Here are 100 books that Welcome to the Monkey House fans have personally recommended if you like
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It is said that Michelangelo could see a statue inside of a block of marble. I believe I have a similar gift – I can find the most idiotic angle to any given story or event and free it into the world. Okay, so some gifts are better than others but this “talent” has afforded me the ability to stay relatively sane in a completely nutso era. Relatively. And to underscore my qualifications, I would ask the reader to take a gander at my sample title below. I rest my case.
The original Looney Tunes should be required viewing for children and adults alike. When I’m King of the World (cue the ominous cellos – wait, we’ve only got one cello? What the hell?), that will be one of my first mandates. Seriously, this book has every beautifully dopey invention from the Wile E. Coyote/Road Runner series, along with a few extras, and the design of the book is stellar. As the cover says so succinctly: “Quality is our #1 dream.”
This hilarious catalogue from Acme Products features loads of useless items - many of which were used by Wile E. Coyote himself in pursuit of the Roadrunner. Starting with a letter to the consumer from Acme President, Canteerya Winan, the book then goes on to showcase page after page of Acme products in all their glory - including both the classics and a whole slew of new and untested products.
It is said that Michelangelo could see a statue inside of a block of marble. I believe I have a similar gift – I can find the most idiotic angle to any given story or event and free it into the world. Okay, so some gifts are better than others but this “talent” has afforded me the ability to stay relatively sane in a completely nutso era. Relatively. And to underscore my qualifications, I would ask the reader to take a gander at my sample title below. I rest my case.
This is one of those books you can open to any page and immediately start laughing. It resembles an encyclopedia but every given subject is shredded with wit and insight. Personally, I’m eternally grateful to the folks at The Onion for trying to keep up with the organically occurring absurdity in modern life that now has rendered most satire obsolete. It must be a whole lot like dogpaddling. In Jell-O. In the dead of winter.
Are you a witless cretin with no reason to live? Would you like to know more about every piece of knowledge ever? Do you have cash? Then congratulations, because just in time for the death of the print industry as we know it comes the final book ever published, and the only one you will ever need: The Onion's compendium of all things known. Replete with an astonishing assemblage of facts, illustrations, maps, charts, threats, blood, and additional fees to edify even the most simple-minded book-buyer, THE ONION BOOK OF KNOWN KNOWLEDGE is packed with valuable information-such as the life…
It is said that Michelangelo could see a statue inside of a block of marble. I believe I have a similar gift – I can find the most idiotic angle to any given story or event and free it into the world. Okay, so some gifts are better than others but this “talent” has afforded me the ability to stay relatively sane in a completely nutso era. Relatively. And to underscore my qualifications, I would ask the reader to take a gander at my sample title below. I rest my case.
This hard-to-find book is a masterpiece and I’m not using the term loosely. Doug Kenney and P.J. O’Rourke were responsible for much of this whip-smart gem. The writers perfectly mock every mundane aspect of much of high school life. (For what it’s worth, I genuinely enjoyed high school, but was aslo painfully aware of the deep-seated screwiness of much of the atmosphere.) If you can find this, snap it up. You won’t regret it.
In honor of the thirty-ninth reunion of the class of 1964 of C. Estes Kefauver High School in Dacron, Ohio, a new edition of their hilarious yearbook brings back such zany characters as Chuck U. Farley, Maria Teresa Spermatozoa, Purdy "Psycho" Lee Spackle, and Larry Kroger, accompanied by a "Where are they now?" addendum and a DVD of the popular film Animal House. 100,000 first printing.
It is said that Michelangelo could see a statue inside of a block of marble. I believe I have a similar gift – I can find the most idiotic angle to any given story or event and free it into the world. Okay, so some gifts are better than others but this “talent” has afforded me the ability to stay relatively sane in a completely nutso era. Relatively. And to underscore my qualifications, I would ask the reader to take a gander at my sample title below. I rest my case.
From 1932-33, Groucho and Chico (two of my role models) appeared on a radio show aired on NBC. It was about a shady law firm (Groucho is Waldorf T. Flywheel – a fine lawyerly name) and you can imagine how that goes. This book contains the scripts of about two dozen episodes, I think. If you’re a Marx Brothers fan, this is a ton of fun. And if you’re not, then I must believe you’re some variety of filthy lout and I would ask you to stand away from me.
