The Guardian today has published a paean to Jerome K. Jerome's "Three Men in a Boat" as part of it's 100 Best Books series and rightly in my view describes it as a comic gem. For many years it is also a book I would have automatically cited as the funniest I had read, though probably not with absolute consistency - off the top of my head I can already think of two others which might also have jumped to the top depending on my humour when asked; Sellar and Yeatman's "1066 And All That" and Tom Sharpe's "The Throwback", both of which had me in painful stitches at times when I first (and even subsequently) read them. What all three share in common is that I am almost afraid to read them now in case I find that so-called maturity and life in general has soured me to their delights.



However for the purpose of proposing the enquiry I'll stick with the Guardian's assessment and nominate the 1889 sojourn up the Thames as top of my own list of books that almost had me hospitalised from laughing so much when first I consumed them. Any you would care to nominate to join it?

Angela's Ashes by Frank McCourt is mine. If ever a book has induced me to laughter and tears of sadness at the same time it is that one. And the Power of One by Bryce Courtenay for the same reasons.

Two by Louis de Bernieres, Captain Corelli's Mandolin and Bird's Without Wings. Possibly because I can understand the Greek sense of the ridiculous but I found them both hilarious none the less.

Someone recently recommended Gerald Durrell's The Corfu Trilogy as being very funny, but I didn't like it at all. I found it to be full of over blown stereotypes, both English and Greek, which left me more annoyed than amused.

"Cold Comfort Farm" by Stella Gibbons.

"There'll be no butter in hell!"

“Surely she had endured enough for one evening without having to listen to intelligent conversation?”

“By the way, I adore my bedroom, but do you think I could have the curtains washed? I believe they are red; and I should so like to make sure.'
Judith had sunk into a reverie.
'Curtains?' she asked, vacantly, lifting her magnificent head. 'Child, child, it is many years since such trifles broke across the web of my solitude'.”

“The audience had run to beards and magenta shirts and original ways of arranging its neckwear; and not content with the ravages produced in its over-excitable nervous system by the remorseless workings of its critical intelligence, it had sat through a film of Japanese life called 'Yes,' made by a Norwegian film company in 1915 with Japanese actors, which lasted an hour and three-quarters and contained twelve close-ups of water-lilies lying perfectly still on a scummy pond and four suicides, all done extremely slowly.”

This one, which I borrowed from the library on Friday.
Never dull, always entertaining and with some genuine laugh out loud moments.

Temperance wrote:

"Cold Comfort Farm" by Stella Gibbons.

"There'll be no butter in hell!"

“Surely she had endured enough for one evening without having to listen to intelligent conversation?”

“By the way, I adore my bedroom, but do you think I could have the curtains washed? I believe they are red; and I should so like to make sure.'
Judith had sunk into a reverie.
'Curtains?' she asked, vacantly, lifting her magnificent head. 'Child, child, it is many years since such trifles broke across the web of my solitude'.”

“The audience had run to beards and magenta shirts and original ways of arranging its neckwear; and not content with the ravages produced in its over-excitable nervous system by the remorseless workings of its critical intelligence, it had sat through a film of Japanese life called 'Yes,' made by a Norwegian film company in 1915 with Japanese actors, which lasted an hour and three-quarters and contained twelve close-ups of water-lilies lying perfectly still on a scummy pond and four suicides, all done extremely slowly.”

Isn't the last quote from "Conference At Cold Comfort Farm"  rather than the original?

My vote would go to this one :-
https://www.goodreads.com/work/quotes/865289-the-cynic-s-word-book

Tom Sharpes' "The Throwback" is a classic.

How about which book that isn't attempting to be funny most amused you as a sub-category? I suggest 

https://sites.google.com/site/mysticismofthegreatpyramid/home/the-great-pyramid-decoded

The circularity of the logic particularly amused me - a measurement is so many "sacred cubits", thus proving that the measurement "sacred cubit" was actually used and was different from the Royal cubit (he chops and changes between cubits apparently as and when it suits him.

Unintentionally hilarious (in a gallows humour sort of way) ...

Protect and Survive



Still, it was probably an improvement on an earlier version from the 1960s which, if I remember correctly, instructed you to make sure to close the curtains in your living room BEFORE the 50 megaton bomb's blastwave hit your house.

That reminds me of this:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IKqXu-5jw60
 Even worse.