J R is the long-awaited novel from William Gaddis, author of The Recognitions, that tremendous book which, in the twenty years since its publication, has come to be acknowledged as an American masterpiece. And J R is a book of comparable magnitude, substance, and humor—a rushing, raucous look at money and its influence, at love and its absence, at success and its failures, in the magnificently orchestrated circus of all its larger- and smaller-than-life characters; a frantic, forlorn comedy about who uses—and misuses—whom.

At the center: J R, ambitious sixth-grader in torn sneakers, bred on the challenge of "free enterprise" and fired by heady mail-order promises of "success." His teachers would rather be elsewhere, his principal doubles as a bank president, his Long Island classroom mirrors the world he sees around him—a world of public relations and private betrayals where everything (and everyone) wears a price tag, a world of "deals" where honesty is no substitute for experience, and the letter of the law flouts its spirit at every turn.

Operating from the remote anonymity of phone booths and the local post office, with beachheads in a seedy New York cafeteria and a catastrophic, carton-crammed tenement on East 96th Street, J R parlays a deal for thousands of surplus Navy picnic forks through penny stock flyers and a distant textile-mill bankruptcy into a nationwide, hydra-headed "family of companies."

The J R Corp and its Boss engulf brokers, lawyers, Congressmen, disaffected school teachers and disenfranchised Indians, drunks, divorcées, second-hand generals, and a fledgling composer hopelessly entangled in a nightmare marriage of business and the arts. Their bullish ventures—shaky mineral claims and gas leases, cost-plus defense contracts, a string of nursing homes cum funeral parlors, a formula for frozen music—burgeon into a paper empire ranging from timber to textiles, from matchbooks to (legalized) marijuana, from prostheses to publishing, inadvertently crushing hopes, careers, an entire town, on a collision course with the bigger world... the pragmatic Real World where the business of America is business, where the stock market exists as a convenience, and the tax laws make some people more equal than others... the world that makes the rules because it plays to win, and plays for keeps.

Absurdly logical, mercilessly real, gathering its own tumultuous momentum for the ultimate brush with commodity trading when the drop in pork belly futures masks the crumbling of our own, J R captures the reader in the cacophony of voices that revolves around this young captive of his own myths—voices that dominate the book, talking to each other, at each other, into phones, on intercoms, from TV screens and radios—a vast mosaic of sound that sweeps the reader into the relentless "real time" of spoken words in a way unprecedented in modern fiction.

The disturbing clarity with which this finished writer captures the ways in which we deal, dissemble, stumble through our words—through our lives—while the real plans are being made elsewhere makes J R the extraordinary novel that it is.

The dazzling and exuberant moral stories of Rabelais (c.1471-1553) expose human follies with their mischievous and often obscene humour, while intertwining the realistic with carnivalesque fantasy to make us look afresh at the world.

Gargantua depicts a young giant, reduced to laughable insanity by an education at the hands of paternal ignorance, old crones, and syphilitic professors, who is rescued and turned into a cultured Christian knight.

In Pantagruel and its three sequels, Rabelais parodied tall tales of chivalry and satirized the law, theology, and academia to portray the bookish son of Gargantua who becomes a Renaissance Socrates, divinely guided in his wisdom, and his idiotic, self-loving companion Panurge.

