The news cycle is driving us to the edge of madness, so why not switch off, unplug and pick up a book? We know you could use a laugh right now — and luckily, several thousand of you told us all about the books, stories and poems that make you laugh.
We took your votes (more than 7,000 of them!) and with the help of our panel of expert judges — people so cool and so hilarious I’m surprised they even talked to me — created this list of 100 reads designed to make you laugh out loud. Want slice-of-life essays? Loopy poetry? Surreal one-panel cartoons? Blackly comic novels? Texts from famous literary figures? Scroll down — we’ve got it all.
As with all our reader polls, this is a curated list and not a straight-up popularity contest; you’ll see that the books are grouped into categories rather than ranked from one to 100.
And, as always, there are a few things that didn’t make the list — surprisingly, Shakespeare didn’t get enough votes to make it to the semifinals, and our judges decided the immortal Bard of Avon didn’t exactly need our help to find new readers. (But read some Shakespeare anyhow, just for the scorching burns in Much Ado About Nothing.) Then there were books that didn’t quite stand the test of time, or were so new we couldn’t tell whether they’d stand up.
Some of the authors on this list are incredibly popular, and you voted them in over and over again (three guesses as to whom, and the first two don’t count, David Sedaris). Because space is limited, we try to hold each author to one spot on the list, but there are some exceptions — in 2015, for the romance poll, we created the Nora Roberts Rule. We’ve applied it somewhat … flexibly, but it generally means that each year, one particularly beloved or prolific author gets two spots on the list. This year, we used it for an actual Nora, Nora Ephron, which our judges thought was the perfect application.
And speaking of our judges, you will find a couple of their works on the list this year — we don’t let judges vote for their own work, but readers loved Samantha Irby’s We Are Never Meeting In Real Life and Guy Branum’s My Life as a Goddess, so the panel agreed they should stay.
Laughter is the best medicine, or so we hear — so read two (heck, read three) and call us in the morning!
To make navigating the list a little easier, click these links to get to each category: Memoirs, Essays, Comics & Cartoons, Novels, Fantasy & Science Fiction, Nonfiction, Kids’ Books & YA, Poetry, Classics, Short Stories and … Deep Thoughts (no, really, just Deep Thoughts. We couldn’t figure out where else to put it).
Memoirs
Born A Crime
Stories from a South African Childhood
by Trevor Noah
Fear And Loathing In Las Vegas
A Savage Journey To The Heart Of The American Dream
by Hunter S. Thompson
Bossypants
by Tina Fey
Funny In Farsi
A Memoir of Growing Up Iranian in America
by Firoozeh Dumas
I Feel Bad About My Neck
And Other Thoughts on Being a Woman
by Nora Ephron
Wishful Drinking
by Carrie Fisher
Let’s Pretend This Never Happened
A Mostly True Memoir
by Jenny Lawson
Is Everyone Hanging Out Without Me? (And Other Concerns)
by Mindy Kaling
My Life As A Goddess
A Memoir Through (Un)popular Culture
by Guy Branum
Priestdaddy
by Patricia Lockwood
Running With Scissors
A Memoir
by Augusten Burroughs
Life Among The Savages
by Shirley Jackson
The Last Black Unicorn
by Tiffany Haddish
Ayoade On Ayoade
A Cinematic Odyssey
by Richard Ayoade
Yes Please
by Amy Poehler
Essays
I Was Told There’d Be Cake
by Sloane Crosley
Me Talk Pretty One Day
by David Sedaris
Assassination Vacation
by Sarah Vowell
Half Empty
by David Rakoff
Cool, Calm, And Contentious
by Merrill Markoe
We Are Never Meeting In Real Life
Essays
by Samantha Irby
If Life Is A Bowl Of Cherries What Am I Doing In The Pits
by Erma Bombeck
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You Can’t Touch My Hair
And Other Things I Still Have to Explain
by Phoebe Robinson
I Can’t Date Jesus
Love, Sex, Family, Race, and Other Reasons I’ve Put My Faith in Beyonce
by Michael Arceneaux
The Awkward Thoughts Of W. Kamau Bell
Tales of a 6′ 4, African American, Heterosexual, Cisgender, Left-Leaning, Asthmatic, Black and Proud Blerd, Mama’s Boy, Dad, and Stand-Up Comedian
by W. Kamau Bell
One Day We’ll All Be Dead And None Of This Will Matter
by Scaachi Koul
So Sad Today
Personal Essays
by Melissa Broder
The Fran Lebowitz Reader
by Fran Lebowitz
The Misadventures Of Awkward Black Girl
by Issa Rae
Vacationland
True Stories from Painful Beaches
by John Hodgman
You’ll Grow Out Of It
by Jessi Klein
Comics And Cartoons
Nimona
by Noelle Stevenson
Hark! A Vagrant
by Kate Beaton
Almost Completely Baxter
New and Selected Blurtings
by Glen Baxter and Marlin Canasteen
The Complete Far Side
by Gary Larson
Can’t We Talk About Something More Pleasant?
