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What is your favorite humorous memoir?

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11 Answers

  • Gold-head_small
    Reputation: 6000

    My favorites are Calvin Trillin's "tummy trilogy" of books about his all-encompassing obsession with food and travel. American Fried, Alice, Let's Eat, and Third Helpings.

    David Sedaris's stuff is giggle-out-loud funny on every page, and close enough to the truth to be considered "memoir". Naked, Me Talk Pretty One Day, and Dress Your Family in Corduroy and Denim are where to start.

    English music journalist Stuart Maconie has written a couple of hysterical books about travel in the real England, Pies and Prejudice: In Search of the North and Adventures on the High Teas, and an even better memoir of his life as a music obsessive, Cider With Roadies.

    My real favorites are the series by the inimitable and criminally overlooked critic, novelist, and intellectual Clive James. The first, Unreliable Memoirs, tells the story of his hardscrabble early life in Australia; the second, Falling Toward England his arrival in England and bohemian days in sixties London. Later volumes are perhaps a letdown in the riotous comedy department, but well worth it for the James fan, though I might steer you towards some of his other books instead. Still, these early ones are among the self-deprecatingly funniest, truest ever written.

    James's compatriot Barry Humphries has a great deal more than just Dame Edna Everage in his resume. He's told his life story a number of times, but probably best in My Life as Me. Dame Edna has her own biography, but that might be a bit too purple-haired to qualify as a memoir, hysterical as it is.

    Stephen Fry is one of the funniest fellows in the history of the world, and among the most erudite and candid. Moab is My Washpot is name of his early autobiography. There's a second volume, The Fry Chronicles which I haven't read yet.

    I'm not sure I'd call the many and various short pieces of S. J. Perelman "memoirs", though there is a great deal of memoir in them, but they are certainly charming and insane. He wrote Marx Brothers scripts, if that gives you any idea. You might dip into The Most of for a taste, and carry on if you like it.

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  • Avatar_default
    Reputation: 47

    Dry by Augusten Burroughs. Laughed so hard I cried.

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  • Candy_porn
    Reputation: 640

    Surely You're Joking, Mr. Feynman is a great read.

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  • N871065272_8115_small
    Reputation: 959

    Daniel Pinkwater's two memoirs: "Chicago Days/Hoboken Nights" and "Fishwhistle".

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  • Avatar_default
    Reputation: 86

    Running With Scissors and Look Me in the Eye are both excellent and hilarious memoirs!!

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  • David_library_small

    Aren't the most humorous memoirs the ones that aren't meant to be?

    I like a lot of the obvious choices - I laughed pretty damn hard at Sarah Silverman's Bedwetter - but one that maybe not everyone already knows about or remembers that I just loved was Car Camping, by Mark Sundeen. But I think my favorite is classed as fiction, though I think it reads as memoir, and is more gently amusing and bittersweet than outright funny: Max Miller's great I Cover the Waterfront. It is such a charming, low-key collection of episodes by this unknown reporter who is giving up on his dreams of wealth and fame.

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  • Eagle_small
    Reputation: 201

    I am about to lose all of my hipster cred (if I ever had any at all)... I am really digging Tina Fey's Bossypants. I love also loved "Dry" by Augusten Burroughs and order David Sedaris books months ahead, but Tina is really tapping into my childhood here. If you too have ever gone through a lifelong awkward phase, worked at a YMCA, or have ever had your Republican parents admonish you for your amazing Sarah Palin impression, you might want to read this in the bathroom, because you too will wet yourself while reading this book... *insert Reading Rainbow jingle here*

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  • Spaceship_small
    Reputation: 1812

    Frankly, I've always been partial to "Confessions of a Cereal Eater", volume 2. (Hell, volume one, if you can find it, but volume 2 speaks volumes about my college life. I remember those days and those dorms VIVIDLY!)

    Confessions of a Cereal Eater - Paperback (May 2003) by Rob Maisch and Scott Hampton
    It's unique because it's told in episodic graphic novel format... and each tale (chapter) is drawn in black and white by a different aspiring art school student... to great effect!

    I found it not laugh out loud funny, but warmly humorous cause it's all true life. Bittersweet at the end, also.

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  • Enso_circle_small
    Reputation: 844

    Gerald Durrell's "My Family and other Animals" is fabulous.

    It is very funny, clever and kind. The time and place are delightful and the perspective of the boy is charming.

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  • Patterson_bigfoot_lg1_small
    Reputation: 5

    "The Big Rewind" was written by Nathan Rabin from The AV Club. He has had an insane life thus far, and is definitely worth the read:

    http://www.amazon.com/Big-Rewind-Memoir-Brought-Culture/dp/B003D7JWFQ/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1304010430&sr=8-1

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  • Jacket_small

    One to add: The Big Rumpus by Ayun Halliday (or Job Hopper)

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