An Arab and a Jew open a restaurant together across the street from the United Nations.... It sounds like the beginning of an ethnic joke, but it's the axis around which spins the long-awaited new Tom Robbins novel, a gutsy, fun-loving, and alarmingly provocative book in which a bean can philosophizes, a dessert spoon mystifies, a young waitress takes on the New York art world, and a rowdy redneck welder discovers the lost god of Palestine--while the illusions that obscure humanity's view of the true universe fall away, one by one, like Salome's veils. Or like the walls of the repeatedly bombed restaurant--for Isaac & Ishmael's, an experiment in international brotherhood, is assaulted by Arabs, Jews, and Christians alike (and not because of its lousy menu). Its greatest crisis, however, comes when it engenders a showdown between the Dance of the Seven Veils and the Super Bowl. Skinny Legs and All, Robbins's most political novel, is also his most controversial, dealing as it does--in Robins's audacious manner--with the most sensitive issues of the day: race, politics marriage, art, religion, money and lust. This time, the bestselling author of Jitterbug Perfume, Even Cowgirls Get the Blues, et al., is writing about the upcoming millennium as seen through the violently scratched lens of the Middle East. But though Jerusalem, ancient an new, is the book's spiritual and psychological setting, every scene but the last takes place in a contemporary America. Leave it to a daredevil like Tom Robbins to pull that one off. Skinny Legs and All lyrically weaves through what some call the "End Days" of our planet. Refusing to avert its gaze from the horrors of the apocalypse, it also refuses to let the alleged end of the world spoil its mood. And its mood is defiantly upbeat. In Skinny Legs and All, the reader will encounter some of the most unusual characters in all fiction, some of the most juicy phrases, some of the most intriguing stories, some of the most challenging ideas. Characters, phrases, stories, and ideas dance together on the page, wild and sexy, like Salome herself. Or was it Jezebel?

If the Marquis de Sade were to crash one of P.G. Wodehouse's house parties, the chaos might resemble the nightmarishly funny goings-on in this novel by the author of London Fields.

The residents of Appleseed Rectory have primed themselves both for a visit from a triad of Americans and a weekend of copious drug taking and sexual gymnastics. There's even a heifer to be slugged and a pair of doddering tenants to be ingeniously harassed.

But none of these variously bright and dull young things has counted on the intrusion of "dead babies" — dreary spasms of reality. Or on the uninvited presence of a mysterious prankster named Johnny, whose sinister idea of fun makes theirs look like a game of backgammon.

Patrick Bateman is twenty-six and he works on Wall Street. He is handsome, sophisticated, charming, and intelligent. He is also a psychopath. American Psycho takes us on a head-on collision with America's greatest dream—and its worst nightmare. It is a bleak, bitter, black comedy about a world we all recognize but do not wish to confront.

Through the eyes of Bateman, the novel explores the incomprehensible depths of madness and captures the insanity of violence in our time or any other. As Bateman moves among the young and trendy in 1980s Manhattan, his outward success conceals a soul preoccupied with torture and murder, prefiguring an apocalyptic horror that no society could bear to confront.

In a comic masterpiece following the misadventures of a simple but hugely ambitious waiter in pre-World War II Prague, who rises to wealth only to lose everything with the onset of Communism, Bohumil Hrabal takes us on a tremendously funny and satirical trip through 20th-century Czechoslovakia.

First published in 1971 in a typewritten edition, then finally printed in book form in 1989, I Served the King of England is an extraordinary and subtly tragicomic novel, telling the tale of Ditie, a hugely ambitious but simple waiter in a deluxe Prague hotel in the years before World War II. Ditie is called upon to serve not the King of England, but Haile Selassie. It is one of the great moments in his life. Eventually, he falls in love with a Nazi woman athlete as the Germans are invading Czechoslovakia. After the war, through the sale of valuable stamps confiscated from the Jews, he reaches the heights of his ambition, building a hotel. He becomes a millionaire, but with the institution of communism, he loses everything and is sent to inspect mountain roads. Living in dreary circumstances, Ditie comes to terms with the inevitability of his death, and with his place in history.

Man discovers a species of giant, intelligent newts and learns to exploit them so successfully that the newts gain skills and arms enough to challenge man's place at the top of the animal kingdom. Along the way, Karel Capek satirizes science, runaway capitalism, fascism, journalism, militarism, even Hollywood.

Bringing his twin gifts of scientific speculation and scathing satire to bear on that hapless planet, Earth, Lem sends his unlucky cosmonaut, Ijon Tichy, to the Eighth Futurological Congress. Caught up in local revolution, Tichy is shot and so critically wounded that he is flashfrozen to await a future cure.

When he awakens in 2039, he is faced with a future unlike any that the Congress could have ever imagined. Translated by Michael Kandel.

Welcome to the incredible adventures of space traveler Ijon Tichy! In a universe filled with bizarre creatures and civilizations, Tichy encounters worlds that satirize science, rationality, theology, and other human pride icons.

