I read it laughing out loud, rolling on the floor, totally devoured it and kept coming back for more for years until my original paperback was in tatters.

Victor Mollo was one of the all time most successful contract bridge players in the UK where they play it as a blood sport. I came across Bridge in the Menagerie when I was still in college, and playing bridge to feed my family. I read it laughing out loud, rolling on the floor, totally devoured it and kept coming back for more for years until my original paperback was in tatters. That original book was long out of print but has now come back in print, but has never been converted to eBook format. However, this sequel can be read without having read the original and by those whose knowledge of bridge is no more than passing. I haven't played a hand myself in probably 15 years, but I'd love to play out the hands in this.
— CRussel

From Goodreads:

Stillwater College in Virginia, 1966. Freshman Peggy, an ingénue with literary pretensions, falls under the spell of Lee, a blue-blooded poet and professor, and they begin an ill-advised affair that results in an unplanned pregnancy and marriage. The couple are mismatched from the start—she’s a lesbian, he’s gay—but it takes a decade of emotional erosion before Peggy runs off with their three-year-old daughter, leaving their nine-year-old son behind.

Worried that Lee will have her committed for her erratic behavior, Peggy goes underground, adopting an African American persona for her and her daughter. They squat in a house in an African American settlement, eventually moving to a housing project where no one questions their true racial identities. As Peggy and Lee’s children grow up, they must contend with diverse emotional issues: Byrdie must deal with his father’s compulsive honesty; while Karen struggles with her mother’s lies—she knows neither her real age, nor that she is “white,” nor that she has any other family.

Years later, a minority scholarship lands Karen at the University of Virginia, where Byrdie is in his senior year. Eventually the long lost siblings will meet, setting off a series of misunderstandings and culminating in a comedic finale worthy of Shakespeare.

"I'll absolutely second Rivers of London/Midnight Riot. This is witty more than funny, but definitely left me regularly chortling and reading passages to my DW. (Best nomination you've made, Jon!)"
— CRussel

My name is Peter Grant and until January I was just probationary constable in that mighty army for justice known to all right-thinking people as the Metropolitan Police Service (as the Filth to everybody else). My only concerns in life were how to avoid a transfer to the Case Progression Unit–we do paperwork so real coppers don't have to–and finding a way to climb into the panties of the outrageously perky WPC Leslie May. Then one night, in pursuance of a murder inquiry, I tried to take a witness statement from someone who was dead but disturbingly voluable, and that brought me to the attention of Inspector Nightingale, the last wizard in England. Now I'm a Detective Constable and a trainee wizard, the first apprentice in fifty years, and my world has become somewhat more complicated: nests of vampires in Purley, negotiating a truce between the warring god and goddess of the Thames, and digging up graves in Covent Garden . . . and there's something festering at the heart of the city I love, a malicious vengeful spirit that takes ordinary Londoners and twists them into grotesque mannequins to act out its drama of violence and despair. The spirit of riot and rebellion has awakened in the city, and it's falling to me to bring order out of chaos–or die trying.

"[O]ne of the funniest books I've ever read."
— Issybird

From Goodreads:

Following the death of a friend, the poet and pets' mortician Dennis Barlow finds himself entering the artificial Hollywood paradise of the Whispering Glades Memorial Park. Within its golden gates, death, American-style, is wrapped up and sold like a package holiday-and Dennis gets drawn into a bizarre love triangle with Aimée Thanatogenos, a naïve Californian corpse beautician, and Mr. Joyboy, a master of the embalmer's art. Waugh's dark and savage satire on the Anglo-American cultural divide depicts a world where reputation, love, and death cost a very great deal.

From The Guardian:

"The temptation when reviewing a David Sedaris book is simply to quote liberally, and enviously, from his endless stock of pithy one-liners. A humorist par excellence, he can make Woody Allen appear ham-tongued, Oscar Wilde a drag. Me Talk Pretty One Day collects tales from both home and abroad, and picks up from where Naked - in which he first introduced his larger-than-life Technicolor family - left off."
— David Vincent

From Goodreads:
David Sedaris' move to Paris from New York inspired these hilarious pieces, including the title essay, about his attempts to learn French from a sadistic teacher who declares that every day spent with you is like having a caesarean section. His family is another inspiration. You Can't Kill the Rooster is a portrait of his brother, who talks incessant hip-hop slang to his bewildered father. And no one hones a finer fury in response to such modern annoyances as restaurant meals presented in ludicrous towers of food and cashiers with six-inch fingernails.

