Funny Fiction A doctoral student was asked to name some humorous novels. She'd been grinding at graduate school for so long that she drew a blank. She turned to me for help. I could think of two books. I turned to you --- and you deluged me with great ideas, fresh proof that the Internet mantra is true: A smart community is smarter than any individual in it. Result: Here are the 20 funny titles/authors that came up most frequently: Douglas Adams, The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy “Far out in the uncharted backwaters of the unfashionable end of the Western Spiral arm of the Galaxy lies a small unregarded yellow sun...” Kingsley Amis, Lucky Jim  A history lecturer at a backwater English university hates his girlfriend, his job, his boss --- you name it, he hates it. Martin Amis, The Information Two friends, both English writers. One has failed. One is effortlessly successful. The failure decides to ruin his friend. I laughed so hard reading this one night that I woke children up. E.F. Benson, Queen Lucia The first in a series of droll English novels that follow Lucia's efforts to become a cultural arbiter. Christopher Buckley, Thank You For Smoking "Nick Naylor had been called most things since becoming chief spokesman for the Academy of Tobacco Studies, but until now no one had actually compared him to Satan....” Bill Bryson, A Walk in the Woods and The Life and Times of the Thunderbolt Kid In one, Bryson hikes the Appalachian Trail with his out-of-shape friend Katz; in the other, he relives his childhood in Des Moines. But you laugh too hard, you say. This stuff must be made up. For our purposes here, sure.    Meghan Daum, The Quality of Life Report Lucinda Trout is a junior TV producer in New York City. She makes $31,900 doing segments for "New York Up Early." She lives in a one-windowed apartment. Ugh. So she trades it all in for a year in "Prairie City," where she finds unlikely romance, friends who don't wear black and a few funny things about herself. Carl Hiaasen, Tourist Season Someone killed the president of the Miami Chamber of Commerce, cut his legs off and stuffed a rubber alligator down his throat. But what does this have to do with the terrorist group, Las Noches de Diciembre? Joseph Heller, God Knows Not the King David you know. This one is a loudmouth Jewish kid. Christopher Moore, Lamb: The Gospel According to Biff, Christ's Childhood Pal There's a 30-year gap in the Gospels, so Biff, Christ's childhood pal, is brought back from the dead to fill it in. Robert Plunket, My Search for Warren Harding Slapstick and farce. Meanderings galone. Out-of-print, but available. Richard Russo, Straight Man The temporary head of the English department at a small rural college is ordered to make a list of teachers to be fired. Instead, he threatens to kill the campus geese...and then one is found dead. David Sedaris, Me Talk Pretty One Day In which Sedaris explores his North Carolina childhood, his odd jobs and his life in France with his lover. But it's not fiction, you say. Ok, then: fictionalized memoir.  Hunter S. Thompson, Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas Another true story? Sure, if you buy this: “We were somewhere around Barstow on the edge of the desert when the drugs began to take hold..." John Kennedy Toole, A Confederacy of Dunces The adventures of Ignatius J. Reilly, a medieval scholar who lives at home with his mother in New Orleans. As you may know, Toole wrote this one book and killed himself; his mother arranged for its publication. Evelyn Waugh, Vile Bodies The smart set. London. The 20s. Gone forever. Or just morphed into Britney and her crew? Donald Westlake, Thieves Dozen Eleven John Dortmunder stories, jammed with capers. A reader says: “Anything 'Dortmunder' is great for airplanes, if you don't mind disturbing your neighbors with sudden bursts of laughter.” Herman Wouk, Don't Stop the Carnival Norman Paperman, a Broadway publicist, surrenders to his lifelong dream of owning a hotel on a sun-drenched island. He lives to regret it. P.G. Wodehouse, Carry On, Jeeves Ten stories in which Jeeves the butler makes sense of Bertie Wooster's madcap life.  Consider also the British TV series, starring Hugh ("House") Laurie. A weekend's worth of amusing reading? I'd say so. --- by Jesse Kornbluth Copyright 2007 by Head Butler Inc.