and Small_.



Yes, all of Dr. Herriot's books are great.
I always laugh out loud when I read anything by Patrick F. McManus.


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## Logopneumatika (Dec 20, 2008)

I doubt David Sedaris qualifies as "good, clean, wholesome humor," but man he's funny.


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## py3ak (Dec 20, 2008)

Laurence Sterne, _The Life and Opinions of Tristram Shandy, Gentleman_. It has a certain amount of earthiness in it, but it is unsurpassedly comic.


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## staythecourse (Dec 20, 2008)

Please read until you stop. This is a list of quotes from Dave Barry's Travel guide book

# This book is dedicated to Wilbur and Orville Wright, without whom air sickness would still be just a dream.
# A hundred years ago, it could take you the better part of a year to get from New York to California; whereas today, because of equipment problems at O’Hare, you can't get there at all.
# No matter what destination these (travel) books are talking about, they’ll tell you it’s wonderful: “Even the most demanding traveler is bound to feel a warm glow after only a few days in Chernobyl ...
# The major advantage of domestic travel is that, with a few exceptions such as Miami, most domestic locations are conveniently situated right here in the United States.
# The major problem here, as I mentioned in the Introduction, is that foreign destinations tend to contain enormous quantities of foreigners (in the form of Japanese tourists).
# You should definitely have a travel agent. Why go through all the hassle of dealing with airlines, hotels, and rental-car agencies yourself, only to see the arrangements get all screwed up, when with just a single phone call you can have a trained professional screw them up for you?
# The type of luggage you carry says a lot about you. For example, if you're carrying somebody else’s luggage, it says you're a thief.
# Airline food is not intended for human consumption. It’s intended as a form of in-flight entertainment, wherein the object is to guess what it is, starting with broad categories such as “mineral” and “linoleum.”
# If the security personnel do their job properly, they just might cause you to miss your plane, thereby possibly saving your life.
# Once we were driving across the country and we got to South Dakota, a dirt-intensive state so sparsely populated that merely by entering it you automatically become a member of the legislature.
# As you parents know, a small child can go for weeks without going to the bathroom at home, but once you hit the road, it becomes pretty much a full-time occupation.
# We have taken Robert’s friends with us on numerous trips, and we have noted a phenomenon familiar to all parents, namely that you would have less conflict if you put the entire North and South Korean arms forces in your backseat then you get with just two children.
# You can't have a bad time at Disney World. It’s not allowed. They have hidden electronic surveillance cameras everywhere, and if they catch you failing to laugh with childlike wonder, they lock you inside a costume representing a beloved Disney character such as Goofy and make you walk about in the Florida heat getting grabbed and leaped on by violently excited children until you have learned your lesson.
# The best time to go (to Disney World), if you want to avoid huge crowds, is 1962.
# Epcot Center also features pavilions built by various foreign nations, where you can experience an extremely realistic simulation of what life in these nations would be like if they consisted almost entirely of restaurants and souvenir stores.
# What gets me is, I waited in line for an hour to do this (Go on a ride called The Body at the Epcot Center). I could have experienced essentially the same level of enjoyment merely by sticking my finger down my throat.
# Traveling with teenagers is somewhat more difficult than traveling with members of the actual human race.
# This (America) is a land of rich diversity, from the towering skyscrapers of Manhatan all the way to the towering mounds of garbage piled up next to the towering skyscrapers of Manhattan.
# Alaska also contains large quantities of nature in the form of tundra (“tundra” is the Eskimo work for “nothing”).
# The official State Motto of Alaska is “Brrrrrrr!”
# Each year millions of skiers come to experience the state’s superb emergency medical facilities!
# Although small in size, Delaware has had a major impact on the nation’s destiny: Thomas Jefferson, Abraham Lincoln, Franklin Roosevelt, and John F. Kennedy all traveled through or flew over Delaware at some time or another, as far as we know.
# The state capital is Epcot Center. The largest city is Miami (official tourism slogan: “Maybe You Won't Get Shot”), a richly diverse cosmopolitan metropolis where people from many different cultures live and work together while continuing to observe the traffic laws of their individual countries of origin.
# Geologically, the Hawaiian island chain was formed when volcanoes on the floor of the Pacific Ocean spewed out molten lava, which eventually cooled off and formed large resort hotel complexes.
# We eat a lot on long trips because we feel our bodies are less likely to become bored if they can pass the time converting food into fat.
# Kansans are still proud of their state’s rough-and-tumble tradition, and will often greet a stranger by warmly breaking a chair over his head.
# Massachusetts (also an Indian word, meaning “place that is hard to spell”) is one of the most historic states in the union.
# Massachusetts is also the site of the nation’s first college, Harvard, which for more than three centuries has produced graduates who, no matter what their philosophical differences, are all dedicated to the lofty goal of subtly letting you know that they went to Harvard.
# Michigan is best known for being the place where, in 1896, Henry Ford built the first commercially successfully automobile, using parts manufactured by the Toyota Corporation.
