In the search for a few novels to put on the Christmas list, gonna go and check some more out in the book store tomorrow. I like light hearted easy to read stuff. Nothing too long (over 300 pages-ish), no microscopic writing, and one thing I HATE is too many comma’s. If there’s comma’s every five words or so I find it really hard to read.

A few I’ve really liked over the last year or two are Charlotte street by Danny Wallace, Ghosts and Lightning by Trevor Byrne, and just recently a Touch of Love by Cameron Coe, (That one was probably the biggest effort to read out of all of them but still some nice parts to it).

Thanks all!

Well, if you can hack something that will teach you stuff, as well as having you giggling like an idiot, I can recommend, without hesitation, pretty much anything by Bill Bryson. A very funny writer indeed.

Chris brookmyres stuff

Chris brookmyres stuff

+1.

Douglas Adams.
Terry Pratchett.
Robert Rankin.
Jasper Fforde.
Tom Holt.
Robert Asprin.

For starters.

The Bible

Brookmyre +2 and anything by John Niven.

The restraint of beasts

alexi sayle’s books /novels are funny –if you like his style of course….

Cooking with Fernet Branca
Amazing Disgrace
Rancid Pansies

All by James Hamilton Paterson

Central character is a hack writer of celebrity biographies who goes in for curious but entirely plausible culinary experiments (liver smoothies and badger wellington are two of the more palatable examples).

Very cynical, very odd, very funny.

Lighthearted, but not laugh-out-loud funny

Joolz Denby

I love Bill Bryson, Tom Sharpe and David Lodge for funny.

Brookmyre +1

And most of John O’Farrell’s work is pretty readable – The Best a Man Can Get, May Contain Nuts, This is Your Life.

Brookmyre+1

I also really enjoyed Mike Gayle novels, especially Mr Commitment – youthful nostalgia and how funny relationships between a couple can be.

“The Passage” by Justin Cronin.

Its not exactly your spec but its a good read.

Bryson, Fforde, Pratchett, Adams, all very good pointers.

I’m not sure how to spell it;

the kurran.

Brookmyre is funny but more dark-hearted than lighthearted I reckon 😆

another +1 for brookmyre

just finished ‘shit my dad says’ by justin halpern which i’ve had for a while but never got round to it as i never fancied it but it’s one of the few books that genuinely had me in tears

The best light hearted funny novel I’ve ever read is ‘Pest Control’ by Bill Fitzhugh. A comedy of errors, **** brilliant.
A mate of mine has a 2nd hand bookshop & he reckons he can’t get enough copies of it.

EDIT, ‘Shit My Dad Says’ is also hilarious!

I used to get moments of eye streaming laughter from some Tom Sharpe novels, Riotous assembly springs to mind, but there are a few others, something Wilt as I recall.

can’t believe i forgot ‘riotous assembly’.
konstable els is one of the greatest comic creations ever – genius!

Spike Milligan’s war memoirs are just packed full of stuff that makes me shoot coffee through my nose, halfway across the room…..

50 Shades of Grey 😳 8)

When you get over the shock of the first book, Anastasia’s “inner goddess” is hilarious. 😆

The humour is dark rather than light-hearted but John Niven’s Kill Your Friends is the funniest novel I’ve read in years.

Any of the Latin American Trilogy by Louis De Bernieres:

The War Of Don Emmanuel’s Nether Parts
Senor Viva And The Coca Lords
The Troublesome Offspring Of Cardinal Guzman

Superb books, touching, funny, exceptionally well written. I’d say he’s my favourite author by a long shot.

Try Jumping Ships by David Baboulene.

anything by John Niven

The humour is dark rather than light-hearted but John Niven’s Kill Your Friends is the funniest novel I’ve read in years.

The one about Jesus, God and smoking dope (same author) was also pretty good – awesome books.

Carl Hiassen.

Carl Hiasesn, Tom Sharpe and the Rise and Fall of Reginald Perrin by David Nobbs.

This is brilliant – particularly if you are a child of the 70s:

http://www.goodreads.com/book/show/41038.The_Rotters_Club

Funny, dark, a bit twisted – well, it is Scandinavian:

If you remember the eighties and had any interest in video games then this is great. More comic thriller than purely light hearted but it’s a fun read nevertheless.

Thanks for all the suggestions folks, gonna make my way into the book shop now and check some of them out.

Ben Aaranovitch (sp?) Rivers of London series.

I’m prepared to bet my house* on the fact you haven’t posted this on LFGSS…

😉

*wendy house. Out the back. Needs some work.

Bill Bryson , A walk in the woods or The life and times of the thunderbolt kid . 😆

Absurdistan 🙂

Milk, suplhate and Alby Starvation by Martin Millar.

Easily one of the funniest books I’ve ever read.

Ardal O’Hanlan’s book is great here. Seems to be the only one he’s ever written though.

If “The missing link between Dick Emery and Bret Easton Ellis” appeals – Charlie Higson. He seems to have gone into “books for teens”…

Wind the clock back and start with some vintage PG Wodehouse. Proper laugh out loud stuff*.

*Subjectively speaking, of course.

Okay, some of those authors were NOT light hearted 😐 . There was a couple of sci fi writers in there and a crime writer. There was me walking around the general fiction section wondering why I couldn’t find them until I asked lol. I’m not really into that kind of writing.