This is a collection of radio scripts of the comedy series starring Groucho, Waldorf and Chico Marx which ran for six months from November 1932. They have recently been discovered and are published here for the first time.
Ever since my younger years, I’ve spent many hours dwelling within the realms of my imagination, daydreaming myself into whirlwind romances from slow-burn to forbidden and everything in between. Why? The best answer I can give right now is my love of love, my innate understanding that the invisible string that pulls two people so fiercely together at the right time and place ultimately are the connections and relationships that propel us into up-leveling ourselves, evolving into our next best versions. So when I read, watch, or write romance, it’s beyond the physical–it’s emotional, mental, and truly spiritual.
I return to this book time and again because of the captivating connection Elizabeth and Darcy share. It’s not just the tension on the surface, but it’s what goes on emotionally and psychologically with them that has me enchanted.
Austen does a fantastic job of portraying how love will sneak up on you when you’re not even looking for it, how it will push you to face the parts of yourself you’ve been avoiding for too long and to stand boldly in your authentic character while holding compassion for another’s perspective.
Every time I read this book, I feel I know the characters at a more intimate level as new fractals of their personalities and behaviors shine through.
Jane Austen's best-loved novel is an unforgettable story about the inaccuracy of first impressions, the power of reason, and above all the strange dynamics of human relationships and emotions.
Part of the Macmillan Collector's Library; a series of stunning, clothbound, pocket sized classics with gold foiled edges and ribbon markers. These beautiful books make perfect gifts or a treat for any book lover. This edition is illustrated by Hugh Thomson and features an afterword by author and critic, Henry Hitchings.
A tour de force of wit and sparkling dialogue, Pride and…
Life is taking a bite of the comedy/tragedy sandwich, savoring the mix of flavors, deciding how you feel about the taste, and taking another bite. I love writing that can gather experiences from across the emotional spectrum and incorporate them into a narrative that is absurd and all the more true because of it. These five books do it better than the rest.
I love a book that makes me laugh out loud and feel something deep about the characters and the world it presents. Ignatius J. Reilly, this novel’s main character, is basically a blueprint for the modern incel: he’s rude, selfish, hypocritical, infantile, and inconsistently idealistic, and while he’d be a horror to interact with in real life, he’s absolutely one of the funniest characters in all of literature.
One of the many magic tricks of this book is making the reader realize they’re halfway rooting for Ignatius by the end of his inane New Orleans adventures.
'This is probably my favourite book of all time' Billy Connolly
A pithy, laugh-out-loud story following John Kennedy Toole's larger-than-life Ignatius J. Reilly, floundering his way through 1960s New Orleans, beautifully resigned with cover art by Gary Taxali _____________
'This city is famous for its gamblers, prostitutes, exhibitionists, anti-Christs, alcoholics, sodomites, drug addicts, fetishists, onanists, pornographers, frauds, jades, litterbugs, and lesbians . . . don't make the mistake of bothering me.'
Ignatius J. Reilly: fat, flatulent, eloquent and almost unemployable. By the standards of ordinary folk he is pretty much…
I love short-story collections. I’ve read dozens to hundreds of them, starting as a child reading Richard Scarry, and I still make them a regular part of my reading diet. I started trying my own hand at short fiction in 2012 and have since finished more than one hundred stories, including the ones in Animal Husbandry. I’m now working on my first novel after years as a short-story writer, and it gives me additional admiration for how many outstanding novelists are also able to master short fiction. It’s two different skill sets, and the five authors I mentioned here (among many others) excel at both.
This is a truly beautiful collection, and I love the way many of the stories place the protagonists in fraught situations that reveal what they will do to survive.
Some of my favorites are “The Worst You Ever Feel” and “The Briefcase” for how they show war’s impact on survivors, and “Painted Ocean, Painted Ship” and “The Miracle Years of Little Fork” for combining the tragic and the absurd in creative ways.