"I saw it on Broadway when Linda Thorson was in the cast, and I laughed so hard during the first two acts, that I didn't have any laughter left inside of me for the third act!"
— GA Russell

From Goodreads:

Noises Off, the classic farce by the Tony Award—winning author of Copenhagen, is not one play but two: simultaneously a traditional sex farce, Nothing On, and the backstage “drama” that develops during Nothing On’s final rehearsal and tour. The two begin to interlock as the characters make their exits from Nothing On only to find themselves making entrances into the even worse nightmare going on backstage. In the end, at the disastrous final performance, the two plots can be kept separate no longer, and coalesce into a single collective nervous breakdown.

Pop culture, chaos theory and matters of the heart collide in this unique novella from the Hugo and Nebula winning author of Doomsday Book. Sandra Foster studies fads and their meanings for the HiTek corporation. Bennet O'Reilly works with monkey group behavior and chaos theory for the same company. When the two are thrust together due to a misdelivered package and a run of seemingly bad luck, they find a joint project in a flock of sheep. But a series of setbacks and disappointments arise before they are able to find answers to their questions.

From The Washington Post:

According to a contemporary review, it was “quite the jolliest crime story that has come our way in many moons.” Yet it’s not at all comic in the manner of, say, a Donald Westlake caper about Dortmunder and his lovable gang of burglars. Black humor, gallows humor, sardonic humor — these better describe the overall tone of Greenwood’s tale of the 83-year-old Dowager Duchess Arabella, Lady Engleton, who decides to do away with a handful of her inconvenient relatives.

Arabella becomes a serial killer for what she believes is the best of reasons. Her own two sons having died, one in the Boer War and the other in the Great War, and the de Birkett family’s fortunes having precipitously declined, she has taken it upon herself to establish her 20-year-old grandson Henry in a manner befitting his noble station. Initially, she persuades various childless in-laws — a dotty clergyman, a blustery India hand, a Harley Street doctor, a stupid businessman, and a pair of sisters, one repulsively fat, the other mousy — to allow her to insure their lives, making Henry the beneficiary. Arabella will naturally pay all the fees against the day — no doubt quite distant, of course — when each finally shuffles off this mortal coil. While maintaining a demeanor of sweetness and innocence, she then starts killing them off, one after the other.

From Goodreads:

In this delightful and delicious book, Calvin Trillin, guided by an insatiable appetite, embarks on a hilarious odyssey in search of “something decent to eat.” Across time zones and cultures, and often with his wife, Alice, at his side, Trillin shares his triumphs in the art of culinary discovery, including Dungeness crabs in California, barbecued mutton in Kentucky, potato latkes in London, blaff d’oursins in Martinique, and a $33 picnic on a no-frills flight to Miami. His eating companions include Fats Goldberg, the New York pizza baron and reformed blimp; William Edgett Smith, the man with the Naughahyde palate; and his six-year-old daughter, Sarah, who refuses to enter a Chinese restaurant unless she is carrying a bagel (“just in case”). And though Alice “has a weird predilection for limiting our family to three meals a day,” on the road she proves to be a serious eater–despite “seemingly uncontrollable attacks of moderation.” Alice, Let Eat amply demonstrates why The New Republic called Calvin Trillin “a classic American humorist.”

From Goodreads:

Wild, dangerous, and flat-out unbelievable, here is the incredible memoir of the Canadian actor, gambler, and raconteur, and one of the greatest stand-up comedians of all time

Norm Macdonald tells the story of his life—more or less—from his rural origins on a farm in the backwoods of Ontario to an epically disastrous appearance on Star Search, from an unbelievable audition for Lorne Michaels to his memorable run as the anchor of Saturday Night Live’s “Weekend Update” (until a couple of O.J. jokes got him fired). But Based on a True Story is much more than just a memoir: it’s the hilarious, inspired epic of Norm’s life.

Told as dispatches from a road trip to Las Vegas with his sidekick and enabler, Adam Eget—a plan hatched to regain the fortune he’d lost to sports betting and other vices—Norm recounts the milestone moments of his life: the regrets, the love affairs, the times that Fortune smiled on him, and the times it did not. As the clock ticks down, Norm’s debt reaches record heights, and he must find a way to evade the hefty price that’s been placed on his head by one of the most dangerous loan sharks in the country.

As a comedy legend should, Norm peppers these pages with classic jokes and long-mythologized Hollywood stories. This tense, wildly adventurous, totally original, and absurdly funny memoir turns the conventional “comic’s memoir” on its head and gives the reader an exclusive glimpse inside the mad, glorious mind of Norm Macdonald.

