Books That Will Get You Weird Looks for Laughing in Public
We ruined products. These authors ruined our composure on public transit. Every link goes to Amazon — buy one and we might earn enough to keep the lights on.
Humor Essays & Memoirs
The gold standard — real people writing about their real lives in ways that make you snort-laugh on the subway.
Me Talk Pretty One Day
David Sedaris
The undisputed king of humor essays. Learning French from a sadistic teacher. His brother's hip-hop slang. Every sentence is a weapon.
Calypso
David Sedaris
Sedaris at his darkest and funniest. Family vacation house. Mortality. A Fitbit obsession. He feeds a tumor to a snapping turtle. Yes, really.
Bossypants
Tina Fey
From middle-school gym nightmare to SNL to 30 Rock. The chapter about her honeymoon cruise alone is worth the cover price.
A Walk in the Woods
Bill Bryson
Two unfit men attempt the Appalachian Trail. Bears. Exhaustion. Bryson's hiking partner eating Little Debbie snack cakes by the box. Already a classic.
I'm a Stranger Here Myself
Bill Bryson
Bryson returns to America after 20 years in England and is baffled by everything. Supermarkets. Motels. The concept of "drive-through." Somehow still relevant.
Let's Pretend This Never Happened
Jenny Lawson
A taxidermist's daughter's memoir. Dead squirrels. A feral cat colony. A dramatic turkey encounter. Lawson is the internet's patron saint of anxious, hilarious oversharing.
Furiously Happy
Jenny Lawson
The sequel where Lawson embraces her mental health chaos and buys a taxidermied raccoon named Rory. If you've ever medicated your anxiety with strange purchases, this is your bible.
Yes Please
Amy Poehler
Part memoir, part life manual, part apology for past haircuts. Poehler writes the way Leslie Knope would if Leslie Knope were real and had done improv in Chicago.
Born a Crime
Trevor Noah
Growing up mixed-race in apartheid South Africa. Should be tragic — and parts are — but Noah tells it so brilliantly it's one of the funniest memoirs ever written.
Is Everyone Hanging Out Without Me?
Mindy Kaling
Kaling on best friends, romance, Hollywood, and why she'll never be a "cool girl." Relatable, sharp, and the literary equivalent of texting your funniest friend.
I Feel Bad About My Neck
Nora Ephron
Getting older, written with the wit of the person who wrote When Harry Met Sally. The title essay alone captures the entire experience of aging in one devastating sentence.
Running with Scissors
Augusten Burroughs
A childhood so bizarre it reads like fiction. His mother gave him to her psychiatrist. The psychiatrist's house had a Christmas tree up year-round. In a dirty living room.
We Are Never Meeting in Real Life
Samantha Irby
Essays on bodily functions, bad dates, and her cats. Irby writes about disaster with the casual confidence of someone who has accepted that everything is chaos.
I Was Told There'd Be Cake
Sloane Crosley
David Sedaris himself called her "perfectly, relentlessly funny." Essays about toy ponies, fire escapes, and the low-grade anxiety of modern adulthood.
Funny Fiction & Novels
Made-up stories that make you laugh harder than most real ones.
The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy
Douglas Adams
Earth is demolished for a hyperspace bypass. The meaning of life is 42. The most important thing an intergalactic hitchhiker can carry is a towel. Absolutely essential.
Catch-22
Joseph Heller
The original absurdist masterpiece. A WWII bombardier tries to get out of flying missions. The military's logic: if you're crazy enough to fly, you're sane; if you ask to stop, you're sane, so you keep flying.
A Confederacy of Dunces
John Kennedy Toole
Ignatius J. Reilly is the most magnificently repulsive protagonist in American literature. 30 years old, living with his mother, medieval philosophy obsession. A comedy that shouldn't work and is somehow perfect.
Good Omens
Terry Pratchett & Neil Gaiman
An angel and a demon team up to prevent the apocalypse because they've grown fond of humanity. Pratchett's wit meets Gaiman's imagination. The Antichrist is an 11-year-old boy who just wants a dog.
Lamb: The Gospel According to Biff
Christopher Moore
The childhood of Jesus, told by his best friend Biff. Somehow both respectful and absolutely hilarious. Moore is a genius at making sacred things funny without making them mean.
Where'd You Go, Bernadette
Maria Semple
An agoraphobic genius architect disappears before a family trip to Antarctica. Told through emails, memos, and documents. Funny, smart, and surprisingly moving.
Lessons in Chemistry
Bonnie Garmus
A 1960s female chemist becomes an accidental cooking show host who teaches housewives about chemistry instead of recipes. Her dog understands over 900 words. Hilarious and furious at the same time.
