5 Reasons It's Impossible to Find Funny Books

5

The "Humor" Section at Every Bookstore Is Terrible

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Have you ever been to the humor section at a Barnes & Noble? It's a freaking nightmare. Sure, some books that end up in it might be pretty funny (and one book found in the humor section in particular is not only the funniest book ever written, but also remarkably affordable), but for the most part, you'll find old comic book anthologies, books full of funny party jokes that are, without exception, horrendous and small coffee table books that started out as Internet blogs/memes.

4

"Funny" Is Slapped on the Jacket of Almost Every Novel Ever Written

No novel ever written is completely devoid of jokes, so, as a result, the description on the back or inside cover of almost every novel says something like "At equal times heartbreaking, intense and totally funny, this book is a must-read" or "Exhilarating and sexy, with a great sense of humor!" Go into a bookstore and pick up any novel, and I guarantee you one out of every three will have either "surprisingly hilarious" or "flat out funny!" slapped on there. The government should honestly be able to step in and legislate the number of times publishing houses can advertise their books as "funny." The back of my copy of Jonathan Franzen's The Corrections says "surprisingly funny," and I guess there are a few funny lines, but at the end of the day, it's a book about Parkinson's disease and an entire family that suffers from depression.

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3

Comedians/Comedy Writers Would Rather Write Memoirs and Essays

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Tina Fey, one of the best writers to ever come out of Saturday Night Live, Paul Feig, creator of Freaks and Geeks, The Office's Mindy Kaling, Michael Ian Black and Patton Oswalt are all very funny, and they've all written memoirs or books of essays. And that's fine, because those books are great, but, again, if you're looking for a Simpsons episode in book form, you won't find it (except, perhaps, for that one written by a Simpsons writer, which is actually very good).

There are a few exceptions. Steve Martin writes novels and Hugh Laurie wrote The Gun Seller, one of the coolest and funniest books I've ever read, but for the most part, you're left wandering around bookstores, hoping that this random book that has "funny" in the description actually means it, because at any given time, the No. 1 book on Amazon in the category of humor is probably just a bunch of stories about Chelsea Handler fucking.

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2

There Aren't Book Studios/Production Companies

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I really like Paul Feig (director of Bridesmaids and many Arrested Development episodes). I know that whenever he writes or directs or produces something, it's going to line up with my own comedic sensibilities. I've found that this is also true about the company he keeps. A small community of like-minded writers and creators emerged (Greg Daniels, Judd Apatow, Nicholas Stoller, David Gordon Green, Seth Rogen, Mitch Hurwitz, Jason Segel, Edgar Wright, Simon Pegg), and so now I know that, if any of those guys does something, I'll probably like it. I can rely on the Apatow Company to consistently churn out stuff that usually matches the kind of stuff I like.

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Uh ... mostly.

1

Even the Internet Sucks at Finding Funny Books

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Bonus Entry: The Funniest Books I've Read

In an effort to fix this problem and provide a home for hilarious novels, I'm going to leave a list of my favorites here, with the hopes that you all do the same in the comments.

Lamb -- Christopher Moore (I've certainly mentioned it enough already)

Lucky Jim -- Kingsley Amis

Catch-22 -- Joseph Heller

John Dies at the End -- David Wong

A Confederacy of Dunces -- John Kennedy Toole

The Long Dark Tea-Time of the Soul -- Douglas Adams

Most of Kurt Vonnegut's stuff

High Fidelity -- Nick Hornby

Any book featuring Philip Marlowe -- Raymond Chandler

That's all I can think of right now. What about you guys?

Daniel O'Brien is Cracked.com's Senior Writer (ladies), and would love to write funny books for the people (the people).

For more from Dan, check out My Brief Time as a Crewmember Aboard the USS Enterprise and Storyboards from Michael Bay's The Great Gatsby.