What do people think the funniest novels of all time are? My vote would go to Catch 22 by Joseph Heller. Every time I read it I'm staggered by the comic inventiveness and energy. The book he wrote after it, Something Happened, is also funny in a different sort of way.
I'm also a fan of Three Men In A Boat by Jerome K. Jerome. It might be over one hundred years old, but it's still very funny in a surprisingly modern way.
Catch-22 is my all-time fave humour.
Followed by Three Men - classic, the language of the day actually helps carry rather than hinder the reader's pleasure.
I have to plug my great mate, AJ Desmond too. He wrote a very funny book. Big Bang is about VIPs trapped in a surreal nuclear bunker with farms and savannahs. It's run by Morpheus, a cookie mainframe and Dwarfius - its psychotic midget fleshbot (a robot made from flesh) sidekick. It'll make you laugh and at the same time make you question the nature of the thing we call 'reality'.
You can read an excerpt at: Big Bang
Billy Liar, which I seem to mention all the time on these boards, is another classic. A lot of P.G. Wodehouse's output is similarly superb.
The Cather In The Rye is my favourite and has some great humor.
Also, As Seen On TV.
I loved a book called THE GAME by Neil Strauss. I loved it so much i stole it from a beach bar in Egypt and risked my left hand getting lobbed off, or slowly being stoned to death.
I refuse to tell you anything about it. Hopefuly to intrigue you into reading it.
Infact it is my chosen book for the book club i am in. Yes filthy Charley the dirty minded trollop is in a la te da book club. Abnormal isnt it?
Very.
Stewart Lee's - The Perfect Fool is really good.
The HitchHiker Guide to the Galaxy
...What do you think they left me to defend myself?...Nothing
Brilliant stuff
David Sedaris. A lot of his stuff is funny essays published as books, (basically just him rambling on about things that happen to him) but he's written a couple of novels too. He's ace.
Robert Rankin is great, hes written tons of books, all nice and silly.
Quote: hotzappa11 @ January 31, 2007, 12:46 PMThe Cather In The Rye is my favourite and has some great humor.
Also, As Seen On TV.
i agree, a good read and some good humour
Quote: Gavin @ January 31, 2007, 6:28 PMThe HitchHiker Guide to the Galaxy
...What do you think they left me to defend myself?...Nothing
Brilliant stuff
Ah, of course, H2G2. Brilliant stuff indeed. 
As has been mentioned already P G Wodehouse. Fantastic, an object lesson in farce. Accept no substitute.
But my favourite novel of all time is:
The Van by Roddy Doyle: part of the Barrytown trilogy.
A hilarious story of the relationship between two friends and how it all nearly goes pear-shaped and is destroyed beyond repair.
Only quibble with Adams is that he wrote some of the best lines in literature (from comedy viewpoint)
"There's only one thing that travels faster than the speed of light - bad news."
Brilliant, but he also wrote some of the shittiest lines. After a quest to find the meaning of life? The answer is 42. I felt totally cheated that that was the best he could come up with. Not only that I had to endure a decade of bus-stop jokers barking "42" to their mates and then watching them all fall around laughing. Save me.
The bus-stop catchphrase phenomena may surprise the post-Little Britain and Fast Show generation but let me assure you it did occur way back then. The only difference is that we learned to 'read' to be able to perform this useful service to the elderly and easily ranckled bus drivers.
The Red Dwarf novels are laugh-out-loud funny.
'Kryten tried to look inconspicuous. Well, as inconspicuous as a mechanical man in a yellow mac running backwards at forty miles an hour can.'
From Backwards by Rob Grant