Imagine a traveler constantly meeting himself through time jumps, a spy observing the world of robots, and an explorer facing strange beings and civilizations in space. Or a passenger desperately lost in a supernova forest, searching for a way out.

This entertaining novel by one of the world's greatest science fiction authors, Stanislaw Lem, playfully mocks the icons of human pride such as technology, theology, and rational thought. Whether it's curious potatoes eager for space journeys, devout robots, or robots unable to erase humanity's history of massacre from their memories, it's all here in one complete package!

After he firewalked in Polynesia, the world wasn't the same for Alexander Hergensheimer, now called Alec Graham. As natural accidents occurred without cease, Alex knew Armageddon and the Day of Judgement were near. Somehow he had to bring his beloved heathen, Margrethe, to a state of grace, and, while he was at it, save the rest of the world...

The Butter Battle Book, Dr. Seuss's classic cautionary tale, introduces readers to the important lesson of respecting differences. The Yooks and Zooks share a love of buttered bread, but animosity brews between the two groups because they prefer to enjoy the tasty treat differently.

Engaged in a long-running battle, the Yooks and the Zooks develop more and more sophisticated weaponry as they attempt to outdo each other.

The timeless and topical rhyming text is an ideal way to teach young children about the issues of tolerance and respect. Whether in the home or in the classroom, The Butter Battle Book is a must-have for readers of all ages.

A Confederacy of Dunces is a tragicomic tale featuring the unforgettable Ignatius J. Reilly, a 30-year-old medievalist who lives with his mother in New Orleans. Ignatius' life of leisure is disrupted by a series of misadventures, beginning with a near-arrest and a car accident involving his inebriated mother. As Ignatius is thrust into the working world, he turns his employers at the Levy Pants Company upside down.

The narrative is populated by a cast of marvelous secondary characters, including a stripper with a talented cockatoo, a septuagenarian secretary, a gay blade, a sinister nightclub owner, and Myrna Minkoff, the girl Ignatius loves to loathe. Ignatius' journey is a modern-day quixotic quest against the forces of modernity and ignorance, making him a giant of comedic proportions in a world that seems too small to contain him.

Author John Kennedy Toole showcases a New Orleans that teems with life and energy, crafting a story that is as complex and vibrant as anything found in Dickens. Despite its comic surface, the novel reveals a deep melancholy beneath its hero's bluster, making Ignatius not just a figure of fun but a character with whom readers can sympathize.

Meet Oswald Hendryks Cornelius, Roald Dahl's most disgraceful and extraordinary character. Aside from being thoroughly debauched, strikingly attractive, and astonishingly wealthy, Uncle Oswald was the greatest bounder, bon vivant, and fornicator of all time.

In this installment of his scorchingly frank memoirs, he tells of his early career and erotic education at the hands of a number of enthusiastic teachers, of discovering the invigorating properties of the Sudanese Blister Beetle, and of the gorgeous Yasmin Howcomely, his electrifying partner in a most unusual series of thefts.

Join Uncle Oswald on his audacious adventures as he seduces the most famous men in Europe for his own wicked, irreverent reasons. It's a delightful and cheeky tale that combines historical figures with outrageous escapades.

Catch-22 is set during World War II, from 1942 to 1944, and follows the life of Captain John Yossarian, a U.S. Army Air Forces B-25 bombardier. The narrative primarily takes place while the fictional 256th Squadron is based on the island of Pianosa, in the Mediterranean Sea, west of Italy.

The book delves into Yossarian's experiences and those of his fellow airmen as they strive to maintain their sanity amidst the chaos of war, with the overarching goal of fulfilling their service requirements to return home.

Catch-22 is renowned for its unique blend of hilarity and horror, its originality, and its powerful vitality. It presents a microcosm of the twentieth-century world as perceived by someone dangerously sane, offering both outrageous humor and a poignant reflection on the human condition.

Our Mutual Friend is a satiric masterpiece about the allure and peril of money, revolving around the inheritance of a dust-heap where the rich discard their trash. When the body of John Harmon, the dust-heap’s expected heir, is found in the Thames, fortunes change hands in unexpected ways, elevating "Noddy" Boffin from a low-born but kindly clerk to "the Golden Dustman."

