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Underground > Books, Criticism & Writing >

Fun novels

12:31 / 09.10.03

Of late, there has been a fair bit of discussion in this forum on why you read what you read, whether you care if people see you reading it, and so forth. So, I was wondering if anyone had any recommendations as to books to read which are just plain fun, rather than something you might feel like you 'have' to read...

I ask because I am currently reading (or rather, frequently coming home too tired to read) Cocaine by Dominic Streatfield. Whilst this is likeable, and not particularly complex, it still contains, well, a lot of facts. The next book on my list of things to read is Tristram Shandy. I have never heard this tome described as 'not particularly complex'. Thus, I want read things which are enjoyable and also entirely substanceless -if you have any recommendations, please let me know...

12:53 / 09.10.03

One of the most pant wettingly funny books I've ever read is A Prayer For Owen Meany by John Irving. I gave my copy away and am going to be compelled to re-buy it. It's 600 pages of sheer pleasure. It does have a lot of substace meditations on God, predestination, that kind of thing but it's still great

Failing that, to state the damn obvious - PG Wodehouse. Btw, I've only some of read the Jeeves & Wooster books. What are the other ones like?

13:37 / 09.10.03

Here's a thread from a wee while ago full of good suggestions for funny reads, Vincennes.

In addition to the stuff mentioned in that thread, I recently read some of Stephen Fry's (not given a universally good crit on the board here) but I found them satisfactorily slight (with occasional grabs for some depth) and often both wrily and uproariously funny.

13:44 / 09.10.03

I'm currently finding Steve Aylett's novels to be an absolute hoot.

And I also continue to dig not-terribly-improving crime books of the Elmore Leonard, Joe R. Lansdale variety.

And then there's Robert Rankin..

15:00 / 09.10.03

Thanks Xoc, I did do a search for stuff like this but missed that thread -in that case, frivolous yet not funny books are very welcome indeed!

Oooooh, PG Wodehouse. What a joy. Jeeves and Wooster is the best series he did (never really got into the Blandings ones) but some of the one-off novels he did were wonderful... might look some more of those out, then...

09:11 / 10.10.03

I’ve only just started to indulge in Wodehouseianiam (much to my shame), but I think the enjoyment varies slightly depending on how much you like the characters – Jeeves and Wooster are the apex for me, though I like Psmith a lot too. Blandings is still great, but not quite as good, for my money. Dunno if you can find it, but there’s an omnibus called “What Ho ! The Best of” which has a slice of most things, which I enjoyed as a taster of PGW’s work.

As for fun books, I recently rattled through ‘Christie Malry’s Own Double-Entry’ by BS Johnson, which was fun, though disappointing if you’re inferring porn from the title. ‘The List of Seven’ by Mark Frost is a fun thriller not a million miles from League of Extraordinary Gents territory, and almost anything by Jonathan Carroll tends, in my experience, to be easy to get through and enjoyable, as well as having some interesting ideas behind the story. And I enjoyed ‘Good Omens’ by Pratchett and Gaiman, which is more mirth-centric than most of my preceding suggestions.

11:23 / 10.10.03

I'd like to second the Robert Rankin suggestion (can you second a suggestion rather than a nomination?).

If you want real fluff, but a good fun read, I can also recommend 'Are You Dave Gorman?' by Dave Gorman and Danny Wallace and 'Join Me' by Danny Wallace.

11:24 / 10.10.03

Oh, and yes, I know they're not novels but what the hell...

Grand Panjandrum of the Pointless

12:28 / 10.10.03

Saki- PGW's evil twin. Writes excellent short stories about amoral Edwardian aesthetes.

Psmith (the P is silent as in Pshrimp) beats J&W hands down any day.

Barry Pain The Problem Club A strange bit of fluff from the 1910s or 20s, can't quite recall which. All about a club of assorted gents who have to accomplish one surreal task per month, with a large cash prize for the best performance. Severely out of print but should be findable secondhand.
Pain was George Orwell's favourite good bad writer

12:38 / 10.10.03

I really like the Bridget Jones books. Sarah Walters' novels are great reads, too, though they're set in Victorian times and will probably educate you about mediumistic practices, music-hall programmes, etc, so if you really don't want to learn any facts at all, they might not be for you.

I'm currently also really into genre books that were written before the genre settled down and became defined: the two prime examples are Isobel Miller's Patience and Sarah (lesbian romance written just before the 70s lesbian-feminist novel started redefining its terms) and Dodie Smith's I Capture the Castle (Young Adult fiction, again, written just before the rules were set for differentiating YA from 'adult' literature).