A Memoir
by Roz Chast
The Great Outdoor Fight
by Chris Onstad
Woman World
by Aminder Dhaliwal
Hyperbole And A Half
Unfortunate Situations, Flawed Coping Mechanisms, Mayhem, and Other Things That Happened
by Allie Brosh
The Unbeatable Squirrel Girl (Comics)
by Ryan North and Erica Henderson
The Essential Calvin And Hobbes
A Calvin and Hobbes Treasury
by Bill Watterson
Trust No Aunty
by Maria Qamar
Novels
Bridget Jones’s Diary
by Helen Fielding
A Confederacy Of Dunces
by John Kennedy Toole
Catch-22
by Joseph Heller
French Exit
by Patrick Dewitt
Crazy Rich Asians
by Kevin Kwan
Dear Committee Members
by Julie Schumacher
High Fidelity
by Nick Hornby
The Princess Bride
S. Morgenstern’s Classic Tale of True Love and High Adventure
by William Goldman
Heartburn
by Nora Ephron
Big Trouble
by Dave Barry
In God We Trust
All Others Pay Cash
by Jean Shepherd
Lamb
The Gospel According to Biff, Christ’s Childhood Pal
by Christopher Moore
Jitterbug Perfume
by Tom Robbins
Daisy Fay And The Miracle Man
by Fannie Flagg
Less
by Andrew Sean Greer
The Sellout
by Paul Beatty
Made For Love
by Alissa Nutting
My Sister, The Serial Killer
by Oyinkan Braithwaite
The World According To Garp
by John Irving
Nobody’s Fool
by Richard Russo
Skinny Dip
by Carl Hiaasen
The Wangs Vs. The World
by Jade Chang
Fantasy And Science Fiction
Discworld (Series)
A Discworld Novel
by Terry Pratchett
The Tough Guide To Fantasyland
by Diana Wynne Jones
To Say Nothing Of The Dog
by Connie Willis
The Hitchhiker’s Guide To The Galaxy (Series)
by Douglas Adams
Thursday Next (Series)
by Jasper Fforde
Nonfiction
A Walk In The Woods
Rediscovering America on the Appalachian Trail
by Bill Bryson
How To Weep In Public
Feeble Offerings on Depression from One Who Knows
by Jacqueline Novak
The New Joys Of Yiddish
by Leo Rosten and Lawrence Bush
Shrill
Notes from a Loud Woman
by Lindy West
How To Be A Woman
by Caitlin Moran
Stiff
The Curious Lives of Human Cadavers
by Mary Roach
Kids’ Books And YA
Sal & Gabi Break The Universe
by Carlos Hernandez
Sideways Stories From Wayside School
by Louis Sachar
The Phantom Tollbooth
by Norton Juster and Jules Feiffer
Angus, Thongs And Full-Frontal Snogging
Confessions of Georgia Nicolson
by Louise Rennison
The Stinky Cheese Man And Other Fairly Stupid Tales
by Jon Scieszka and Lane Smith
Poetry
Where The Sidewalk Ends
The Poems and Drawings of Shel Silverstein
by Shel Silverstein
Archy And Mehitabel
by Don Marquis
The Best Of Ogden Nash
by Ogden Nash and Linell Nash Smith
Classics
Clouds
by Aristophanes
Jeeves And Wooster (Series)
by P. G. Wodehouse
Candide
by Voltaire
Cold Comfort Farm
by Stella Gibbons
Pride And Prejudice
by Jane Austen
Roughing It
by Mark Twain
Importance Of Being Earnest
by Oscar Wilde
The Loved One
An Anglo-American Tragedy
by Evelyn Waugh
Lucky Jim
by Kingsley Amis
The Portable Dorothy Parker
by Dorothy Parker and Marion Meade
Three Men In A Boat (To Say Nothing Of The Dog)
by Jerome K. Jerome and Geoffrey Harvey
The Pursuit Of Love
by Nancy Mitford
My Life and Hard Times
by James Thurber
The Benchley Roundup
by Robert Benchley and Nathaniel Benchley
Short Stories
Texts From Jane Eyre
And Other Conversations with Your Favorite Literary Characters
by Daniel Mallory Ortberg
“Victory Lap”
by George Saunders
Deep Thoughts
Deep Thoughts
by Jack Handey