Best Book Club Books: Funny Books

Boisterous and tenderhearted, If We’re Being Honest by Cat Shook will spark conversations about love, reconciliation, and hilariously relatable family drama at your next book club meeting. The Williams family gather to mourn the passing of their patriarch, Gerry, but a bombshell disclosure at the funeral sends them all spinning out, grappling with the revelation while dealing with their own unsettled personal lives. The cousins are nursing heartbreak, looking for belonging, or trying to rekindle old flames, while the parents are doing their best to process their grief and find some security in their relationships. Witty and real, If We’re Being Honest is a fresh and funny fiction book and an altogether delightful family dramedy.

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Bernadette Fox is a lot of things: a loving mother, a strong-willed wife, a respected architect, and an agoraphobic. In Where’d You Go, Bernadette by Maria Semple, Bernadette vanishes before a family trip to Antarctica, setting her 15-year-old daughter Bee on an amateur investigation to find her mother. Hailed by The New York Times as “divinely funny,” Where’d You Go, Bernadette is a sharp commentary on mother–daughter bonds and the challenge of creativity, suffused with excellent storytelling and laugh-out-loud moments that will have your book club group in stitches.

Selin, the daughter of Turkish immigrants, arrives at Harvard for her first year of college. The year ahead will introduce her to a slew of new experiences, from fresh friendships and budding romance to the mortifying ordeal of becoming an adult — or, worse, a writer. Accompanied by Svetlana, her worldly classmate from Serbia, and Ivan, the Hungarian mathematics student with whom she’s been emailing, Selin embarks on a whirlwind journey of growth and self-discovery that spans from Harvard’s campus to the streets of Paris and the Hungarian countryside. Poignant and amusing, The Idiot by Elif Batuman is a perfect funny book club book for conversations about artistry, self-discovery, and the comedic growing pains of adulthood.

An uproarious and award-winning satire, The Sellout by Paul Beatty will spark cracking discussions about race, class, and family. The unnamed narrator of the novel hails from Dickens, California, an “agrarian ghetto” on the outskirts of Los Angeles that’s home to lower-middle-class Californians. The narrator has plenty of personal baggage to sort out — namely, the troubled legacy of his father, an eccentric sociologist who conducted questionable psychological experiments on him when he was a boy. But when word gets out that Dickens is about to be wiped off the map to spare California from further embarrassment, the narrator hatches a wild scheme to save his hometown from erasure: He teams up with the last surviving Little Rascal to reinstate slavery and segregate the local high school. A stellar pick that you won’t be able to stop talking about, “The Sellout isn’t just one of the most hilarious American novels in years, it also might be the first truly great satirical novel of [the 21st] century” (NPR).

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To whom do you turn when you accidentally kill your blind date? Your mother, of course. After an evening out goes sideways, Meddelin Chan does just that. Thankfully, it isn’t just Meddy’s mother who has her back, but her mother’s meddlesome sisters as well. Together with her Ma and aunties, Meddy tries to dispose of her ill-fated date’s body. But things shift from bad to worse when the body ends up inside a cake cooler and is accidentally shipped to the lavish wedding the Chan family has been hired to host. And if that wasn’t enough, Meddy’s one-that-got-away college sweetheart returns to add more chaos to the mix. Hilarious, full-hearted, and bursting with charm, Dial A for Aunties by Jesse Q. Sutanto is a delicious blend of comedy, family, and culture that provides ample inspiration for discussion.

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Lillian has barely heard from Madison since they were roommates at an elite boarding school. That is, until a letter from Madison arrives, begging Lillian to work for her as the caretaker of her twin step-kids. The request is a bit of a surprise to Lillian, but not nearly as shocking as the explosive truth about her would-be charges: The siblings spontaneously combust whenever they get too riled up. With nothing to lose, Lillian accepts the job, thrusting herself into a summer of self-reflection, startling flames, and finding a new kind of love. Nothing to See Here by Kevin Wilson is a heartwarming tale that will fuel considerations of what it means to be a parent and a caregiver to yourself and to others. Your book club will devour this hilarious and eccentric pick.

In this riotously relatable collection of essays, Samantha Irby crafts a priceless portrait of contemporary adulthood that will have your book club howling through its discussion. At 40 years old, Irby boasts all of the successes, insecurities, insights, and knee aches that come with middle age. Her bestselling collection offers an unflinching take on the big-kid growing pains of marriage, friendships, careers, and smartphone-era melancholy. Told with humor, of course, but also lots of heart, Wow, No Thank You is sure to be a book club hit.

A New York Times bestseller, Dear Girls by comedian and actress Ali Wong will hit home for moms and daughters alike. Presented as a collection of letters addressed to Wong’s daughters, this funny memoir encapsulates the woes and joys of motherhood, the trials of the New York dating scene, and the realities of life as a public figure, both on and off the stage. Filled with advice and gut-busting anecdotes, Dear Girls is as moving as it is amusing.

From hosting “Weekend Update” on Saturday Night Live to her sidesplitting portrayal of Liz Lemon on 30 Rock, Tina Fey is a comedy superstar. But as you’ll learn from her acclaimed collection of essays: “You’re no one until someone calls you bossy.” Just as funny as you’d expect, and with no punches pulled, Bossypants happily tackles a number of book-club-ready topics, from the absurdities of fame and the thrills of motherhood to near-fatal honeymoons.

New York Times bestselling author and comedian Phoebe Robinson takes on the hot mess that is contemporary life in Everything’s Trash, But It’s Okay. From big-picture cultural issues like race, gender, and feminism to dating headaches and personal money woes, Robinson tackles them all with her unfiltered and effortlessly funny perspective. Boasting essays that read like a chat with a close friend, Everything’s Trash, But It’s Okay is a perfect conversation starter. You and your book club will find yourselves feeling (just slightly) better about the dumpster-fire state of the world after reading Robinson’s hilarious and insightful commentary.

If you’ve read anything by David Sedaris, you’re familiar with his achingly funny voice and razor-sharp observations. Calypso is no exception. A collection of essays set against the idyllic backdrop of Sedaris’s Carolina coast beach home, Calypso tackles middle age and mortality with candor and biting charm. It’s a darker set of themes than you might expect from a book that takes place at a beach house, but Sedaris will usher your book club through the heaviness of life with his inimitable wit.

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