# Nebraska was not always a bed of roses. When the first settlers arrived, they found a harsh, unforgiving place, a vast, treeless expanse of barren, drought-parched soil. And so, summoning up the dynamic pioneer spirit of hope and steely determination, they left.
# There are no laws at all in Nevada. Even murder is legal, but it rarely happens, because people get distracted. A guy will be on his way to kill somebody, and he’ll pass a slot machine, and he’ll figure, what the heck, so he’ll put in a quarter, and pretty soon he’s broke and has to pawn his gun to get more quarters.
# Nevada has a very dynamic economy, with gambling being the number-one industry, followed closely by blood donorship.
# Elvis Presley, whose Memphis home, Graceland, draws millions of visitors to marvel at The King’s awesome legacy in the field of interior decoration, including a large room with a color scheme based entirely on digestive enzymes.
# Washington is nicknamed “The Evergreen State” because it sounds better than “The Incessant Nagging Drizzle State.”
# Mount Rainier, an extraordinary beautiful volcanic peak some fifty miles from the city, blew up in 1963, but nobody in Seattle is aware of this yet because the weather has been pretty cloudy.
# There are also a number of humans living up there (Canada), and in many ways they have a lifestyle quite similar to ours, including such traditional American activities as driving Japanese cars.
# These Indians built numerous ruins that can still be seen today, as well as a number of major pyramids, which were made by lifting enormous stones and which served as monuments to Xinzthiznclxn, the God of Hernias.
# There was finally a revolution, and today Mexico is a modern happy nation of 90 million people, 87 million of whom currently reside in Los Angeles.
# Although from the outer space Europe appears to be shaped like a large ketchup stain, it actually consists of many small separate nations, each with a proud and ancient tradition of hating all the other ones.
# The Greeks, aided by a warm climate, had invented geometry, and they used this advanced knowledge to conquer the surrounding cultures by piercing them with the ends of isosceles triangles.
# The Romans spent the next 200 years using their great engineering skill to construct ruins all over Europe.
# The basic Roman ruin design is a pile of rocks with a little plaque saying “Roman Ruins” and a group of tourists frowning at it and wishing they were back at the hotel bar.
# Many travel experts recommend that you take a piece of chalk and place a distinctive mark on each cathedral you visit, because sometimes the tour guides, as a prank, will take a group to the same one five or six times in a single afternoon.
# There is really nothing at all primitive about European medical care except that in some countries they practice it in foreign languages, meaning you run the risk of entering the hospital complaining of an inflamed appendix and coming out as a member of a completely different gender.
# European toilet paper is made from the same material that Americans use for roofing, which is why Europeans tend to remain standing throughout soccer matches.
# The first rule of travel finance is that no matter what is going on elsewhere in the world, the dollar is always getting weaker where you are. By the time you’ve spent a couple of days in a foreign country, the natives will be blowing their noses on the dollar.
# England is a very popular foreign country to visit because the people there speak some English.
# England manufactures most of the world's airline food, as well as all the food you ever ate in your junior-high-school cafeteria.
# Finland has long been a popular destination with travelers who enjoy the feeling of knowing that if their car breaks down, they could be eaten by wolves.
# Finland is also the home of the sauna, which is a wooden box in which you subject your body to extreme heat, which causes you to become very relaxed, unless of course the door gets stuck, in which case it causes you to become lasagna.
# Another well-known Paris landmark is the Arc de Triomphe, a moving monument to the many brave men and women who have died trying to visit it, which we do not recommend because it’s located in the middle of La Place de la Traffic coming from All Directions at 114 Miles Per Hour.
# You should definitely visit the Louvre, a world-famous art museum where you can view, at close range, the backs of thousands of other tourists trying to see the Mona Lisa.
# They have wonderful beer in Germany, and they serve it in containers so large that, in other nations, they would be used as shelters for the homeless.
# Democracy, which is made up of two Greek words, “demo,” meaning “people,” and “cracy,” meaning “wearing stupid hats.”
# The Greeks also gave us the Pythagorean theorem, although after we graduated from high school we gave it back.
# This nation (Italy) is so friendly that the leading cause of injury is getting passionately embraced by strangers.
# Elsewhere in Italy is the lovely city of Venice, which each year attracts millions of visitors despite the fact that it is basically an enormous open sewer.
# Many times the other nations didn’t even mean to invade Poland; one night they’d simply forget to set the parking brakes on their tanks, and they’d wake up the next morning to discover that, whoosh, they had conquered Poland.
# It always rains on tents. Rainstorms will travel thousands of miles against the prevailing winds for the opportunity to rain on a tent.
# I'm recommending a major recreational vehicle, the kind that has a VCR-equipped recreation room and consumes the annual energy output of Syria merely to operate the windshield wipers.
# Remember the Old Traveler’s Saying: “You may lose your money and your health and your sanity and some important organs, but they can't take away your travel memories unless they hit you hard on the head.”