As Charles Dickens’s last complete novel, Our Mutual Friend delves into the great themes of his earlier works: the pretensions of the nouveaux riches, the ingenuousness of the aspiring poor, and the unfailing power of wealth to corrupt all who crave it. With a flavorful cast of characters and numerous subplots, it stands as one of Dickens’s most complex—and satisfying—novels.

Handsome, ambitious Julien Sorel is determined to rise above his humble provincial origins. Soon realizing that success can only be achieved by adopting the subtle code of hypocrisy by which society operates, he begins to achieve advancement through deceit and self-interest. His triumphant career takes him into the heart of glamorous Parisian society, along the way conquering the gentle, married Madame de Rênal, and the haughty Mathilde. But then Julien commits an unexpected, devastating crime—and brings about his own downfall.

The Red and the Black is a lively, satirical portrayal of French society after Waterloo, riddled with corruption, greed and ennui, and Julien—the cold exploiter whose Machiavellian campaign is undercut by his own emotions—is one of the most intriguing characters in European literature.

Vanity Fair is William Makepeace Thackeray's classic tale of class, society, and corruption. No one is better equipped in the struggle for wealth and worldly success than the alluring and ruthless Becky Sharp, who defies her impoverished background to clamber up the class ladder. Her sentimental companion Amelia, however, longs only for caddish soldier George.

As the two heroines make their way through the tawdry glamour of Regency society, battles—military and domestic—are fought, fortunes made and lost. The one steadfast and honourable figure in this corrupt world is Dobbin with his devotion to Amelia, bringing pathos and depth to Thackeray's gloriously satirical epic of love and social adventure.

Coward, scoundrel, lover, and cheat, but there is no better man to go into the jungle with. Join Flashman in his adventures as he survives fearful ordeals and outlandish perils across the four corners of the world.

Can a man be all bad? When Harry Flashman’s adventures as the reluctant secret agent in Afghanistan lead him to join the exclusive company of Lord Cardigan’s Hussars and play a part in the disastrous Retreat from Kabul, it culminates in the rascal’s finest – and most dishonest – turn.

Second only to Slaughterhouse-Five of Vonnegut's canon in its prominence and influence, God Bless You, Mr. Rosewater (1965) presents Eliot Rosewater, an itinerant, semi-crazed millionaire wandering the country in search of heritage and philanthropic outcome, introducing the science fiction writer Kilgore Trout to the world and Vonnegut to the collegiate audience which would soon make him a cult writer.

Trout, modeled according to Vonnegut on the science fiction writer Theodore Sturgeon (with whom Vonnegut had an occasional relationship) is a desperate, impoverished but visionary hack writer who functions for Eliot Rosewater as both conscience and horrid example. Rosewater, seeking to put his inheritance to some meaningful use (his father was an entrepreneur), tries to do good within the context of almost illimitable cynicism and corruption.

It is in this novel that Rosewater wanders into a science fiction conference--an actual annual event in Milford, Pennsylvania--and at the motel delivers his famous monologue evoked by science fiction writers and critics for almost half a century: "None of you can write for sour apples... but you're the only people trying to come to terms with the really terrific things which are happening today." Money does not drive Mr. Rosewater (or the corrupt lawyer who tries to shape the Rosewater fortune) so much as outrage at the human condition.

The novel was adapted for a 1979 Alan Menken musical. The novel is told mostly through a collection of short stories dealing with Eliot's interactions with the citizens of Rosewater County, usually with the last sentence serving as a punch line. The antagonist's tale, Mushari's, is told in a similar short essay fashion. The stories reveal different hypocrisies of humankind in a darkly humorous fashion.

Told with deadpan humour and bitter irony, Kurt Vonnegut's cult tale of global destruction preys on our deepest fears of witnessing Armageddon and, worse still, surviving it. Dr Felix Hoenikker, one of the founding 'fathers' of the atomic bomb, has left a deadly legacy to the world. For he's the inventor of 'ice-nine', a lethal chemical capable of freezing the entire planet.

The search for its whereabouts leads to Hoenikker's three eccentric children, to a crazed dictator in the Caribbean, to madness. Felix Hoenikker's Death Wish comes true when his last, fatal gift to humankind brings about the end, that for all of us, is nigh...

