why can't I find many books that are like comedies that you see in the movies?

Question

maybe im not looking hard enough, but why does it seem that there arent any books that are like the american pie movies for example, or meet the parents or stories like that, again i could just be looking in the wrong place but can anyone make some suggestions?

Answer 1

Try these authors:

Ben Elton
Zadie Smith (especially 'White Teeth')
or, the legendary PD Wodehouse (Wooster and Jeeves - that duo are an absolute crack up)

Answer 2

I think that perhaps you just haven't been looking long enough. The hilarious films "About a Boy" and "High Fidelity" were hilarious novels first (both of them by the same titles and by Nick Hornby).

Humor on the screen works very differently from humor on the page. You can convey a lot more wit and subtlety on the page! So funny movies don't always start as funny books, and funny books don't always succeed as funny movies.

Other answerers have given you many great suggestions. Here's a meta-answer: Ask a librarian! The staff of any reasonably large library is liable to include one or two people whose taste in funny novels will run very close to what you're asking for.

Answer 3

Try Carl Hiassen. His books are pretty funny( in my opinion at least). They have made 1 or 2 of his books into movies, but as always with a book-lover, the movie is a bit of a let down. He still writes new ones, but check the library and the local book swapping places.

Answer 4

I have a friend who writes hilarious books but she's not published. Her books remind me of American Pie because they're really funny but not unrealistic or ridiculous. One of them is even about a bunch of highschool kids. In case she ever gets anything published, her name is Katherine Morrison. The only other writer of funny stuff I can think of was Lewis Carroll (his short stories and such; not the Alice books).

Answer 5

Movies and books are different media. What's funny in a book is not necessarily funny in a movie and vice versa. Having said that, I think Mark Twain is almost always funny, James Thurber is usually funny, H. Allen Smith is funny, Robert Benchley is funny although dated. Ring Lardner's "You Know Me Al" is hilarious. I hope you enjoy some of these.

Answer 6

Ben Elton is fantastic- he write a bit of dark comedy too which is pretty cool. In fact he's wrote the script for "Maybe Baby" which was based on his own book "Inconcievable". He writes alot of things that are spoofed on reality tv- "High Society" has a character that won Pop Hero, and "Dead Famous" is based on Big Brother.

Answer 7

because those sort of things are not funny in book form. What makes them funny is the timing of the jokes and the expressions/personality of the actors - that sort of stuff would not come accross in book form. The only book i know that is as funny/funnier than the movie is Hitchhikers guide to the galaxy.

Answer 8

The majority of true and entertaining Comedy comes from visual cues and the inflection of the words.

It takes a VERY descriptive author to get that accross on a page, and after awhile, I'd think that written comedy would spend too much time describing the actions and too little time on dialogue since it'd be harder to "get" the humor they're trying to convey.

Answer 9

we may need to find people who can write those books and be able to do it well. It would be great to see those kind of books

Answer 10

i wonder too,there are only sad stories ,true stories and love stories.even comic books are on the sad side the comic strips have changed too ,not funny anymore.