Five books to make you laugh

Because God knows we could use them right about now

Hey there! I just got back from New York, where I attended the award show for this year’s Thurber Prize in American Humor in writing, as one of the three finalists. [Pause for applause]. Thank you. Thank you so much. It was an amazing thing to be nominated, and even though I didn’t win—that honor went to WaPo humor columnist Alexandra Petri, for her very funy book Alexandra Petri’s U.S. History (more on that below)—I had a blast, and some excellent trout for dinner.

I also realized that it is high time I put together a list of some of the funny books I’ve read recently — and links to them on Bookshop.org, where every purchase supports independent bookstores. If you didn’t make it out to an indie bookstore for Independent Bookstore Day on Saturday, here’s another chance to support the more than 2,000 wonderful non-billionaire, non-penis-rocket-owning, non-Trump-ass-kissing booksellers in this great land of ours.

And here is also your chance to up your daily laughter output. Because, as we all know, laughter is a powerful antidote to things like spiraling into despair because your country has fallen into the hands of an authoritarian moron. Remember: the only kind of laughter fascists and other bad guys like is the evil kind. So, laugh merrily in their direction. They hate that.

Evil laughter

Non-evil laughter — me and Steven Rowley, author of my first book recommendation below.

Now, without further ado, here are five funny books I’ve read recently. Click any cover or title to get it on Bookshop.org.

The Guncle, by Steven Rowley

This Thurber Prize winner by the generous and lovely Steven Rowley is both funny and moving—a combo that I admire so much in a book. “Guncle” is a portmanteau of Gay and Uncle (portmanteaux feature prominently in the book, which is one more reason I love it, and also it gave me an excuse to unnecessarily use the French plural of the word just then). The Guncle in question is former sitcom star Patrick O’Hara, who unexpectedly ends up taking care of his niece and nephew at his Palm Springs home when their mother—his sister-in-law and best friend—dies. The clash between Patrick’s lifestyle and the needs of his six- and nine-year-old charges is frequently hilarious. Quips and bon mots abound, and there are many genuinely poignant moments as Patrick confronts his own grief and and considers how to move forward.

Rating: Two cocktails, a swimming pool, and a seasonally inappropriate Christmas tree.

Griefstrike by Jason Roeder

Jason Roeder was my fellow Thurber Prize loser, and a lovely guy. His nominated book, Griefstrike is a humorous guide to mourning, which he wrote in the wake of his mother’s death. It’s a parody of a grief manual, but also has the occasional “sincerity corner,” where Roeder has little heart-to-hearts with the reader. (And they’re funny, too, but in a different way.) Sections/chapters include: “How much am I allowed to blame God?” with a state by state breakdown of whether you can legally blame God for your loved one’s death. (Massachusetts: “Fuck yeah, you’ll love it.”); “The Grief Calorie Counter” (Returning funeral shoes to Marshall’s: 90 calories); and “Grieving Visualization Power Postures” all of which begin standing nude in your sunroom. If you’ve lost close to you someone recently, or expect to in the future (you will), keep this on hand for some cathartic, mucus-y sob-laughter.

Rating: Four sympathy cards and two hundred and six “I’m so sorry for your loss”es on Facebook from people you maybe knew in high school. Or was it college?

I See You’ve Called in Dead, by John Kenney

MORE GRIEF! Oh my god, it’s almost as if death is funny. It is! It is! Comedy and tragedy are inseperable if you want them to be—and you should. I had the pleasure of being asked to blurb this novel by Thurber Prize winner (For his novel Truth In Advertising) John Kenney, and to quote myself, it is “wise, wry, and heartfelt.” Obituary writer Bud Stanley is in a deep rut after his wife leaves him, and accidentally publishes his own obituary, which costs him his job. It’s only once he gets up close and personal with death—namely by attending the wakes and funerals of strangers—that he figures out how to embrace life again. The humor is subtle and perfect, and you really will come away from this book with a greater appreciation for the precious, fleeting time we get on this earth.

Rating: 4.5 stars (Sometimes the tride and true works just fine.)

Alexandra Petri’s US History: Important Amercan Documents (I Made Up), by Alexandra Petri

NOT ABOUT GRIEF! This is the kind of book you want to keep on your beside table and pick up and read a piece or two from when it’s too late to read the other book you’re reading, because you wasted forty-five minutes doomscrolling through the fascism, and now it’s almost eleven, and you really should go to bed, but you still want to read something, just really quick. (And also, the doomscrolling has made you sad and you want to laugh.) This Thurber Prize stealing winning book is compendium of humor pieces about American history and culture, including “John and Abigail Adams Try Sexting,” “An Oral History of the Oklahoma! Exclamation Point,” “Ayn Rand’s The Little Engine that Could but Preferred Not to” and “The Team at Build-a-Bear Responds on the Thirteenth Anniversary of 9/11.” I laughed out loud multiple times, especially at the part in “An Oral History of the Constitutional Convention” where Gouverneur Morris, who is supposed to be taking notes, starts doodling a man-sized rabbit and passes the drawing around to the other delegates and asks them to weigh in on what kind of clothes it should be wearing. It’s that kind of book.

Rating: A man-sized rabbit and a Thurber Prize

James by Percival Everett

I’m only about eighty pages into James, which reimagines the story of Huckleberry Finn from Jim’s point of view, but I am absolutely riveted. I expected the book to be profound and important and thought-provoking and all of the other things the reviewers have said about it. BUT I did not expect that it would also be quite funny. One of the core sources of this humor is how Jim and other enslaved people, for their own safety and self-preservation, act scrapingly subservient, superstitious, and dim when they’re in the presence of white people, speaking in the sort of broad dialect attributed to Black people in Huckleberry Finn and other books of the time, but speak the King’s English and act like the intelligent, complex, and perceptive human beings they are when they’re amongst themselves. It’s a satrical stroke of genius.

Rating: Liberty and justice for all

And if none of these titles tickle your fancy, some other funny books I recommend include Straight Man by Richard Russo, Cold Comfort Farm by Stella Gibbons, My Sister The Serial Killer, by Oyinkan Braithwaite, and The Girl With The Lower Back Tattoo by Amy Schumer. Oh yeah, and there’s this one, too.

What are your favorite funny books? Please add in the comments below. Happy (non-evil) laughing.

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