Can you recommend books with meme culture humor?
Can you recommend books with meme culture humor?
No, I am serious about this. I wish to get back into the learning of reading, but as a beginner I am repelled by the intense use of vocabulary, literary devices of classical literature books or intense and difficult-to-follow storyline of modern day fiction. I want to read a book that is clearly made with people like me in mind.
I'm not saying I want 10 second short paragraphs or extremely racist or bigoted comments to fuel my interest in reading the book. Though I rarely use social media, I do quite often look at memes, and they make me feel at home with how they are relatable and make use of clever wordings and phrases to express that one particular feeling. Same thing is seen in comments of meme forums where people come up with things to add to the humor of the original post or make it even better. I feel like this kind of expression could very well be possible to implement in a book in a textual medium while retaining the same amount of engagement and creativity.
I know my request may seem unnecessary, that I should quit bickering and just pick up a book and start reading it, and in reality I could by lending one from my family, however I wish to give this approach a chance as I am sure this situation must be faced by other people and someone could have a written a book to directly address these kind of people. I need a stepping stone to start my habit of reading books and I feel like starting from something I am already familiar with would greatly assist me.
I am not interested in any particular genre as of now apart from what I have expressed in the post so far. I could even go as far as to read an encyclopedia or an academic paper if the humor is engaging enough.
I feel that this topic of discussion is general, subjective and of help to others on the internet, which is why I decided to post it here instead of the dedicated books community.
You might consider books written with meme-like humor. Two that come to mind are The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy (by Douglas Adams) and The Princess Bride (by William Goldman). Both of those books are relatively short novels, so they should go down easy.
I'll second the recommendation for The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy (by Douglas Adams).
It is very funny, with a zany sense of humor that is right at home in meme land. Many of the funny things I have read in memes and comments under memes are just quotes from that book.
I auggest also any book from Terry Pratchett, if OP is into fantasy
Some of the few books that had me laughing out loud.
Repulsed by vocabulary, but writes a wall of text.
I've never read anything so fucking inane.
I'm not feeling so vitriolic, but my sentiment is the same. This is almost a parody.
I swear it wasn't intentional 😓
Don't sweat it. Some people just like to hate on things. You're allowed to ask question on an Internet forum dedicated to asking questions.
With a limited vocabulary they needed more time to clarify their intent ig.
Terry Pratchett disc world books are very funny and full of easy to understand jokes.
But also full of slightly harder to understand linguistic jokes that may frustrate OP.
I found with my kids they just didn't get the reference and enjoyed what they understood. No frustration, just revelations when they read them again when older.
"repelled by the intense use of vocabulary"
"this kind of expression could very well be possible to implement in a book in a textual medium while retaining the same amount of engagement and creativity."
🤷🏻♀️
No but really, Douglas Adams could be what you're looking for, very funny stuff
Books and meme humour feel like a very anachronistic combination
The notion that books are "of the past" has done harm to many.
I should elaborate that I meant printed books
Anachronistic? They still write books today.
Have you tried graphic novels? Comic books get a bad rap, but there is dialog and pictures that help you get into the story. Maybe that would help?
Truth be told, I have been reading graphic novels for a month now. I wanted to move away from comics in favour of starting to read books, but like I said in the post, I do not know of any books that could provide a similar amount of humor as from the dialogs in these comics, which is the primary reason why I read them, not because of the illustrations.
This might be counter intuitive but if you want to step out of your comfort zone and try to really get used to that "intense use of vocabulary" in an engaging story I recommend reading "the wheel of time" novels and for something lighter and funnier the "Percy Jackson" series they are what got me into reading back in middle school
I don't know where you live but the Brooklyn public library has a free service where you can ask something like this, and a human librarian will try to find books for you: https://www.bklynlibrary.org/bookmatch
Oh shit that’s awesome.
Only because I haven't seen anyone else say it, but Ready Player One is kinda what you're talking about and pretty accessible.
I've already watched the movie. Does it make the book redundant?
The movie was like someone reading the cliffnotes version of the book and making a movie out of just that. Major overarching plot points are there but how they got there and character development is all lost.
Actually, the book has a completely different set of clues for the egg hunt, and you get to know the characters a lot better.
Terry Pratchett.
The Discworld books can wrap a particle physics pun in a fart joke. The cheeky cleverness that Patchett writes with, along with the keen eye for making fun of the absurdity of human existence, could be right up your alley. Start with "Guards, Guards!", or whichever one you spot on your local second hand bookstore- they are pretty much all able to be read standalone.
Seriously. Pratchett will scratch your itch.
John Dies at the End by David Wong/Jason Pargin. It's very colloquial
My favorite of his is Futuristic Violence and Fancy Suits, and it's sequel. Pargin is a competent writer, so while it's not typically my type of book (Almost constant action gets old to me), he does a competent job that kept me reading. And I think it would be pretty good for someone with a shorter attention span like OP.
Have you considered graphic novels or manga?
I haven’t read them myself, but I understand that “Gideon the Ninth” and its sequels are heavy on meme humor. Some reviewers love them for that, others hate them for that, but they all seem to agree that it’s there.
It definitely feels unique among the books I've read, yeah. I liked it once I understood that it was supposed to be anachronistic and fun to read.
The hardest part about reading Gideon the Ninth for me was keeping track of all the settings (different room layouts, a big castle with winding hallways, etc.) and people (basically Hunger Games--style; 2 people from each of 9 sections of a nation). Maybe it would be more helpful for OP to start with something easier for these reasons.
Go to a book store. In my experience it is way easier to find book there than with the whole catalog of amazon.
Have a look at the shelves with the gift ideas. Most books there are somewhat funny and are more a casual read.
