Fans pick 100 books like Jeeves and the Leap of Faith

Set in London in the early 1920s, Huxley’s Antic Hay follows a cast of young bohemian and artistic characters, all affected in various ways by the Great War, as they search for SOMETHING to give meaning to their lives. London has changed, the world has changed, and they are lost. Cripplingly shy Theodore Gumbril, the main character, (inventor of Gumbril's Patent Small-Clothes, trousers which contain an inflatable cushion in the seat) searches for love, and meaning, in the shattered society following the end of the war. His search for love – including the donning of a false, confidence-boosting beard, makes for an absurd kind of comedy. Antic Hay is a savage satire, a switchback of emotions, swooping between humour and despair – though the slight plot does sometimes get rather side-lined by intellectual discussions and I admit to skipping the odd page. However, it gives an excellent flavour of the… show more.

Though easy to mock for their repetitive plots and outdated societal attitudes, children of all ages devoured Enid Blyton’s mystery stories ravenously, and I was no exception. Blyton was an absurdly prolific writer, and it’s tough to pick a favourite from her expansive catalogue, but if you twisted my arm, I’d have to go with 1945’s The Mystery of the Secret Room. I still remember my excitement as I followed the five intrepid “find-outers” (and dog!) on their quest to uncover the mystery behind a fully furnished room in a supposedly abandoned house, all the while outsmarting the dim-witted local policeman, Mr. Goon. An unusual choice, perhaps, but this book, and indeed Blyton’s entire oeuvre, were a formative influence on me and sparked a lifelong love of amateur detectives.

While I grew up at the tail end of the Cold War, there was something in The Mouse that Roared that really spoke to me. The way that it takes an already absurd reality to an extreme really spoke to my own sensibilities and humor. History books tell the facts, but stories like this reflect how absurd the geopolitical culture must have felt to most people. It’s akin to Dr. Strangelove, not only in being a Cold War satire, but in the absurd and extreme nature of the farce. It influenced my own political satire heavily.

This is a funny and dramatic book and movie in which Grady Tripp is a university writing teacher who makes a mess out of his relationships. He’s having an affair with the chancellor of the college he teaches at, his wife has moved out maybe for good, and one of the students he has in class and who rents a room from him is attracted to him.

Tripp’s life is like a train wreck you can't stop watching, but also somehow funny. This book also became a great movie of the same name, starring Michael Douglas as the professor, Robert Downey Jr. as his agent, Frances McDormand as the chancellor, and Tobey Maguire and Katie Holmes as students. I mean, c’mon, doesn’t that sound great?!!!

It’s impossible to talk about action-adventure thrillers without recommending something by Graham Greene. It could have been any one of his great novels, but I’ve settled on this book as one of his shortest and most easily accessible stories.

It’s quirky without being obscure, full of atmosphere and intrigue, and wonderfully witty in its portrayal of its central characters. For sheer panache, this book is hard to beat.

A story about a biographer who pokes into the corners of a Nobel-winning author’s salacious life to write an exposé is juicy enough, but what happens when the latter uses the opportunity to write a counter-exposé on the former? Unstructured in plot and other novel-craft, this book is laden with pithy quotes on the writing life. The biographer and his subject are libidinous, adulterous, and self-absorbed, a testament to the fact that a writer has to be appreciated separately from their work. Also on display are the strategies employed by the publishing industry to keep the reputation and marketability of a once best-selling author alive, long after their effective shelf-life. 

Laumer’s satirical books about Jame Retief, a functionary in Corps Diplomatique Terrestrienne, were inspired by his real-life career in the U.S. Foreign Service. They don’t have to be read in any order and mix short stories (as in this collection) and novels. Much of the humor comes from Retief ignoring the diplomatic niceties in dealing with the problems involving Earth and various alien races.

One of the rare successful tragicomedies. Starting as a witty sendup of the decadent British upper classes, it turns deadly serious in the middle, when John, the young son of Brenda, has an accident while fox-hunting. Because her lover is also called John, she imagines, on being told, that it is her lover who is hurt—and thanks God when she discovers that it is her son. Brenda’s distraught husband Tony, the one noble character, mounts an expedition to South America, but instead of finding meaning and redemption, as the reader hopes, a nightmarish fate awaits him. With this novel, Waugh proved himself the greatest British novelist of the inter-war years—and inspired me, showing me how to mix elements of gravity and tragedy with comedy. 

Maybe it’s because I’ve always been a sucker for a righteous cause that Carl Hiaasen’s riotous, rollicking, tale of muckraking to the max had me cheering his zany protagonist and one-man-wreaking-crew, Twilly Spree from the first page to the last.

Twilly Spree has dedicated himself to saving Florida's wilderness from runaway destruction. He favors in-your-face political statements - such as torching Jet-Skis or blowing up banks - that leave his human targets shaken but taught a lesson in what happens when they choose not to do what Twilly considers the right thing.

Dognapping eco-terrorists, bogus big-time hunters, a Republicans-only hooker, an infamous ex-governor who's gone back to nature, thousands of singing toads, a horde of hungry dung beetles, and a Labrador retriever greater than the sum of his Labrador parts - these are only some of the zany denizens of Carl Hiaasen’s outrageously funny Sick Puppy.

I first read Stanislaw Lem’s The Futurological Congress in a literature of science fiction course as an undergrad around 1991 and I’ve reread it a bunch of times since then. Lem’s endlessly creative wordplay and brilliant satirical style have been major influences on all of my fiction, especially the Great American series. His novel might seem less like an overt haha comedy than the others I’ve listed here, but I still laugh every time I read it. Sample sentence: “Still, the sight of a man at your side crumpling to the floor under heavy fire is not among the most pleasant, even if it is the result of a simple misunderstanding, which ends with an exchange of diplomatic notes and official apologies.”