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## Honor (Dec 20, 2008)

not THE funniest but the funniest book isn't clean or wholesome BY FAR... second place though is
My Life as a Smashed Up Burrito with extra Hot Sauce by Bill Myers


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## Carolyn (Dec 20, 2008)

"My Family and Other Animals" by Gerald Durrell. I read it once a year in the winter time. I still laugh out loud in some parts.

I also enjoyed the Alexander McCall Smith 44 Scotland St. series.


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## Theognome (Dec 20, 2008)

Origin Of Species by Charles Darwin.


Theognome


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## Scott1 (Dec 20, 2008)

Very funny, especially in the historical introduction, mixed in with serious discussion of issues, _The Way Things Ought to Be_ by RH Limbaugh


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## caddy (Dec 20, 2008)

A Confederacy of Dunces by John Kennedy Toole


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## Sonoftheday (Dec 20, 2008)

Its been a while since I've read any of them so I am unsure as to exactly how clean and wholesome they are, but the Discworld novels by Terry Pratchett were always hilarious. They are at least mostly clean but perhaps have some objectionable things in them.

-----Added 12/20/2008 at 07:15:25 EST-----

I was also a fan of the Hitchhikers Guide to the Galaxy, that is until I found out that Douglas Adams was an atheist. His comments about religion no longer seemed lighthearted and took on a hateful feeling to me after I read about his blatant antitheism.


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## Ex Nihilo (Dec 20, 2008)

_Wuthering Heights_


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## Staphlobob (Dec 20, 2008)

caddy said:


> A Confederacy of Dunces by John Kennedy Toole



That was a good one. 

I'd put it up there with Dickens' _"The Pickwick Papers." _


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## VictorBravo (Dec 20, 2008)

TimV said:


> Robert E. Howard the Sword and Sorcery fantasy writer wrote a book about a guy named Breckenridge Elkins "A Gent from Bear Creek" that is crazy funny.



I was going to say early Dave Berry until I saw this one. I had forgotten all about it. 

Another one, I forget the author but he was local to Idaho: "A fine and pleasant misery." It was about camping. His description of campfires had me in tears.


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## Ex Nihilo (Dec 20, 2008)

staythecourse said:


> # Massachusetts is also the site of the nation’s first college, Harvard, which for more than three centuries has produced graduates who, no matter what their philosophical differences, are all dedicated to the lofty goal of subtly letting you know that they went to Harvard.


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## staythecourse (Dec 20, 2008)

I'm not asking where you went to school. Ain't gonna do it...


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## InevitablyReformed (Dec 20, 2008)

I haven't read it in awhile, but being a military man--Catch 22. Don't remember if there were many innappropriate parts but I sure remember laughing a lot.


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## DMcFadden (Dec 21, 2008)

Yes, there were inappropriate parts and yes it is absolutely hilarious in a post-modern existential way (i.e., Catch 22).

My all time favorite (as a man who had a pregnant wife on five different occasions) was Dave Berry's book _Babies and Other Hazards of Sex_. More true to life you cannot get.


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## jwithnell (Dec 21, 2008)

Y'all have mentioned many of my favorites. Does anyone else remember Lewis Grizzard, a columnist with the Atlanta Constitution and publisher of several books. He had a hard life, but was a talented and funny writer.


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## Timothy William (Dec 21, 2008)

The various works of fiction by Adrian Plass are always amusing.



Ex Nihilo said:


> _Wuthering Heights_


I have a copy on my bookshelf, of which I have managed to read about 20 pages. Perhaps there is a subtle humour there that I'm missing.


