I have just read a BRILLIANTLY funny book today! Got it at charity shop on way to hospital and it was a bargain 40p!! It's by Robert Rankin called 'The Most Amazing Man Who Ever Lived' and it was PROPER laugh out loud funny - which got me some wierd looks in hospital! It's very Pratchett-esque but set on Earth, our Earth - with abit of heaven thrown in! Enjoed it sooooo much I MUST find more!!!!
Anyway, just wondered if anyone else has read a TOTALLY brill book (or comic/newspaper article/mag/whatever wordy) recently and would like to tell all about it.
I like Robart Rankin stuff, there was a radio show of his Brightonomicon on a few months back and he wrote another that I read that was hilarious. I'll have to get some more of his books out of the library.
Try Jasper Fforde if you like his stuff. He's got a couple of series called Thursday Next and Nursery Crimes. There's another called Shades of Grey which I think is a lot weaker and not as funny to my mind. The Thursday Next series are based on classic novels (Jane Eyre etc) but with a twist and the Nursery Crimes are using (you've guessed it) nursery rhyme characters but in everyday situations. Jack Spratt is a police detective and he's investigating the murder of Humpty Dumpty... not what you might think though. Political intrigue, infidelity and they're all really funny.
Title of 'funniest book I ever read' is tied between two:
One's from way back, Scepticism Inc. by Bo Fowler, and it satirises organised religion by watching a 'faith war' through the eyes of a supermarket trolley (the last of his kind). I've heard it described as a beginners Nietzsche, which seems fair to be honest: it's not that heavy, I read it at 13 and never felt challenged, but it's clear what the author's trying to make us realise.
Second is only from last September, Yahtzee Croshaw's Mogworld. It's a Discworld-y, gamery look at how those pixels might really have feelings. If youi watch Zero Punction on The Escapist, it's that guy's first novel. Absolutely loved it, and had to read it a second time as soon as I finished.
In the not-so-funny side, there's a few of the older Stephen King books (before he had that accident and turned into a naracisstic, repetitive emo-kid). The Stand, which is a slightly fantastical look at a post-apocalyptic future, complete with a battle betwen good and evil, and The Dark Tower series (although the final two were a little meh, being after the accident, where suddenly a hero of a writer from Maine who got hit by a blue van while on a walk appears to save the day...honestly, use it once or twice, but after the fifth time you work it in, change SOME details, you megalomaniac!), which is a fantasy-western about one ol' cowboy's search for good in a world gone bad, lot of steampunk-style notions, and it is interesting to see how the style develops, given the first was written originally when he was in his early teens, and three new books added to the series at various points, before he eventually got them published, added a fifth alright one, and two pieces of self-indulgent tripe. Not that I bear him a grudge for turning into a whiny little brat 'cause of one accident, oh no. :)