I read it laughing out loud, rolling on the floor, totally devoured it and kept coming back for more for years until my original paperback was in tatters.

Victor Mollo was one of the all time most successful contract bridge players in the UK where they play it as a blood sport. I came across Bridge in the Menagerie when I was still in college, and playing bridge to feed my family. I read it laughing out loud, rolling on the floor, totally devoured it and kept coming back for more for years until my original paperback was in tatters. That original book was long out of print but has now come back in print, but has never been converted to eBook format. However, this sequel can be read without having read the original and by those whose knowledge of bridge is no more than passing. I haven't played a hand myself in probably 15 years, but I'd love to play out the hands in this.
— CRussel

From Goodreads:

Stillwater College in Virginia, 1966. Freshman Peggy, an ingénue with literary pretensions, falls under the spell of Lee, a blue-blooded poet and professor, and they begin an ill-advised affair that results in an unplanned pregnancy and marriage. The couple are mismatched from the start—she’s a lesbian, he’s gay—but it takes a decade of emotional erosion before Peggy runs off with their three-year-old daughter, leaving their nine-year-old son behind.

Worried that Lee will have her committed for her erratic behavior, Peggy goes underground, adopting an African American persona for her and her daughter. They squat in a house in an African American settlement, eventually moving to a housing project where no one questions their true racial identities. As Peggy and Lee’s children grow up, they must contend with diverse emotional issues: Byrdie must deal with his father’s compulsive honesty; while Karen struggles with her mother’s lies—she knows neither her real age, nor that she is “white,” nor that she has any other family.

Years later, a minority scholarship lands Karen at the University of Virginia, where Byrdie is in his senior year. Eventually the long lost siblings will meet, setting off a series of misunderstandings and culminating in a comedic finale worthy of Shakespeare.

"I'll absolutely second Rivers of London/Midnight Riot. This is witty more than funny, but definitely left me regularly chortling and reading passages to my DW. (Best nomination you've made, Jon!)"
— CRussel

My name is Peter Grant and until January I was just probationary constable in that mighty army for justice known to all right-thinking people as the Metropolitan Police Service (as the Filth to everybody else). My only concerns in life were how to avoid a transfer to the Case Progression Unit–we do paperwork so real coppers don't have to–and finding a way to climb into the panties of the outrageously perky WPC Leslie May. Then one night, in pursuance of a murder inquiry, I tried to take a witness statement from someone who was dead but disturbingly voluable, and that brought me to the attention of Inspector Nightingale, the last wizard in England. Now I'm a Detective Constable and a trainee wizard, the first apprentice in fifty years, and my world has become somewhat more complicated: nests of vampires in Purley, negotiating a truce between the warring god and goddess of the Thames, and digging up graves in Covent Garden . . . and there's something festering at the heart of the city I love, a malicious vengeful spirit that takes ordinary Londoners and twists them into grotesque mannequins to act out its drama of violence and despair. The spirit of riot and rebellion has awakened in the city, and it's falling to me to bring order out of chaos–or die trying.

"[O]ne of the funniest books I've ever read."
— Issybird

From Goodreads:

Following the death of a friend, the poet and pets' mortician Dennis Barlow finds himself entering the artificial Hollywood paradise of the Whispering Glades Memorial Park. Within its golden gates, death, American-style, is wrapped up and sold like a package holiday-and Dennis gets drawn into a bizarre love triangle with Aimée Thanatogenos, a naïve Californian corpse beautician, and Mr. Joyboy, a master of the embalmer's art. Waugh's dark and savage satire on the Anglo-American cultural divide depicts a world where reputation, love, and death cost a very great deal.

From The Guardian:

"The temptation when reviewing a David Sedaris book is simply to quote liberally, and enviously, from his endless stock of pithy one-liners. A humorist par excellence, he can make Woody Allen appear ham-tongued, Oscar Wilde a drag. Me Talk Pretty One Day collects tales from both home and abroad, and picks up from where Naked - in which he first introduced his larger-than-life Technicolor family - left off."
— David Vincent

From Goodreads:
David Sedaris' move to Paris from New York inspired these hilarious pieces, including the title essay, about his attempts to learn French from a sadistic teacher who declares that every day spent with you is like having a caesarean section. His family is another inspiration. You Can't Kill the Rooster is a portrait of his brother, who talks incessant hip-hop slang to his bewildered father. And no one hones a finer fury in response to such modern annoyances as restaurant meals presented in ludicrous towers of food and cashiers with six-inch fingernails.

