Funny Books You Should Be Reading

All right. So now for my grown-up book recommendations, which, you know, are just so obvious that I pretty much walk around with a list of them in my head. No, the exact opposite is true. Ask me on any specific day to recommend some books and I’ll probably think of ones I just read that were good or books from many years ago that I never forgot or something else. I thought it would be a good idea to write some down here, but it turns out that again the exact opposite is true. I don’t know where to begin. The following authors and books are all pretty much funny. That’s where I’m starting.

1. David Sedaris. You know how certain books and almost all music can become heartbreaking if you’re in the wrong state of mind? Well, if you’ve come to that, it’s time for some David Sedaris. He is the cure for what ails you. I wrote a letter to him once many years ago (It was so long ago that I actually looked up his address in a Manhattan phone book and mailed him an actual letter. And he wrote one back to me from France!). Anyway, the letter started out, Could you be the funniest person alive? And I still kind of feel that way. In case you’re not familiar with David Sedaris (is this possible?) he writes essays about his family and incidents from his life and pretty much whatever happens to occur to him. Any book is fine, really. But be careful not to read him on the subway unless you don't mind laughing uncontrollably in front of strangers.

2. Then We Came to the End by Joshua Ferris. Have you ever worked in an office? Then you will like, or rather love, this book. And even though the book is written in that potentially problematic first person plural (“we”) it works perfectly. See for yourself: “While waiting for Lynn to arrive, we killed time listening to Chris Yop tell us the story of Tom Mota's chair. We loved killing time and had perfected several ways of doing so. We wandered the hallways carrying papers that indicated some mission of business when in reality we were in search of free candy. We refilled our coffee mugs on floors we didn't belong on.” And did I mention that this book will make you truly laugh out loud? It’s one of those books that I think I need to read again, that is, whenever we unpack our 60 plus boxes of books.

3. Stiff: The Curious Lives of Human Cadavers by Mary Roach. This book is about dead bodies and it’s hilarious. If I compare Mary Roach to David Sedaris, it’ll do you no good, but I’m afraid I’ll have to do just that. To be honest, this is the exact sort of book I think David Sedaris wished he wrote, what with his fascination with bizarre medical equipment and human oddities and such. Basically Mary Roach went around checking out what exactly happens to bodies after they are dead, whether they are simply fancied up at a funeral home or used for medical research. And her observations are really pretty great. For example: “The human head is of the same approximate size and weight as a roaster chicken. I have never before had the occasion to make the comparison, for never before today have I seen a head in a roasting pan.” I mean, there is just so much here to love.

4. I Was Told There’d Be Cake by Sloane Crosley. All right, fine. If you think I got this book mostly because of the title, you’d be correct. But can I describe this book without referring again to David Sedaris? Um. Let me just say that this is a collection of very very funny essays about Crosley's life as a twenty-something living in New York. Oh my god, that sounds totally awful, doesn’t it? Except it’s not! She is genuinely funny and her topics are mostly unexpected or at least unexpectedly good. And here’s what made me like her even more: she turned three of the essays in the book into little plexiglass dioramas that she posted on her website. I mean, jeez, what’s not to like?

And now for my next post, I plan to write about the saddest books ever!

Catch-18*

Just as you should never really judge a book by its cover (though of course we all do) you should also never judge a book by its title (though again: of course). I do know for a fact that there is a book out that discusses the original titles of books before they were changed into famous book titles, such as Trimalchio in West Egg being the original title for The Great Gatsby. How I know this is that the author of this book was a guest on that public radio show in New York City I once worked for. This was at a time when books like this really were able to be published with ease. And the book actually had a publicity team behind it.

Anyway. One of the absolute best titles of a book I can think of (which is also an excellent book) is Alice Mattison's book of intersecting stories called Men Giving Money, Women Yelling. I mean, jeez, you practically don't even have to read the book. You can buy it and just admire that title every single time you look at the cover. Some titles, like Infinite Jest, for example, sound cool and seem important. Or then there are titles like Roddy Doyle's The Woman Who Walked Into Doors and even Junot Diaz's The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao, which are wordy and evocative. In that category there is, of course, Raymond Carver's Will You Please Be Quiet Please?, which is a title that is very pleasing to say.

I find that one-word book titles don't really say enough, even though for bands that seems to be a fine way to go. The following are all good books, but they sound so ordinary: Jazz, Away, Intuition, Middlesex. The exception to this is Mary Roach's Stiff, a hilarious book about human cadavers.

There may actually be books that I have not read simply due to their titles, but I can't come up with any now. Well, here's one: Thermodynamics and an Introduction to Thermostatistics.

Whenever I think about writing a book, I actually like to think about the title most of all. I mean, then you’d just have to write the book, right? I’ve come up with Someone Else’s Weekend (there's nothing wrong with using a song lyric as a title, right, Brett Easton Ellis?), but as of yet I have not written that particular book. Somehow the title is almost too good for what I've been planning to write. It's getting me way too distracted. As far as I’m concerned, that particular title is up for grabs.

* The original title of Catch-22