George F. Babbitt is a middle-aged realtor, family man, and resident of Zenith, a fictitious Midwestern city. His main preoccupation is to climb the social ladder by conforming to the norms of his environment. The novel depicts his daily routines and occasional misadventures in an unorthodox writing style, where the protagonist appears altogether foolish, funny, and pathetic. This work was both celebrated as an incisive satire of American culture and criticized as an exaggeration, but was ultimately influential in Sinclair Lewis being awarded the 1930 Nobel Prize in Literature.

Graham Greene's classic Cuban spy story, now with a new package and a new introduction. First published in 1959, Our Man in Havana is an espionage thriller, a penetrating character study, and a political satire that still resonates to this day.

Conceived as one of Graham Greene's 'entertainments,' it tells of MI6's man in Havana, Wormold, a former vacuum-cleaner salesman turned reluctant secret agent out of economic necessity. To keep his job, he files bogus reports based on Lamb's Tales from Shakespeare and dreams up military installations from vacuum-cleaner designs.
Then his stories start coming disturbingly true...

Saatleri Ayarlama Enstitüsü is a masterpiece by Ahmet Hamdi Tanpınar, known for using a symbolist language in his poetry and a realistic style addressing social issues in his novels. This book is a cornerstone novel that examines the struggle of the Turkish people between the East and the West.

The book draws its content and themes from its characters: Nuri Efendi (the Clock Master), Mübarek (an old English wall clock), Halit Ayarcı, and the intricate relationship between time, clocks, and humans. The narrative, with Tanpınar's unique symbolic storytelling, transforms as the events unfold, highlighting how people's obsession with popularity and money can lead to sudden changes in their demeanor.

This critical novel satirizes the misguided attitudes and behaviors of a society caught between two civilizations. The story is structured around the memoirs of Hayri İrdal, whose childhood spans the reign of Abdülhamit II, the Constitutional Monarchy, and the Republic periods. The novel is divided into four parts: Great Expectations, Small Truths, Towards the Morning, and Every Season Has an End.

Animal Farm is a brilliant political satire and a powerful and affecting story of revolutions and idealism, power, and corruption. 'All animals are equal. But some animals are more equal than others.' Mr. Jones of Manor Farm is so lazy and drunken that one day he forgets to feed his livestock. The ensuing rebellion under the leadership of the pigs Napoleon and Snowball leads to the animals taking over the farm.

Vowing to eliminate the terrible inequities of the farmyard, the renamed Animal Farm is organised to benefit all who walk on four legs. But as time passes, the ideals of the rebellion are corrupted, then forgotten. And something new and unexpected emerges—a razor-edged fairy tale for grown-ups that records the evolution from revolution against tyranny to a totalitarianism just as terrible.

When Animal Farm was first published, Stalinist Russia was seen as its target. Today it is devastatingly clear that wherever and whenever freedom is attacked, under whatever banner, the cutting clarity and savage comedy of George Orwell's masterpiece have a meaning and message still ferociously fresh.

My goal, my life’s ambition if you like, is to give direction to comedy, purpose to satire. And this is probably why I write the way I do, in order to use self-deprecating, piss-taking humour to bring to the fore situations that just don’t stack up. To demonstrate that serious issues can be approached with humour.

Hardly any subject is taboo to the Englishman when he’s laughing, and this often seems insensitive to other cultures, but the bedrock of the British sense of humour is a strong sense of sarcasm and self-deprecation. The British can be very passionate – and if you doubt that try going to a football match - but that passion is often hidden deep in our humour so that other nationals fail to not only recognise the deadpan delivery and are never too sure if they’ve been involved in a serious conversation or just a little bit of friendly banter.

Having said that, my style of writing is now appealing more and more to the American market. This book is not a novel, and if you’re looking for a book that is all sweetness and light, please give this one a miss. It’s not for you. I won’t be offended and I honestly wish you a great life. If everyone likes me, then I’m not being controversial enough.

If you’re looking for Humorous books about Life, Comedy Writing or even Humorous Books for Adults then take a chance on this book. If a chapter doesn’t suit, just move on.