If you want something funny, have a look at something from your favorite comedian or poetry slammer. They often write similar format like they do on stage. Short, condensed and on point.
Pick up a few books, read the better bart of the first page, run through the pages and read another one in the middle. See if you like the style or try with the next one.
It's only technically a book, but I'm still going to recommend Homestuck. It's one of the most "made for the internet" stories out there when that's what you're looking for.
https://bambosh.dev/unofficial-homestuck-collection/ is recommended since flash died.
This is a bit of a stretch, but Rule 34 by Charles Stross might be up your alley. It's a detective story where the first murder victim is a spammer killed by a sex toy, and it gets weirder from there.
Yes, that's the same Charles Stross who invented D&D's githyanki, by the way.
I think you should try Christopher Moore. Suggested starting point: Lamb.
Here's how it starts: six year old Jesus and his little brother are playing a game where the brother kills a lizard with a rock, then Jesus puts it in his mouth to resurrect it.
His humor is irreverent, absurd, and constant. The stories are all grounded in the real world though, so you won't struggle to understand lore, settings, or language. Very easy to read.
It sounds like you’re talking about Calvin and Hobbes to me. They’re amazing and full of funny quips, quotes, and jokes. They’re also super approachable, because they’re supposed to be the perspective of a six year old.
That's not a book though?
I mean.. they're comic books. there's quite a few of them. but no, not a traditional "read the entire story" kind of book.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Calvin_and_Hobbes_books
Emoji Dick is a crowd sourced and crowd funded translation of Herman Melville's Moby Dick into Japanese emoticons called emoji.
Real Ultimate Power: The Official Ninja Handbook. Other people have heard of this right?
I haven't read the book, but their very informative website is where I learned that the purpose of a ninja is to flip out and kill everyone.
Check out Off to be the Wizard by Scott Meyer. It's got a lot of nerdy humor to it. I wouldn't necessarily call it "meme humor" but it might have the feel that you're looking for.
Can you elaborate on this 'nerdy humor'? If it is what I believe it to be, I could also enjoy that. I love memes and jokes revolving around complex maths and scientific phenomena that you need to have properly studied in order to understand the humor.
A lot of the humor is around computer programming and things that typical nerdy guys find funny. Trying not to spoil it too much, but an example is >!the main character creates a "levitating spell" that is a loop that runs 10 times a second that resets an object's vertical position, with funny results.!< You don't need to understand complex math or anything to still think it's funny, but it helps. There's also things like jokes about Star Wars, The Simpsons, and other popular culture. It's an easy read, so worth checking out and dumping if you don't like it.
I really enjoy He Who Fights with Monsters it's a lit-rpg with the main character being Australian with lots of off the wall references, mostly to 80's TV shows.
Try books by Dril. Yes, the Twitter personality. I hear his newest book, The Get Rich and Become God Method, is his finest work so far.
It's part of a series called the DRIL Collection, though, so it may have quite a few of his tweets. The other books in the series are just his tweets collected in a book.
I also see he has a book called How to Cheat at Casino Games by Being a Bitch, and the sample pages are quite hilarious, so that could be up your alley as well.
...only problem is they're not available digitally, at least not on any storefront I can find.
Think you can find digital copies at http://wint.co/
But only of two of them: TGRaBGM and the 10 year anniversary tweet compilation. And if you go on the Gumroad page there's an additional massive tweet compilation with extras for huge fans and data hoarders.
So no Casino Games.
Most of David Sedaris’s books could fit the bill. His books are usually a collection of short stories with an overarching theme and are funny and easy to follow.
When you said meme humor, a couple of Brandon Sanderson (he's a fantasy author) examples came to mind.
(Very minor spoilers for some of his works follow, reader beware.)
There's a scene in one of his books where a young woman is talking with her magical spirit companion about doing something "inappropriate" with her new fiancé, and the most inappropriate thing her spirit companion - who is a logic-based abstract entity - can concieve of them getting up to together is dividing by zero. This happens in the Stormlight Archive series, which is several very weighty tomes of high fantasy.
One of his books, which is aimed toward more of a YA audience, is narrated by one of his recurring characters and is just extremely witty, frequently breaking the fourth wall of the story when he himself happens to show up in it as a character off in the background. There's one passage that I think is a great example of this, it happens when the main character is getting acquainted with all the members of a pirate ship she's stumbled onto, and they're talking about all the different crew:
I’m not going to ask you to remember them all. Mostly because I don’t remember them all. Therefore, for ease of both narrative and our collective sanity, I’m going to name only the more important members of the Crow’s Song. The rest, regardless of gender, I’ll call 'Doug.' You’d be surprised how common the name is across worlds. Oh, some spell it 'Dug' or 'Duhg,' but it’s always around. Regardless of local linguistics, parents eventually start naming their kids Doug. I once spent ten years on a planet where the only sapient life was a group of pancakelike beings that expressed themselves through flatulence. And I kid you not—one was named Doug. Though admittedly it had a very distinctive smell attached when the word was 'spoken.' 'Doug' is the naming equivalent to convergent evolution. And once it arrives, it stays. A linguistic Great Filter; a wakeup call. Once a society reaches peak Doug, it’s time for it to go sit in the corner and think about what it has done.
That one's called Tress of the Emerald Sea. Fantastic read.
I'm really enjoying Hank Green's Carl novels, although I'd say they're somewhat less meme culture and more social media in general.
We are Legion by Dennis Taylor is immersed in nerdy humor.
David Thorne's website and books are great fun.
I have several of his books and when my partner and I go on holiday, I pack one for him as he doesn't read -ever- but said these don't feel like reading.
Would absolutely recommend Gideon the Ninth and the rest of the Locked Tomb series. Great read.