I was thinking the other day about the last time I read a book that made me laugh out loud (I should perhaps add the qualification that only books that are meant to be funny count). I don't mean raised a wry smile, or a gentle chuckle, I mean a loud uncontrolled belly laugh. Too long ago I fear, but that led me on to think about the books that have ever made me laugh out loud. It is a distressingly short list but the reason for that may be my increasingly defective memory more than anything else. Be that as it may, here they are (in no particular order): 1) Spike Milligan's Puckoon; 2) Flann O'Brien's The Third Policeman; 3) Evelyn Waugh's Decline and Fall; 4) Waugh's Scoop. Two Irishmen (sort of) and an English reactionary. Odd bedfellows to be sure (to be sure). What was the last book that made you laugh out loud?
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'Geoff in Venice, Death in Varanasi' by Geoff Dyer made me laugh almost every page, at least for the first half. I'd not heard of him before i read this piece about him by James Wood: http://www.newyorker.com/arts/critics/books/2009/04/20/090420crbo_books_wood but it seems he's well-regarded.
'Foucault's Pendulum' by Umberto Eco was funny too - it relentlessly mocks the kinds of people who go in for ancient secret society conspiracy theories - the Rosicrucians, Knights Templar, etc. - and see patterns in history that aren't there.
The latter is more in the satirical spirit of something like Scoop than the former, but the Dyer book is more relentlessly funny (again, for the first half, anyway).
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