What is the funniest / saddest book you have ever read?

[Legend83]

The one that has you clutching your sides and struggling to read on through the pain of laughter.

The one that has you struggling to keep the lump from your throat, that makes it hard to read through your damp eyes.

The Hogfather - Terry Pratchett

If This is A Man - Primo Levi

[spikeyhead]

The funniest is probably the Throwback by Tom Sharpe.

[Jakarta]

Bill Bryson - A Walk in the Woods.
There is a section in here where is buddy, Stephen Katz gets hopelessly lost that had me in stitches, I read it more than a couple of times straight after each other and laughed every single time.

[kowalski655]

Funniest...HHGTTG
Saddest...Germinal,by Emile Zola. I welled up on the tube when the pit pony drowned

[droopsnoot]

Funniest I've read is "The best a man can get" by John O'Farrell.

[AmitG]

The saddest is Dickens - Dombey and Son. I might have "had something in my eye" during the second half

[Gargamel]

World according to Garp. One of the funniest I have read.

Wilt, by Tom Sharpe also very funny.

Saddest, that's a tough one, I don't tend to read too many obvious tragedies

Jude the Obscure is fairly unrelenting bleak

As is

Going down River Road by Meja Mewangi

[frank hovis]

Saddest
http://www.amazon.co.uk/My-Epileptic-Lurcher-Des-D...

Funniest
http://www.amazon.co.uk/Another-Thing-Douglas-Hitc...
Very funny and a easy read only slightly better than the red dwarf books

[timbo999]

The Secret Lemonade Drinker - Guy Bellamy - for funniest (bit dated now)
The Railway Man - Eric Lomax - for saddest (Beneath Another Sun by Robert Radcliffe on the same topic is probably sadder, but Lomax book is written from his real experience).

[oddball1973]

Quartered Safe out Here by George Macdonald Fraser
Memoirs of the Burma campaign from a foot soldiers perspective.

[nicanary]

oddball1973 said:

Quartered Safe out Here by George Macdonald Fraser
Memoirs of the Burma campaign from a foot soldiers perspective.

By coincidence, I'm re-reading that at the moment. One of the very best wartime memoirs, written from a fresh perspective.

Although it's not really what's intended by the OP, I have to say that Spike Milligan's "My part in Hitler's downfall" always gives me a lump in the throat when I come to the section where he is on the end of a German 88mm and wakes up in hospital. The book changes from humour to sadness in a flash. And the reader knows he's just witnessed the start of British post-war humour from one of the greatest manic-depressives.

[TheJimi]

Saddest - Flowers For Algernon, probably.

Funniest? I don't tend to go for comedy books, so I can't really answer that.

I probably should though.

[Halmyre]

'Of Mice And Men' is probably the saddest I can think of, although I don't recall ever actually crying over a book.

Last book I read which had me laughing out loud was Kate Atkinson's 'Emotionally Wierd'. As a child, the Professor Branestawm books had me paralytic with laughter, and the 'Molesworth' books were always good for a laugh, and still raised a smile when I re-read them some 30+ years later.

[TwigtheWonderkid]

droopsnoot said:

Funniest I've read is "The best a man can get" by John O'Farrell.

That's very funny, but there is a bit in O'Farrell's This Is Your Life where the letter is read out down the pub, the letter written by his brother as a child years before, about how he should conduct himself when he becomes a rich and famous adult.

It's brilliant.

[goldblum]

Saddest I can remember in adult life was also completely absorbing as well - For Whom The Bell Tolls. By the time I got to reading A Farewell To Arms I was prepared. Hemingway's style with those two is lull you into a false sense of security then hit you in the face with a brick.

Edited by goldblum on Monday 10th November 19:15

[M888SXY]

Tom Sharpe funniest:
One of: Riotous Assembly/Indecent Exposure/Ancestral Vices/Wilt (the first one)

[irocfan]

Tom Sharpe - Riotous Assembly

[boyse7en]

nicanary said:

Although it's not really what's intended by the OP, I have to say that Spike Milligan's "My part in Hitler's downfall" always gives me a lump in the throat when I come to the section where he is on the end of a German 88mm and wakes up in hospital. The book changes from humour to sadness in a flash. And the reader knows he's just witnessed the start of British post-war humour from one of the greatest manic-depressives.

When I first saw the thread title, I thought that the OP meant a funny/sad book (singular) rather than two separate books, and I immediately thought of Spike Milligan's war memoirs. They are very good at highlighting the absurdity of most of the war, and the horror and tragedy of the remaining bits,

[Hugo a Gogo]

sad
The Road, Cormac McCarthy

[Halmyre]

nicanary said:

By coincidence, I'm re-reading that at the moment. One of the very best wartime memoirs, written from a fresh perspective.

Although it's not really what's intended by the OP, I have to say that Spike Milligan's "My part in Hitler's downfall" always gives me a lump in the throat when I come to the section where he is on the end of a German 88mm and wakes up in hospital. The book changes from humour to sadness in a flash. And the reader knows he's just witnessed the start of British post-war humour from one of the greatest manic-depressives.

Spike getting blown up is in "Mussolini - His Part in my Downfall", although it's a long time since I read the first book so I can't remember if he mentions it in there as well.