I teach and have written too many articles on these books as an English professor. There’s a time for tragic or difficult books (James Joyce, anyone?), but also a time for fun, and I believe it’s good for my students to giggle and enjoy reading while they learn. As a Canadian, I’m told my humor is dry but warmer, and accordingly, the books I prefer make me think—and some break my heart—but my favorites also make me laugh. If you want a quality read but aren’t above a fart joke, I hope you will check out my list.
I wrote
Shorter of Breath: 8-Tracks. Aliens. Korea. Edmonton. And a chance to leave lame-o millennial culture for the '70s!
Leisure suits! Muscle cars! An annoyingly ethical cocktail-loving alien! Social justice radicals! Time-traveling terrorist music critics out to erase “We…
A quick read from 1912: I first read this in college, and it’s still some of the gentlest, sunniest humor I’ve seen—a literary afternoon in the park with a brass band and dogs and Frisbees.
This is a book I can safely read to my grandmother. But I still come back to it, partly because it teaches a great deal about now mostly-gone small-town lives and values (here a fictionalized prewar Orillia, Ontario) and partly because its Bernie Wooster-ish misadventures and wordplay have such a playful joy and innocence.
These are characters I’d want to have as neighbors.
Affectionately combining both the idyllic and ironic, Sunshine Sketches of a Little Town is a colourful, imaginative, and thoroughly entertaining portrait of small town Ontario. This is Stephen Leacock at his best--now available as a Penguin Modern Classic.
Sunshine Sketches of a Little Town, which first appeared as a newspaper serial, chronicles life in the fictional community of Mariposa, modelled on Orillia, Ontario, where Stephen Leacock spent many summers. It's a brilliant satire about small towns, small-town people, and small-town occurrences. Life in Mariposa is never dull or ordinary. It's a town full of eccentrics, where boats sent to rescue…
I’m not Professor Dixon and wouldn’t want to be!—I am not drunk while lecturing, chasing female students, or in a crazy love triangle. But this book makes me snort every time I read it for its amicable, deadpan snark.
Kingsley Amis’s reputation didn’t age well as an alcoholic misanthrope, and this isn’t for the easily offended. However, in this first work of his, there’s still room for a likable but bungling young history professor. Lucky Jim basically started campus humor in the ‘50s and still holds up and parodies a side of faculty life that still very much exists.
Penguin Decades bring you the novels that helped shape modern Britain. When they were published, some were bestsellers, some were considered scandalous, and others were simply misunderstood. All represent their time and helped define their generation, while today each is considered a landmark work of storytelling.
Kingsley Amis's Lucky Jim was published in 1954, and is a hilarious satire of British university life. Jim Dixon is bored by his job as a medieval history lecturer. His days are only improved by pulling faces behind the backs of his superiors as he tries desperately to survive provincial bourgeois society, an unbearable…
How often have I heard, “Oh, Q. W. Aardvark’s fantasy is awesome, but you really need to read all 8,326 books in the series to get it”! How about no? Fortunately, I learned the secret of Pratchett’s Discworld series: each novel is freestanding.
I like this book because it’s like a cynical, bitter uncle who secretly has a teddy bear—despite the outward grime and gloom of the setting, there’s a hilarious wit, punning, and barrage of pop references underlying the story that gives it a heart. It’s fantasy for those who don’t think they like it.
First book of the original and best CITY WATCH series, now reinterpreted in BBC's The Watch
'This is one of Pratchett's best books. Hilarious and highly recommended' The 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 . . . _________________
'It was the usual Ankh-Morpork mob in times of crisis; half of them were here to complain, a quarter of them were here to watch the other half, and the…
I’ve never been fond of the ‘chick-lit’ term because it scares away male readers, who think the book will be jammed with vagina jokes and anti-men tirades. Yes, this is written by a woman and about a woman, but a woman who wants to get laid.
Partly I like the Gen-x vibe, and partly I like the ‘90s (now retro) London setting, but mostly I like Bridget and all the characters—funny, horny, flawed, prone to bad choices, and outrageous. There’s some Bridget in all of us, and if not, we’d sure have fun at a party with one.
A dazzlingly urban satire on modern relationships? An ironic, tragic insight into the demise of the nuclear family? Or the confused ramblings of a pissed thirty-something?
As Bridget documents her struggles through the social minefield of her thirties and tries to weigh up the eternal question (Daniel Cleaver or Mark Darcy?), she turns for support to four indispensable friends: Shazzer, Jude, Tom and a bottle of chardonnay.
Welcome to Bridget's first diary: mercilessly funny, endlessly touching and utterly addictive.
Helen Fielding's first Bridget Jones novel, Bridget Jones's Diary, sparked a phenomenon that has seen…
This book has always hit the trifecta for me—interesting, moving, and funny. A story about London immigrant families in the ‘80s and ‘90s, it shows a lesser-known side of society and certainly is the raunchiest book in my list—there’s a lot of sex among its confused screw-ups.
I admit my mind was opened, and my sympathies widened by this book, and after re-reading, I can appreciate it as a masterpiece of comic chaos. I wouldn’t want to be these characters—how many books begin with a failed suicide attempt?—but I’m glad they let me into their lives.
One of the most talked about fictional debuts of recent years, "White Teeth" is a funny, generous, big-hearted novel, adored by critics and readers alike. Dealing - among many other things - with friendship, love, war, three cultures and three families over three generations, one brown mouse, and the tricky way the past has of coming back and biting you on the ankle, it is a life-affirming, riotous must-read of a book.
Leisure suits! Muscle cars! An annoyingly ethical cocktail-loving alien! Social justice radicals! Time-traveling terrorist music critics out to erase “We Build This City”! Just like Jane Austen used to write! Why couldn’t Alan be cool like people in the ‘70s? After breaking up with his girlfriend Sheila and unsatisfyingly teaching English in Korea, he befriends an alien grad student, Coff, who lets him time travel to swingin’ 1967 England.
But now a senior in Edmonton, Canada, Alan takes a chance in meeting Sheila again to confess his past, causing problems that Coff will need more than Fleetwood Mac and fuzzy dice to fix. My book is a comic romp through expat life in Korea, ‘70s retro culture, and classic rock.
The 19th century women's rights movement and the rise of public education intertwine with one woman's story of struggle, perseverance, and love.
Alice Harris is pressed to marry a Civil War veteran twice her age when her family’s inn fails in 1882 in western North Carolina. She remakes herself by learning to farm tobacco, campaigning for the city’s first public schools, and immersing herself in the large and divisive Carter family. But marriage offers a tenuous promise of security. When tragedy strikes, Alice turns to the courts to fight for her independence and discovers an unexpected love.
The 19th century women's rights movement and the rise of public education intertwine with one woman's story of struggle, perseverance, and love.
When her father dies and the family inn falls to ruin in 1882, western North Carolina, thirty-year-old Alice Harris is compelled to marry Jasper Carter, a Civil War veteran twice her age. Far from home and a stranger in a new family, Alice remakes herself. She learns to farm tobacco, mothers her stepson, and comes to love her husband.
However, Alice uncovers pending trouble with the family's land holdings, which threatens their livelihood on the farm. The growth…
