Bitchery reader Maya sent me a very smart idea: we need recommendations for the funny-funny romance novels.
She wrote:
As an aspiring writer myself, I’m interested to study what works in comedic writing (I’m plenty capable of finding what doesn’t work in comedic writing myself). Has the bitchery every compiled such a list ? If not – dare I hope the question might be thrown out there ?
If someone asked me, for example, I’d lead off with
Mr. Impossible – Loretta Chase – (historical -Egypt)
Crocodile on the Sandbank – Elizabeth Peters – (historical – Egypt)
Fame Fatale – Wendy Holden – (contemporary – Britain)
Pastures Nouveaux – Wendy Holden – (contemporary – Britain)
Alice, I Think, Miss Smithers, Alice McLeod, Realist at Last – Susan Juby – (young adult contemporary trilogy, Canada)
So bring on the hilarity – what funny romance novels, historical OR contemporary, do you recommend?
Summon the Keeper by Tanya Huff. Although not really romance it does contain romantic subplot and theres nothing funnier than a schizophrenic portal to Hell that argues with itself…and sulks.
Oh, Summon the Keeper is one of my all-time favorite books. SOOOOOO many funny moments.
I agree anything by Katie MacAlister. I loved the Corset Diaries. I wish they would make that into a movie.
Also loved Summon the Keeper.
Agree with Jennifer Crusie. Faking It is my favorite for being zany-it would also be a great movie.
How did I miss this thread?
I agree completely about Anne Gracie’s The Perfect Rake. I don’t get Loretta Chase, but I think that Katie MacAlister’s Hard Days Knight is hilarious, as is Men in Kilts. (Her vampire novels are atrocious. Awful. Awe-inspiringly bad, but her contemporary stuff is not too bad.)
Another vote for Bet Me, as well.
historical: Patricia Veryan’s Mistress of Willowvale. I couldn’t look at a pancake for months without cracking up after first reading this one.
Carl Hiaasen’s book Sick Puppy is definitely a romance. You just know the moment the hero shows up that he’s so messed up SOMEBODY’s gotta love him. And it always cracks me up.
I have to disagree with all the people recommending anything by Katie MacAlister. I don’t find her funny but it’s obvious that she tries. Nothing is more cringe-worthy than a failed joke. I couldn’t even finish reading The Corset Diaries for that reason. But from the comments above I guess to each their own.
I’ve noticed that their are two types of humor in books. The kind that makes you smile and the kind that makes you laugh out loud.
My list of the latter:
Lamb by Christopher Moore
Fluke by Christopher Moore
True Story by Bill Maher
Comedy Writer by Peter Farrelly
Naked by David Sedaris
Dress Your Family In Cordoroy and Denim by David Sedaris
Me Talk Pretty One Day by David Sedaris
Humor in books is really hard to pull off. I can’t think of one romance novel that actually made me laugh out loud. Julia Quinn’s Romancing Mr. Bridgerton and The Viscount Who Loved Me both had scenes that made me smile though.
I second Georgette Heyer’s The Grand Sophy, and I’d like to throw in Cotillion and Frederica by her as well. I have read The Masqueraders, but tend to get it slightly confused with The Talisman Ring (don’t ask me why), and though I love the father, I can’t make myself really warm to Prudence. I also echo any Jennifer Crusie, but I’d like to plump for Welcome to Temptation as the one which makes me laugh the most.
I second The Corset Diaries. Hey! That book also mentions condoms! (ref to an earlier topic—BC in romancelandia). The story is over the top and hilarious and has a scene that I swear Katie Macalister spent way, way too much time researching by watching Tom Jones (the movie with Albert Finney, not the singer).
I no longer remember the name of the book nor the author, but I am hoping some bitchery reader can provide me with both of a book written in the 80s. The heroine’s name was Joanna, and the hero kidnaps her at one point. She constantly gets the name of things wrong. Where most heroines would call the hero a rake, she calls him… a hoe!
They part early in the book and meet later, both in disguise. She gets angry at him and again calls him, “You hoe!” and he says, “Joanna!”
She: How did you know it was me?
Him: Nobody else calls me a hoe.
I enjoy Katie MacAlister’s Aisling Gray series but didn’t find some of her other books that funny.
