I cleaned and tidied both my bedroom and my front room today, including even hoovering. It was quite an interesting experience, and one I probably ought to engage in more frequently.
At 5am this morning I finished reading Jasper Fforde's book "Something Rotten", the last in a series of four. It was, like the others, hilarious and totally wacky. For those who don't know the books, they are very difficult to describe - the comment the from one reviewer was "Forget all the rules of time, space and reality; just sit back and enjoy the adventure", which is a pretty good summary.
The way that the plot was weaved together in this one was particularly good. It even brought together things that had been started in the first book, and in one instance I can think of it seemed like large parts of the plot from several books were only there to culminate in one very bad joke!
Talking of funny books, I'm also reading "Three Men In a Boat" at the moment. This is easily one of the funniest books i've ever read. It can have me in stitches within seconds of picking it up, I can't get along with reading for laughing so much, so despite its slim size I still haven't finished it. Bizarrely, it's often difficult to work out why it's funny - I imagine some people might not see the humour at all, in which case it would be a rather dull read, as it has almost no plot to speak of. I think it is generally a quite famous book ('Thursday Next' in Jasper Fforde's book had read it many times, for instance), but I haven't heard it talked about much or had it personally recommended to me. Which is a shame, so I'm now recommending it to the blogosphere.
Comments §
By the way, I don't really like 'Three Men in a Boat' much. I find the comedy a little too obvious. It's a good read, but too predictable. I prefer Durrell (Gerald) and 'Alice in Wonderland'.
I also love The Goon Show, which is arguably the predecessor to Monty Python. Lots of very obvious and stupid humour there, complete with very very bad jokes, but somehow manages to entertain just the same.
With "Three Men in a Boat", it's slightly strange - I've been picking it up again recently, and reading chapters at random. When I read the first chapter for the third time, it was rather dull, because I knew what was coming. Other chapters were just as funnny as ever, but maybe only because I'd forgotten them. You're right that in places it is rather obvious humour e.g. with the kind of slapstick things going wrong. But in other places it is much more subtle, especially the self-conscious (though completely unspoken) hypocrisy of the narrator.
Your comment on '3 Men in a Boat' is probably right, but I doubt I'll ever be entirely like it.
By the way, I forgot to mention Stephen Leacock. I haven't read much of his works, but some of his essays are quite excellent.
I haven't heard the Goon Show (I live in India where it isn't available - I even got Monty Python through the British Library) but I have read some of Spike Milligan's books and loved them, especially 'A Dustbin of Milligan' - unmitigated silliness, with a knowing wink.
If interested, why not visit my website 'www.geocities.com/adityabidikar'? I've got some reviews, and some stories and essays of my own up there.
Don't hesitate to mail me.