I'm with you on the Bridget Jones books, thought I liked the first so much more than the second.

The last book I remember that made me guffaw (outside of parts of the last Harry Potter... let's not get into that obsession right now) was Notes From A Small Island, by Bill Bryson. Basically a travelogue from Great Britain, from a native midwesterner's point of view. Some of the cultural difference observations alone were enough to make me stifle giggles in a silent lunchroom at work. Highly reccomended to my fellow anglophiles.                   

                     I have a huge soft spot for anything David Sedaris, especially "Jesus Shaves" and "The Santaland Diaries."

I'm also fond of Flannery O'Connor's "A Good Man Is Hard to Find".                   

                     I have a copy of "The Most of S.J. Perelman" that has been my constant companion since 1982. The binding is falling apart, the pages are worn from constant thumbing, but I could no more part with that book than Linus van Pelt could give up his blanket. Perelman was to my mind the funniest and most literate of 20th Century humorists. "Westward Ha!" with illustrations by his pal and traveling companion Al Hirschfeld, is a riot, as is--well, just about everything the man wrote. But among my favorite of his short stories:

"On Me It Looks Wizard," detailing his agonies connected to the purchase of a new Homburg hat;

"And Thou Beside Me, Yacketing in the Wilderness," all about a disastrous date with statuesque actress (possibly Julie Newmar--he knew her a little too well) who drinks too much and won't shut up;

"Farewell My Lovely Appetizer," a noirish send-up about an unfortunate lox-and-bagel delivery girl who is eaten by a cannibal; and

"I Am Not Now Nor Have I Ever Been a Matrix of Lean Meat," a quirky piece about the conspiracy caught on tape that was going on in his refrigerator among moldy comestibles.

But for all my love of Perelman, I have to give equal space to James Thurber ("The Secret Life of Walter Mitty," "The Curb in the Sky," "The Topaz Cufflinks Mystery," and "The Catbird Seat" will always be masterpieces of American humor.) And to Robert Benchley.

But those are just the Americans. Patrick Ryan and J. B. Boothroyd wrote some amazingly funny stuff for "Punch" over the years, as did Jane Clapperton ("The Tango Is a Dance of Love," about her humiliations in a Philadelphia dance studio circa 1959 is brilliant.)

Whew. I'll fess up. When it comes to reading material, I wanna be amused.                   

                     I like my reading material to be amusing, too.  I'm reading some Cornelia Otis Skinner, which I'm enjoying, but the two funniest books I've read in recent memory have been non-fiction.  "Sixties People," by Jane and Michael Stern (who were teenagers in the '60s) had me in stitches.  The sections about bomb shelters and whether or not you should keep a gun in yours to shoot your neighbor if he tries to get into your shelter during a nuclear attack (the Reverand L.C. McHugh, of America magazine said yes, you should) and the section on "playboys" were my favorites.

"Where the Girls Are: Growing Up Female With the Mass Media," by Susan J. Douglas, is also a scream.  I laughed so hard I was in pain at the section on the film Imitation of Life.                   

                     That'd make a good spare tire cover when you get a classic car, Wing!