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## Ex Nihilo (Dec 21, 2008)

Timothy William said:


> The various works of fiction by Adrian Plass are always amusing.
> 
> 
> 
> ...



It's unintentional.


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## Mindaboo (Dec 21, 2008)

The Great Turkey Walk by Kathleen Karr. My children and I read this book together and we laughed until were crying.


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## toddpedlar (Dec 21, 2008)

victorbravo said:


> TimV said:
> 
> 
> > Robert E. Howard the Sword and Sorcery fantasy writer wrote a book about a guy named Breckenridge Elkins "A Gent from Bear Creek" that is crazy funny.
> ...



Sounds like Patrick McManus...?


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## LockTheDeadbolt (Dec 21, 2008)

_Catch-22_ by Joseph Heller or _The Radical Reformission_ by Mark Driscoll.

In a different vein of humor, anything an atheist writes about objective morality (i.e. Hitchens, Dawkins, Harris, et al) is pretty hil-stinkin-larious to me...


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## ReformedWretch (Dec 21, 2008)

Ann Coulter books always make me laugh (at those she writes about, as I personally like Ann)


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## wfl3 (Dec 21, 2008)

I remember reading Catch-22 as a teenager and absolutely crying. So, I picked it up within the last few years and was stunned how bad it was - I stopped reading it pretty quickly!

William


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## KMK (Dec 21, 2008)

I don't remember anything unwholesome, but Woody Allen's "Getting Even" is an hilarious complilation of short stories. Especially funny is a story about Dracula showing up early for a dinner party during a solar eclipse!


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## christianyouth (Dec 21, 2008)

Amazon.com: My Life and Hard Times (Perennial Classics): James Thurber: Books

This book is great! James Thurber, most popular for _The Secret Life of Walter Mitty _and the short story that is featured in a lot of literature text books,_ The Catbird Seat_, was said to be a superior humor writer than even Mark Twain by none other than E.B. White.


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## VictorBravo (Dec 21, 2008)

toddpedlar said:


> victorbravo said:
> 
> 
> > TimV said:
> ...



Yup! That's him.


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## Scynne (Dec 22, 2008)

I don't read much (read: 'any') humour, so I'm going to have to all lame-like and say "Pebble in the Sky" by Isaac Asimov...


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## jaybird0827 (Dec 22, 2008)

Dave Barry's Book of Bad Songs.


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## py3ak (Dec 22, 2008)

An honorable mention should also go to Mark Twain's _McWilliams_ stories.


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## ColdSilverMoon (Dec 22, 2008)

DMcFadden said:


> Yes, there were inappropriate parts and yes it is absolutely hilarious in a post-modern existential way (i.e., Catch 22).
> 
> My all time favorite (as a man who had a pregnant wife on five different occasions) was Dave Berry's book _Babies and Other Hazards of Sex_. More true to life you cannot get.



_Catch-22_ is the only book I laughed out loud multiple times while reading. For anyone remotely familiar with the military it is truly hilarious - the author's 1960 satire of the military is just as applicable today as it was then. It's not anti-military per se, but does illustrate the absurdity in its mentality at times.


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## davidsuggs (Dec 26, 2008)

*Perhaps rather cynical, but...*

InnovateChurch: 8 Innovative Ways to Lead and Grow the Church by Jonathan Falwell


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## PresbyDane (Dec 26, 2008)

I am gonna go with Calvin and Hobbes as well.


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## Kevin (Dec 26, 2008)

Southern Ladies & Gentlemen, By Florence King


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## shackleton (Dec 26, 2008)

Calvin and Hodges and Far Side, if those count.


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## KMK (Dec 27, 2008)

KMK said:


> I don't remember anything unwholesome, but Woody Allen's "Getting Even" is an hilarious complilation of short stories. Especially funny is a story about Dracula showing up early for a dinner party during a solar eclipse!



I found this here: Humorous Quotes from Getting Even @ WorkingHumor.com

They are quotes from Woody Allen's "Getting Even"



> # It is no secret that organized crime in America takes in over forty billion dollars a year. This is quite a profitable sum, especially when one considers that the Mafia spends very little for office supplies.
> # The Cosa Nostra is structured like any any government or large corporation - or group of gangsters for that matter.
> # Death, incidentally, is one of the worst things that can happen to a Cosa Nostra member, and many prefer simply to pay a fine.
> # Can we actually "know" the universe? My God, it's hard enough finding your way around in Chinatown.
> ...


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## Matthias (Dec 27, 2008)

Not the funniest, but I found a ton of humour in Luthers Bondage of the Will.


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