I comfort-read Margaret Atwood a lot, but people tell me that's just me and actually Cat's Eye is really upsetting.

at the scarwash

18:52 / 10.10.03

Well, not a novel, actually, but one of my favorite reads when I'm down and need a bag of literary Cheetos is The Naked Civil Servant by Quentin Crisp. Sure, it deals with being beaten up and discriminated against because of the color of one's sin, but the writing is so supple and witty, and the subject so inspiring that I always leave it feeling better about myself.

Brigade du jour

20:54 / 12.10.03

A propos of Deva's suggestion, I recommend anything by Mike Gayle. Frequently hailed as a male Bridget Jones (or rather a male Helen Fielding I suppose) and that's probably a fair assessment. I've read three of his four(?) novels and they are jolly easy and kind of nice. Odd moment of emotional upheaval and stuff otherwise there'd be no drama, but generally it's witty and warm and approachable.

Goodness Gracious Meme

02:32 / 13.10.03

Things I can read with massive or no concentration, and all points in between:

JKR, Armistead Maupin - wonderful, touching, funny, and so easy to read it's untrue, Jacqueline Susaan, Dorothy L Sayers.

(like Deva with Atwood, i can comfort-read JS while other people find her utterly depressing.)

Other stuff: Conan Doyle/sherlock holmes, kevin sampson, Wodehouse (Pref the j/w/blandings/uncle fred stuff meself), Syvlia Engdahl(who i'm sure i've mentioned before,but *great* YA sci-fi)

on the YA tip, *Love* The Adventures of Feluda - Bengali director Satyajit Ray for years wrote detective stories for a children's fiction magazine, Sandesh. They're fab.

Oh, and various lesbian 'tec series, have a real soft spot for these.

non fiction: nick hornby's fever pitch. light and rather lovely. Tony adam's 'addicted': tough but easy to read and engrossing.

in fact, this kind of stuff is all i read.

08:19 / 13.10.03

For fun and easy I like Pratchett's Discworld books.

If you're not familiar, it could be described as, "what if A Hitchiker's Guide to the Galaxy were in the fantasy genre" except that at some undefined point in the series he switched over from satirizing the fantasy genre to satirizing the real world through fantasy.
I can read his thickest book in a day and it's about 400 pages. He quietly plays with the time honored cliches of how one uses hyperbole and asimiles in this quiet offhand manner that just kills me every time. Whenever I'm working on a show that just devours my higher analytical thought processes to the point of nigh-epileptic fits, his books pick me right back up.

09:45 / 13.10.03

BiP: Armistead Maupin!! God, I love those books, need to go buy RIGHT NOW.

Just as an aside does anybody get off on the New English Library pulp stuff like Richard Allen's Skinhead books or the Chopper series (Hell's Angels) by someone I can't remember. They're fun I suppose (if you can handle the racism, misogyny, violence and so on).

10:11 / 21.10.03

Yes, Armistead Maupin - delightful. And I'm with Deva on Margaret Atwood, although I'd debate tarring her with the 'fun and frivolous' brush, not because her books are depressing but because I genuinely believe she's one of the greatest female writers of this century. I'm just not sure you can put her in the same box as Helen Fielding, sorry.

For interesting and readable, which I find an easier category than fun and frivolous I would suggest anything by Douglas Kennedy, especially 'The Big Picture' which is a novel about changing identity and his new book 'A Special Relationship' which I have just read and which was unputdownable. Also there's a book by Wally Lamb called 'She's Come Undone' which is one of my all time greatest books of all time, and which I would recommend to anyone, not in the least because it's the best writing of a female character I've come across in a long time, yet it's written by a man.

Scrubb is on a downward spiral

17:11 / 22.10.03

Yay for Armistead Maupin and Margaret Atwood in the bath (that's, y'know, reading them, not scrubbing them both down), especially Cat's Eye and The Robber Bride.

Also - the Malory Towers and St Clare's canon, even though I know them off by heart.

And - The Buddha of Suburbia makes me happy too with minimum brain engagement.

No star here laces

08:49 / 23.10.03

I'd like to give a big shout out to the crime fiction massive on this thread, mans like the Ed McBain, Sarah Paretsky, Joe R Lansdale, Ian Rankin, Patricia Cornwell, Robert B Parker and Dick Francis

They sell 'em in airports for a reason...

12:20 / 23.10.03

Zodiac and The Big U, both 1980s novels by Neal Stephenson. The former has an eco-warrior with a hilariously high opinion of himself (somewhat deserved) squaring off against yuppie polluters. The latter, Stephenson's first, is obviously a first novel, sort of a cross between National Lampoon's Animal House and J.G. Ballard's High Rise, but it's got the Julian Jaynes "bicameral mind" theme he later used in Snow Crash. The Big U is a little hard to find, since Stephenson really wanted to forget about it, but it's very entertaining (especially the guy shocking the Wargamers Club by playing as the Nazi Germans and winning) and it was reprinted once. It may even be available online.

Brigade du jour

21:57 / 23.10.03

Oh, has anybody mentioned Elmore Leonard yet?