"I saw it on Broadway when Linda Thorson was in the cast, and I laughed so hard during the first two acts, that I didn't have any laughter left inside of me for the third act!"
— GA Russell

From Goodreads:

Noises Off, the classic farce by the Tony Award—winning author of Copenhagen, is not one play but two: simultaneously a traditional sex farce, Nothing On, and the backstage “drama” that develops during Nothing On’s final rehearsal and tour. The two begin to interlock as the characters make their exits from Nothing On only to find themselves making entrances into the even worse nightmare going on backstage. In the end, at the disastrous final performance, the two plots can be kept separate no longer, and coalesce into a single collective nervous breakdown.

Pop culture, chaos theory and matters of the heart collide in this unique novella from the Hugo and Nebula winning author of Doomsday Book. Sandra Foster studies fads and their meanings for the HiTek corporation. Bennet O'Reilly works with monkey group behavior and chaos theory for the same company. When the two are thrust together due to a misdelivered package and a run of seemingly bad luck, they find a joint project in a flock of sheep. But a series of setbacks and disappointments arise before they are able to find answers to their questions.

From The Washington Post:

According to a contemporary review, it was “quite the jolliest crime story that has come our way in many moons.” Yet it’s not at all comic in the manner of, say, a Donald Westlake caper about Dortmunder and his lovable gang of burglars. Black humor, gallows humor, sardonic humor — these better describe the overall tone of Greenwood’s tale of the 83-year-old Dowager Duchess Arabella, Lady Engleton, who decides to do away with a handful of her inconvenient relatives.

Arabella becomes a serial killer for what she believes is the best of reasons. Her own two sons having died, one in the Boer War and the other in the Great War, and the de Birkett family’s fortunes having precipitously declined, she has taken it upon herself to establish her 20-year-old grandson Henry in a manner befitting his noble station. Initially, she persuades various childless in-laws — a dotty clergyman, a blustery India hand, a Harley Street doctor, a stupid businessman, and a pair of sisters, one repulsively fat, the other mousy — to allow her to insure their lives, making Henry the beneficiary. Arabella will naturally pay all the fees against the day — no doubt quite distant, of course — when each finally shuffles off this mortal coil. While maintaining a demeanor of sweetness and innocence, she then starts killing them off, one after the other.

From Goodreads:

In this delightful and delicious book, Calvin Trillin, guided by an insatiable appetite, embarks on a hilarious odyssey in search of “something decent to eat.” Across time zones and cultures, and often with his wife, Alice, at his side, Trillin shares his triumphs in the art of culinary discovery, including Dungeness crabs in California, barbecued mutton in Kentucky, potato latkes in London, blaff d’oursins in Martinique, and a $33 picnic on a no-frills flight to Miami. His eating companions include Fats Goldberg, the New York pizza baron and reformed blimp; William Edgett Smith, the man with the Naughahyde palate; and his six-year-old daughter, Sarah, who refuses to enter a Chinese restaurant unless she is carrying a bagel (“just in case”). And though Alice “has a weird predilection for limiting our family to three meals a day,” on the road she proves to be a serious eater–despite “seemingly uncontrollable attacks of moderation.” Alice, Let Eat amply demonstrates why The New Republic called Calvin Trillin “a classic American humorist.”

From Goodreads:

Wild, dangerous, and flat-out unbelievable, here is the incredible memoir of the Canadian actor, gambler, and raconteur, and one of the greatest stand-up comedians of all time

Norm Macdonald tells the story of his life—more or less—from his rural origins on a farm in the backwoods of Ontario to an epically disastrous appearance on Star Search, from an unbelievable audition for Lorne Michaels to his memorable run as the anchor of Saturday Night Live’s “Weekend Update” (until a couple of O.J. jokes got him fired). But Based on a True Story is much more than just a memoir: it’s the hilarious, inspired epic of Norm’s life.

Told as dispatches from a road trip to Las Vegas with his sidekick and enabler, Adam Eget—a plan hatched to regain the fortune he’d lost to sports betting and other vices—Norm recounts the milestone moments of his life: the regrets, the love affairs, the times that Fortune smiled on him, and the times it did not. As the clock ticks down, Norm’s debt reaches record heights, and he must find a way to evade the hefty price that’s been placed on his head by one of the most dangerous loan sharks in the country.

As a comedy legend should, Norm peppers these pages with classic jokes and long-mythologized Hollywood stories. This tense, wildly adventurous, totally original, and absurdly funny memoir turns the conventional “comic’s memoir” on its head and gives the reader an exclusive glimpse inside the mad, glorious mind of Norm Macdonald.