The earlier Stephanie Plum books are great, and I think Linda Howard does humor well, too. Mr. Perfect is one that comes to mind.
And I might as well toot my own horn. My books tend to have a lot of humor:
Romancing the Alien (the Talking dogs books), Summer in the City of Sails and Snap! to mention a few 😉
I made the mistake of reading Lamb by Christopher Moore while I was confined to not moving for a couple of weeks due to back trouble. It is a mistake to read a book that makes one laugh so hard that you cry about every page when every movement makes you cry from pain. It is NOT a good combination.
But I second it as a great humor book that although it is not offically a romance, it does have a romance occuring in it.
Cotillion by Heyer
almost anything by Barbara Metzger
EF Benson
DEFINITELY Pratchett and Chase
PG Wodehouse
Evanovich’s old short category romances (not the stuff she’s re-releasing as full length)
some Emma Jensen
Connie Brockway
Alice in Bed Catherine Schine
In the funny Heyer stakes, I’m nominating Sprig Muslin, over and above The Grand Sophy now I’ve finally managed to bring ‘the name of that one I can’t quite remember’ to mind.
There’s something in the spectacle of ‘Uncle’ Gary and Amanda (quite the force of nature) desperately outdoing doing each other in the telling of ‘enormous bouncers’ about the other to frustrate their respective plans for Amanda’s fate that’s inately hilarious. Then it all gets *completely* out of hand with the advent of Mr.Hildebrand Ross with tales Queen Katherine’s blackened (possibly using pitch) heart. With eventually Lady Hester, having been—quite improperly—summoned to their rescue, being forced to lament upon the fact that she was really quite shatter-brained not have broken into Widmore’s strongbox before setting out to save them…
…and that’s before she attempts not be seen by poor Barnabas Vinehall. Or Amanda’s Major turns up.
everything I’ve written even the stuff I didn’t intend to be funny.
Although I agree with Crocodile on the Sandbank (and all Elizabeth Peters books for that matter), I found the second in the series “Curse of the Pharoahs” the funniest. Amelia and Emerson’s interactions with a very young, lispy, precocious Ramses are some of the funniest scenes in that book.
Also second Summon the Keeper by Tanya Huff.
I can’t believe no-one has mentioned Jilly Cooper : don’t you get her books in Americaland? The 600 page blockbuster ones are all very well but the best ones are the short ones from the early 1970s with a whiff of Brand New Sexual Revolution about them. Prudence, Imogen and Emily are all snortingly funny, even if they do rely a bit overmuch on puns.
I’m just loving La Cooper’s work.
(Oh – and Devil’s Cub has got to be the funniest Georgette Heyer).
Here’s another nod to Devil’s Cub. I love to re-read the scene towards the end with the heroine and the elderly English “m’lord” in the inn to laugh and study Heyer’s craft.
I have to recommend Julie Garwood’s
The Gift
. Sarah’s adventures on Nathan’s ship made me laugh out loud when I first read them, and they still make me smile umpteen readings later.
You mean besides my own “hilarious” (Romantic Times) novel? Someone else mentioned Connie Willis’s sci-fi comedy of manners, To Say Nothing of the Dog, which I loved. Several people have mentioned “the weirdness that is Christopher Moore,” and he’s fabulous. All of his books have a romantic love story. I know Sophie Kinsella gets dissed for her completely unrealistic plots, but she’s writing comedy and her Shopaholic books make me laugh out loud. Jane Austen’s books are very funny, especially the eccentric secondary characters. I’m with the people who mentioned Jasper Fforde’s The Eyre Affair. Jennifer Weiner’s books aren’t comedies, but there are always funny scenes. I’m also a fan of Charlaine Harris’s Sookie Stackhouse novels.
I have to agree with Mr. Perfect. The cucumber scene was great. When I lent it to my mom to read and she burst out laughing I knew exactly where she was.
I just finished re-reading “The convenient Marriage†by Georgette Heyer. I found myself laughing out loud more than once, especially towards the end.
Heyer is one of the few that gets me actually giggling, not just smiling broadly and enjoying myself.
The first Heyer I read was Devil’s Cub. I remember reading it in bed at night, and laughing so much I woke up my sister who slept in the next room.