The Rosie Project
Graeme Simsion
A genetics professor with zero social skills designs a scientifically rigorous questionnaire to find the perfect wife. He meets Rosie, who fails every criterion. Romantic comedy in book form.
Dungeon Crawler Carl
Matt Dinniman
Earth is destroyed and the survivors are dropped into a dungeon-crawl reality show for alien entertainment. Carl and his cat Princess Donut must descend 18 floors. Absurdly funny, surprisingly emotional.
John Dies at the End
David Wong
Cosmic horror meets slacker comedy. A drug called Soy Sauce opens a door to another dimension. Two guys who work at a video store are humanity's last hope. This shouldn't be as good as it is.
Joke & Gag Books That Are Actually Good
The books you buy as gifts that turn out to be genuinely funny.
How to Talk to Your Cat About Gun Safety
Zachary Auburn
Parody of religious pamphlets, but about feline safety topics including abstinence, drugs, and Satanism. The cover alone has sold millions of copies.
5 Very Good Reasons to Punch a Dolphin in the Mouth
The Oatmeal (Matthew Inman)
Comics and essays from The Oatmeal. Includes "Why I'd Rather Be Punched in the Testicles Than Call Customer Service" and other relatable observations.
True Facts That Sound Like Bull$#*t
Shane Carley
500 real facts so absurd they sound fake. The kind of book that starts arguments at dinner parties because nobody believes you until you show them the page.
Hyperbole and a Half
Allie Brosh
The illustrated blog-turned-book. "Clean ALL the things" originated here. Her essay on depression using MS Paint illustrations is one of the most shared pieces of writing on the internet. Funny AND devastating.
The Worst-Case Scenario Survival Handbook
Joshua Piven & David Borgenicht
How to escape from quicksand. How to fend off a shark. How to land a plane. Information you'll never need, presented with deadpan urgency. A bathroom book hall-of-famer.
All My Friends Are Dead
Avery Monsen & Jory John
A dinosaur says "All my friends are dead." A tree says "All my friends have been turned into books." A clown says "All my friends are imaginary." It's 96 pages of this. It's perfect.
Go the F**k to Sleep
Adam Mansbach
A bedtime story for exhausted parents. Samuel L. Jackson narrated the audiobook. That's all the endorsement this needs.
S**t My Dad Says
Justin Halpern
A Twitter account turned book. A 29-year-old moves back in with his 74-year-old father, who says things like "That woman was sexy... Out of your league? Son. Let women figure out why they won't screw you."
Comedy & Entertainment
Written by funny people, about the business of being funny.
The Misadventures of Awkward Black Girl
Issa Rae
Before Insecure, Issa Rae was writing about what it's like to be socially awkward in a world that expects you not to be. Honest, funny, and disarmingly charming.
Year Book
Seth Rogen
Not a traditional memoir — more like a series of interconnected essays about weed, movies, his mother-in-law, and the time he met Kanye West. Funnier than most of his movies.
The Bassoon King
Rainn Wilson
Dwight Schrute's origin story. Wilson on growing up Baha'i, finding comedy, and the surreal experience of becoming America's favorite beet farmer.
Paddle Your Own Canoe
Nick Offerman
Ron Swanson is not Nick Offerman, but Nick Offerman IS pretty close to Ron Swanson. Woodworking, meat, life philosophy. The manliest funny book on this list.
How to Be Perfect
Michael Schur
The creator of The Good Place wrote a book about moral philosophy that's somehow genuinely helpful AND hilarious. Kant, but funny. Utilitarianism, but with jokes.
Failure Is an Option
H. Jon Benjamin
The voice of Archer and Bob's Burgers writes about every failure in his life. The chapter about his jazz album (he can't play piano) resulted in an actual, terrible, released jazz album. Commitment to the bit.
The Classics — Read These First If You Haven’t
If you’re new to funny books, start here. These are the Mount Rushmore.
The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy
Douglas Adams
The funniest sci-fi novel ever written. Period.
Me Talk Pretty One Day
David Sedaris
The funniest essay collection ever written. Fight me.
A Walk in the Woods
Bill Bryson
The funniest travel book ever written. (Bryson has several contenders.)
Catch-22
Joseph Heller
The funniest war novel ever written. Bureaucratic absurdity at its finest.
Bossypants
Tina Fey
The funniest celebrity memoir ever written. (Sorry, everyone else.)
All links go to Amazon. When you buy through our links, we may earn a small commission at no extra cost to you. Think of it as paying us to find funny things for you.
Got a book that made you laugh out loud?
Tell Us