I'm the New York Times bestselling author of five middle grade book series: Spy School, FunJungle, Charlie Thorne, Moon Base Alpha, and Once Upon a Tim. Together, my books have sold over six million copies. Although my books are mysteries and adventures at heart, there is a great deal of humor in them, which is probably the secret to their success. I hear from a surprising number of readers (or the parents of my readers) that someone has laughed so hard at my book that they have fallen off a couch. My sense of humor has come from careful reading of the books listed here, over and over again, throughout my life.
The first book in my newest series follows Tim, a peasant back in olden times who hates being a peasant because… well, peasantry stinks. However, the only chance for upward mobility is joining the knight brigade. When Princess Grace is snatched away by a vicious Stinx, Tim eagerly joins the rescue party – but he’s going to find himself in a lot more danger than he ever expected.
I first discovered this book in eighth grade and it rocked my world. Not only is the story riotous fun, but Adams’ goofball writing style adds much additional hilarity. (Who else would say that the alien spaceships hovered in the air ‘in the same way that bricks don’t’?) There are great characters, madcap action sequences, delirious footnotes – and yet, at the heart of it all, it raises some serious questions about who we are and our place in the universe. This book changed everything about writing for me – and also caused a major shift in how my young teenage brain viewed the world.
This box set contains all five parts of the' trilogy of five' so you can listen to the complete tales of Arthur Dent, Ford Prefect, Zaphod Bebblebrox and Marvin the Paranoid Android! Travel through space, time and parallel universes with the only guide you'll ever need, The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy.
Read by Stephen Fry, actor, director, author and popular audiobook reader, and Martin Freeman, who played Arthur Dent in film version of The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy. He is well known as Tim in The Office.
The set also includes a bonus DVD Life, the Universe and…
I love just about everything Hiaasen has ever written, but I have read his early works over and over again. He’s a master of plotting, storytelling, and dialogue. It’s hard to go wrong with any of his books, but I’m picking Native Tongue as his most outright funny. A deft skewering of the Florida theme park industry (as well as many other aspects of our society), this book was my ur-text when I first set out to design FunJungle, the theme park at the heart of my first book series.
From the New York Times bestselling author comes a novel in which dedicated, if somewhat demented, environmentalists battle sleazy real estate developers in the Florida Keys.
"Rips, zips, hurtles, keeping us turning the pages at breakfinger pace." —New York Times Book Review
When the precious clue-tongued mango voles at the Amazing Kingdom of Thrills on North Key Largo are stolen by heartless, ruthless thugs, Joe Winder wants to uncover why, and find the voles. Joe is lately a PR man for the Amazing Kingdom theme park, but now that the voles are gone, Winder is dragged along in their wake…
Once again, it’s hard to go wrong with anything Terry Pratchett wrote – and he wrote a lot. His voluminous Discworld series is a wonderful send-up of the fantasy genre, although it also sent up the mystery genre, the adventure genre, and pretty much every other genre along the way. It can occasionally be staggered to see exactly how many jokes Pratchett can work onto a single page – and yet still keep the story humming along. I’m nominating Mort here because I think it’s one of his funniest, and it has the personification of Death, one of of his most enduring characters, at the center of the storyline.
'Cracking dialogue, compelling illogic and unchained whimsy' Sunday Times
The Discworld is very much like our own - if our own were to consist of a flat planet balanced on the back of four elephants which stand on the back of a giant turtle, that is . . .
Death comes to us all. When he came to Mort, he offered him a job.
Death is the Grim Reaper of the Discworld, a black-robed skeleton carrying a scythe who must collect a minimum number of souls in order to keep the momentum of dying, well . . . alive.
While Silverstein is most known for his wonderful compendium of poetry, Where The Sidewalk Ends, this was one of my favorite books as a child (and my sister’s too). Yes, it’s written for kids, but it’s still a great read as an adult, laugh-out-loud funny – and ultimately, very affecting. As you may have deduced from the title, it’s about a lion who figures out how to shoot back to defend himself and his pride against hunters – which then sparks an extremely inventive and surprising journey. Plus, it is deftly illustrated by Silverstein as well.
Shel Silverstein's first children's book, Lafcadio, the Lion Who Shot Back—a whimsical tale of self-discovery and marshmallows—is turning fifty with a return to the vintage full-color cover.
Is a famous, successful, and admired lion a happy lion? Or is he a lion at all? Written and drawn with wit and gusto, Shel Silverstein's modern fable speaks not only to children but to us all!
First published in 1963, this book had rave reviews from the New York Times, Time magazine, and Publishers Weekly, as well as a starred review from Kirkus. Now celebrating its fiftieth anniversary, Lafcadio is being reissued…
This is non-fiction, but in Bryson’s capable hands, even the most serious of issues can be deliriously funny. Bryson is astoundingly capable of making any subject interesting, be it the workings of the human body to the development of the English language. Here, we follow him and a friend on a somewhat misguided attempt to hike the Appalachian Trail, with digressions into everything from how chestnut trees went extinct in this country to the strange fact that so many of our cities are built without pedestrians in mind. (Bryson drives this point home poignantly yet hilariously with an extremely funny account of his ill-fated attempt to walk from one part of a town along the Appalachian Trail to the other.) I believe this book has the line that made me laugh harder than any other I’ve ever read. (Although there’s no way that my retelling it will do it justice. You’ll just have to read the book for yourself.)
From the author of "Notes from a Small Island" and "The Lost Continent" comes this humorous report on his walk along the Appalachian Trail. The Trail covers 14 states and over 2000 miles, and stretches along the east coast of America from Maine in the north to Georgia in the south. It is famous for being the longest continuous footpath in the world. It snakes through some of the wildest and most specactular landscapes in America, as well as through some of its most poverty-stricken and primitive backwoods areas.
Me and The Times offers a fresh perspective on those pre-internet days when the Sunday sections of The New York Times shaped the country’s political and cultural conversation. Starting in 1967, Robert Stock edited seven of those sections over 30 years, innovating and troublemaking all the way.
His memoir is rich in anecdotes and admissions. At The Times, Jan Morris threw a manuscript at him, he shared an embarrassing moment with Jacqueline Kennedy, and he got the paper sued for $1 million. Along the way, Rod Laver challenged Stock to a tennis match, he played a clarinet duet with superstar Richard Stoltzman, and he shared a Mafia-spiced brunch with Jerry Orbach.
Me and The Times: My wild ride from elevator operator to New York Times editor, columnist, and change agent (1967-97)
An intimate, unvarnished look at the making of the Sunday sections of The New York Times in their pre-internet heyday, back when they shaped the country’s political and cultural conversation.
Over 30 years, Robert Stock edited seven of those sections, innovating, and troublemaking all the way – getting the paper sued for $1 million, locking horns with legendary editors Abe Rosenthal and Max Frankel, and publishing articles that sent the publisher Punch Sulzberger up the wall.
On one level, his memoir tracks Stock’s amazing career from his elevator job at Bonwit Teller to his accidental entry into journalism to his…
