Humor Classics

The wizard Margle the Horrendous takes special pride in never killing his enemies. Instead, he transforms them into various accursed forms and locks them away in his castle. It's Nessy's duty to tend this castle. Its a lot of work, but she manages, taking pride in housekeeping talents that keep the castle from collapsing into chaos. But when Margle suddenly dies, everything begins to unravel.

Petronius’ Satyricon is a rampant and vivacious Roman adventure dating back to the first century, during the reign of Nero. It follows the exploits of Encolpius, an impoverished ex-gladiator, and his boy-lover Giton. The action is fleet and the narrative sweeping: over the course of their journey we meet a host of lewd and comical rogues, including beggars, prostitutes, poets, sodomites, and pedants, and witness many strange and curious events, including a remarkably vulgar multi-course feast, hosted by the pompous nouveau riche Trimalchio

Says Charles Pooter, "I fail to see - because I do not happen to be a 'somebody' - why my diary should not be interesting." Surprisingly, Mr. Pooter's life is fascinating! The fascination is two-fold: firstly, his astounding arrogance that we should care about his domestic trivia and narcissistic scribblings. Secondly, we can all sympathize with (and wince at!) this ridiculous slave to convention.

Doctor Fischer despises the human race. When the notorious toothpaste millionaire decides to hold the last of his famous parties - his own deadly version of the book of Revelation - Greene opens up a powerful vision of the limitless greed of the rich. Black comedy and painful satire combine in a totally compelling novel.

The Freaks of Mayfair by E.F. Benson is a series of satirical sketches introducing us to some bizarre inhabitants of Edwardian High Society of Mayfair, which was, and still is today, the stamping ground of the very wealthy. Each sketch introduces a different type of "freak". Sir Louis and Lady Mary Marigold turn snobbism into fine art; Sarah Whitehand is the social-climbing wife of an American toilet bowl magnate, and the so-called "Grizzly Kittens", Babs Begum and Charlie Gordon, cling desperately to their youth as they totter toward old age.

Another classic funny Jeeves and Wooster story. Bertie once again travels to Totleigh Towers to try to repair the rift in Gussie Finknottle and Madeline Basset's engagement. Pop Basset and Roderick Spode (Lord Sidcup) think he is there to steal a black amber statuette for Bertie's Uncle Tom. How could things get complicated?

The Rum Diary was begun in 1959 by a then-22-year-old Hunter S. Thompson. It was his first novel and he told his friend, the author William Kennedy, that The Rum Diary would "in a twisted way...do for San Juan what Ernest Hemingway's The Sun Also Rises did for Paris."

A tour de force of black humor and imaginary erudition, Nazi Literature in the Americas presents itself as a biographical dictionary of writers who espoused extreme right-wing ideologies in the 20th and 21st centuries.

Here, we have a glorious ensemble of Woodhousian characters knocking elbows to foreheads in the elegant and grand Blandings Castle. Meet Freddy Threepwood, the vagrant son of doddering old Lord Emsworth of Blandings Castle. Freddy has recently become engaged to Aline Peters, the American heiress of an irascible father. The snag is that Freddy seems to have at one point become enamored of a struggling actress, Joan Valentine, and written some impetuous and imprudent letters to her.

Золотой теленок - роман Ильи Ильфа и Евгения Петрова. В основе сюжета - дальнейшие приключения центрального персонажа "Двенадцати стульев" Остапа Бендера, происходящие на фоне картин советской жизни начала 1930-х годов. Жанр - плутовской роман, социальная сатира, роман-фельетон.

A savage and hilarious satire, Gulliver's Travels sees Lemuel Gulliver shipwrecked and adrift, subject to bizarre and unnerving encounters with - among others - quarrelling Lilliputians, philosophising horses, and the brutish Yahoo tribe that change his view of humanity - and himself - forever. Swift's classic of 1726 portrays mankind in a distorted hall of mirrors as a diminished, magnified, and finally, bestial species, presenting us with a comical yet uncompromising reflection of ourselves.

The story opens in the country parsonage of Dr. Primrose, a kindly man who has a good heart, a good family, and a good income. Suddenly, his idyllic life is cruelly devastated by a series of misfortunes, and he ends up in prison. Yet, despite all this calamity and injustice, the vicar never loses sight of Christian morality, a conviction which lends him genuine nobility and, in the end, also brings justice and the restoration of his family and fortune.

Plucky and romantic Alice tries to rise above the crudities of her hopelessly shabby background in this Pulitzer Prize-winning classic about ambition and self-delusion. The lower-middle class Adams family faces a slow disintegration in a small Midwestern town. Alice, a social climber, is ashamed of her unsuccessful family and determined to distinguish herself.

This novel is the story of Dreyer, a wealthy and boisterous proprietor of a men’s clothing emporium. Ruddy, self-satisfied, and thoroughly masculine, he is perfectly repugnant to his exquisite but cold middle-class wife, Martha. Attracted to his money but repelled by his oblivious passion, she longs for their nephew instead, the thin, awkward, myopic Franz. Newly arrived in Berlin, Franz soon repays his uncle’s condescension in his aunt’s bed.

Despite the title, Dickens's portrayal of early industrial society is less relentlessly grim than that in novels by contemporaries such as Elizabeth Gaskell or Charles Kingsley. Hard Times weaves the tale of Thomas Gradgrind, a hard-headed politician who raises his children Louisa and Tom without love and to have no empathy, their lives completely devoid of beauty, culture, or imagination. Only after a series of crises does their father realise that the manner in which he raised his children has ruined their lives.

Mr Edgar Finchley, unmarried clerk, aged 45, is told to take a holiday for the first time in his life. He decides to go to the seaside. But Fate has other plans in store...From his abduction by a cheerful crook, to his smuggling escapade off the south coast, the timid but plucky Mr Finchley is plunged into a series of the most astonishing and extraordinary adventures. His rural adventure takes him gradually westward through the English countryside and back, via a smuggling yacht, to London.

From basic training to World War II to the Gulf War, America's veterans share their funniest stories in this collection of Reader's Digest's popular "Humor in Uniform" column. Beneath the horror of war lies a rich tradition of comedy and satire, and these anecdotes have entertained fans for decades.

Marcovaldo is an unskilled worker in a drab industrial city in northern Italy. He is an irrepressible dreamer and an inveterate schemer. Much to the puzzlement of his wife, his children, his boss, and his neighbors, he chases his dreams - but the results are never the expected ones.

Guy Grand, an eccentric billionaire prankster, is rich enough to do whatever he likes. And what he likes is to carefully execute projects where he can cauterize by ridicule what the rest of the world ignores: Complacency, greed, corruption, and idiocy. Determined to "make it hot for people," Grand spends his billions staging a series of hilarious, sometimes bewildering stunts, lampooning along the way the American holy cows of money, status, power, beauty, media, and stardom.

The Unofficial F-R-I-E-N-D-S Trivia Book: The One with All the Quotes includes over 200 quotes all neatly sectioned to make it easier to understand who the quotes are from; a section for nothing but the most famous one-liners the show is known for; a section of quotes only between the main six characters: Monica, Ross, Phoebe, Chandler, Rachel, and Joey; and more.