17:11 / 26.10.03

Another shout for Wodehouse. I am indebted for the Psmith recommendations. Have often found J&W a big comfy sofa for the soul, so look forward to better.

12:51 / 28.10.03

Thanks for the Atwood recommendations, people -I read A Handmaid's Tale and thoroughly enjoyed it, and then read The Edible Woman which didn't inspire me to look at anything else of hers. Will give her another shot now...

I liked the Psmith book I've read, and will probably go secondhand bookshop trawling for PGW tonight -the main problem with them is that I end up actually talking like Psmith, to the great irritation of all around me.

16:42 / 30.10.03

Vincennes, The Edible Woman was I think the first book Margaret Atwood wrote, and for me it was a bit overly symbolic. I much prefer the others. If you liked the Handmaid's Tale, you definitely should try her again, because her other books are much more like that than The Edible Woman, if you know what I mean. Go and read Cat's Eye. Or Bodily Harm. Or The Robber Bride. Or...or...

16:51 / 12.11.03

francesca lia block's books are beautiful and engaging, but meant for "young adult" readers, so they are easy reads that you can usually do in a day or so. the whole weetzie bat series is fun, but the hanged man is darker.

05:45 / 01.12.03

Any of Chuck Pahlaniuk's books are really easy to read. The subject matter is always kinda heavy, but you swallow them whole.

foot long subbacultcha

15:00 / 01.12.03

I've got a thing for David Gemmell's novels. High on emotional drama, heroic adventure, skillful characterization. Ridiculously easy to read. Only works on paper but somehow a DG novel sits in your head as a blockbuster movie.

21:03 / 04.12.03

The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie by Muriel Spark. Plenty of substance, but fluidity of prose + intelligence of wit = an easy and enjoyable read. One of the finest examples of post-war English Lit.

Yotsuba & Benjamin!

12:24 / 05.12.03

Lemony Snicket's A Series Of Unfortunate Events are top drawer fun and there's a childlike glee to be found in figuring out all of its mysteries, tied up in anagrams and secret codes. They're brilliant. Encyclopedia Brown by way of Vladimir Nabokov. They need their own thread.

13:02 / 05.12.03

A Prayer For Owen Meany - I hated that book! Might have had something to do with reading it in high school English, I don't know.

I like Atwood for easy reads too, though I thought The Robber Bride sucked. Cat's Eye is great. I confess to reading a Dean Koontz here & there - on dismal Sundays, with a pot of coffee.

13:57 / 07.12.03

Are the Lemony Snicket books the ones where basically the plot of each is lots of unpleasant things happening to this one family of children? I'd never really looked into those, because I read a bad review of them (that's awful, must be far too easily swayed...) but the Nabokov reference there got me interested!

Also - The Prime Of Miss Jean Brodie -yes! It's excellent isn't it... do you know if Muriel Spark did anything else good?

19:03 / 07.12.03

Murel Spark: 'A Far Cry from Kensington' is the only other novel of her's which i've read. Written in the late 1980's but set soon after the war, it's as witty and as pleasurable a read as 'Brodie' but essentially a very different kind of book. Actually, from what I recall there was a slight air of magic realism about it, reminiscent of Gabriel Garcia Marquez. Speaking of whom... i've recently enjoyed 'Of Love and Other Demons'. I've yet to read a Marquez novel that i haven't fallen in love with. As far as i'm concerned his passion and imagination is unparalleled amongst his contemporaries, and as this particular book is one of his least difficult i'd especially recommend everybody to give it a read.

21:21 / 16.12.03

I always thought Candide by Voltaire was one of the simplest and enjoyable books I have ever read. Got my friend to read it, and before she started it she kept complaining about having to read this difficult intellectual book, but she found it very enntertaining. I think that was her second and last book she ever picked up tho.

15:11 / 17.12.03

Oh, I was going to here mention that I'm re-reading Pynchon's Mason and Dixon, and finding it extremely "fun", though after reading the topic abstract I'm afraid it might qualify as slightly difficult. So forget that. But it is fun.

08:23 / 14.01.04

Apologies for the bumping of my own thread, but so everyone who gave suggestions knows I'm not just reading this and thinking "Yeah, whatever"... I bought Cat's Eye and A Prayer For Owen Meany with the Christmas book tokens, and am happy to discover that these are not only fun novels, but relatively big fun novels, which should keep me in reading matter for the rest of the term. Excellent!

12:08 / 14.01.04

How I envy a person who's about to read Owen Meany for the first time.

And on a Wodehouse tip, if you've liked the Jeeves & Woosters, Kyril Bonfiglioli's Mortdecai Trilogy is worth a look. It's about as good a homage as you'll find; although someone will probably slate me for saying so. Nevertheless, 'fun' would be the word.