Devil’s Cub was my first too! And I was absolutely enthralled! I love its dry and dark humor. Ah! Now I must go off and read it again. Alice i think, etc. Series are really quite funny. I felt like it was looking in a mirror. Except that I don’t do Hobbit outfits.
On Mrs. Giggles rec I read Out of This World by Ann Wesley Hardin. Freakin’ hysterical from start to finish. All her books are.
Otherwise I love Manhunting and Faking It by Jennifer Crusie, and Dakota Cassidy is a scream too!
Here are a couple that no one has mentioned or maybe even heard of—more’s the pity: The Ideal Bride, and Courting Trouble, by Nonnie St. George. Both books are wonderful spoofs of the romance genre, while also being sweetly romantic and great stories to boot. Courting Trouble is especially funny, and follows two characters introduced in The Ideal Bride.
You’ll likely only find these books at Amazon or Alibris or, with luck, in your library, but you won’t be disappointed.
Also, the beginning of Katie MacAlister’s The Trouble with Harry, in which a young girl is trying to get Daddy to explain “women’s troubles” to her—oh, so funny. God love him, he’s ready to put a bullet in his brain before he finally makes his escape.
Here’s a question for Georgette Heyer fans. I bought some of her old hardbacks with lovely covers: Black Sheep, Bath Tangle, The Nonesuch, and Spring Muslin. Do you have any suggestions about the order in which they should be read? I was glad to hear that Sprig Muslin is a fave.
Thanks for your advice.
I am a huge Katie Macalister fan and I think her books are a great example of comedic writing as well.
I know it is not romance but I would recommend Anansi Boys by Neil Gaiman or Good Omens by Gaiman and Terry Pratchett (anything by Pratchett is funny). I just read Anansi Boys and thought it was hilarious and I think that Good Omens is the funniest book ever written!
I am also a big fan of a young adult series called Confessions of Georgia Nicolson by Louise Rennison. The first book is called Angus, Thongs, and Full Frontal Snogging. They are very cute, and I think I made everyone on a bullet train in Japan think Americans are lunatics because I was having fits of laughter reading one of those books.
Wow. Let a couple of days go by, and not only have the uber-bitches taken my humble little suggestion and run with it, but the bitchery has come up with 60+ gems. Thanks, everyone. What an excellent, excellent reason to procrastinate with my own writing – obviously, I now have to go do a lot of ‘research’.
I’m so happy !
Marta – I don’t think it really matters which order you read those ones in, they’re all unrelated. It’s only when you hit the stories about the Alastairs that it helps to read them in sequence, that is: These Old Shades (which is the only Heyer that ever makes me cry, when the hero finally proposes), Devil’s Cub, Regency Buck, and An Infamous Army. But out of those you mention, Sprig Muslin I think is the best, I wouldn’t lose any time becoming acquainted with it. I must admit that Lady Hester is one of my favourite Heyer heroines – she’s older, not outstanding in appearance and underestimated by most people but has integrity and a good sense of humour. When she breaks out of her downtrodden life it’s wonderful. And I just adore the relationship between Neil and Amanda.
I fangirl over Terry Pratchett. And I recently started reading some Wodehouse, and it is hilarious.
But funny straight-up romance? Hmm. Julia Quinn generally amuses me, but I seem to go angsty in my romances even though I also seem to enjoy the humourous ones more.
Also, I can never find Loretta Chase! I’ve looked in my library and every bookstore I can find around here, and it’s like she doesn’t exist. A pity, since she’s so highly recommended everywhere I’ve looked.
I dunno why, but I love Hanah Howell’s books. Medieval jokes, I heart me some medieval jokes. Very subtle humour. I forget which book it is, but the best one from her was about ‘the man with no chin’ as the villain.. I snorted countless times.
I second Confessions of Georgia Nicolson by Louise Rennison.
Katie MacAlister is a hit and miss for me, but Men in Kilts is one of my fave re-reads. Karen Marie Moning has her funny moments, and overall her books are very well-written. Julia London’s Hazards of Hunting a Duke.
Oh, not to forget Jeremy Clarkson – very obvious, sometimes cheap humour, but I will love him til the day I die.
Guess I better start reading Heyer and Pratchett..