A short-story collection from the acclaimed author of The Great Believers
Named a must-read by the Chicago Tribune, O Magazine, BuzzFeed, The Huffington Post, Minneapolis Star-Tribune, and The L Magazine
Rebecca Makkai's first two novels, The Borrower and The Hundred-Year House, have established her as one of the freshest and most imaginative voices in fiction. Now, the award-winning writer, whose stories have appeared in four consecutive editions of The Best American Short Stories, returns with a highly anticipated collection bearing her signature mix of intelligence, wit, and heart.
A reality show producer manipulates two contestants into falling in love, even…
I grew up in the lap of Borscht Belt comedy in an entertainment family, the dour child with a precocious predilection for reading archaic literature. My parents gave me a subscription to Punch Magazine and subjected me to countless comedy movies during my formative years strapped to a chair à laClockwork Orange. Which explains how I ended up an international banker. Until late in life with the publication of my first novel, a satire. After eight successive novels, I realized that I should have listened to the family’s adage, “Don’t Quit Your Day Job.”
Hysterical, witty, and brilliant, Absurdistan is a political parody of the corruption underlying the George W Bush Administration’s war in Iraq. The main character, Misha, is an Ignatius knockoff who ends up on a rollercoaster of a hilarious adventure that gallops away with savagery about the reality of war, greed, and life.
“Absurdistan is not just a hilarious novel, but a record of a particular peak in the history of human folly. No one is more capable of dealing with the transition from the hell of socialism to the hell of capitalism in Eastern Europe than Shteyngart, the great-great grandson of one Nikolai Gogol and the funniest foreigner alive.” –Aleksandar Hemon
From the critically acclaimed, bestselling author of The Russian Debutante’s Handbook comes the uproarious and poignant story of one very fat man and one very small country Meet Misha Vainberg, aka Snack Daddy, a 325-pound disaster of a human being, son…
I grew up in the lap of Borscht Belt comedy in an entertainment family, the dour child with a precocious predilection for reading archaic literature. My parents gave me a subscription to Punch Magazine and subjected me to countless comedy movies during my formative years strapped to a chair à laClockwork Orange. Which explains how I ended up an international banker. Until late in life with the publication of my first novel, a satire. After eight successive novels, I realized that I should have listened to the family’s adage, “Don’t Quit Your Day Job.”
Regrettably, while emptying my mother’s house I discarded this book, a comedy I read and reread over the decades. The writing is funny as all get go, undiminished by age, possessing a universal quality. Which is the key to comedy: the ability to make a lot of people laugh over time, distance, cultural backgrounds, etc. Alan King was the master of comedy in this book.
America's wacky, angry man of the suburbs strikes back in this uproarious free-for-all! Alan King once again turns his bright, beady eye on suburbia and finds it uproariously funny. The outrageous Mr. King is America's most peerless destroyer of America's sacred cows. Here's another blast from his loaded cigar that levels AT&T, IBM, the AMA, BBD&O, the IRS, the PTA, and Freud, just for openers. It will leave you leveled, too from laughing.
I love short-story collections. I’ve read dozens to hundreds of them, starting as a child reading Richard Scarry, and I still make them a regular part of my reading diet. I started trying my own hand at short fiction in 2012 and have since finished more than one hundred stories, including the ones in Animal Husbandry. I’m now working on my first novel after years as a short-story writer, and it gives me additional admiration for how many outstanding novelists are also able to master short fiction. It’s two different skill sets, and the five authors I mentioned here (among many others) excel at both.
I really enjoy all of Gaiman’s collections, but this one is my favorite. “We Can Get Them for You Wholesale” and “The Price” are two stories I particularly love, one so darkly comic I laughed nonstop the first time I read it and one that gave me a genuine chill.
But it’s a deep collection with lots of great stories spanning genres and emotions, and one I’ve read a few times.
***This short fiction collection includes 'Chivalry', this year's Radio 4 Neil Gaiman Christmas Day special, starring Glenda Jackson and Kit Harington. This is the story of Mrs Whitaker, who finds the Holy Grail in a charity shop.***
Open your mind to one of the brightest, most brilliant writers of our generation...
'Gaiman is god in the universe of story' - Stephen Fry
'There's no one quite like Neil Gaiman' - George R. R. Martin
An elderly widow finds the Holy Grail beneath an old fur coat. A stray cat fights and refights a terrible nightly battle to protect his unwary…
