Jokes don’t always work in all formats: some of the most hilarious writing falls flat when you hear it rather than read it on the page. Luckily, these authors have made it work no matter how you choose to read their work. Here are thirteen hilarious audiobooks that you should queue up immediately.
Me Talk Pretty One Day by David Sedaris
Me Talk Pretty One Day is a memoir, told in essays, first published more than twenty years ago – and yet David Sedaris’s wry humour and keen observations, of everything from family life to travel to cooking to education, are timeless. He provides seemingly endless and delightfully witty commentary on all of his experiences, sharing the worst of them (addiction, grief, shame) with just as much good humour as the best of them. Read my full review of Me Talk Pretty One Day here.
This Is Going To Hurt by Adam Kay
This Is Going To Hurt contains all the gruesome and hilarious anecdotes we look for in a doctor’s memoir (strange objects pulled from patients’ rectums, strange objects pulled from patients’ urethras, that kind of thing), but also balances them with the bitter pill of working in an overburdened health system. It winds up being very funny in general, but with the occasional horribly sad diary entry that hits like a professional boxer’s right hook. Read my full review of This Is Going To Hurt here.
Read This Is Going To Hurt on audiobook via Libro.fm here.
Quietly Hostile by Samantha Irby
Quietly Hostile is a great sample plate of everything that makes Samantha Irby’s work wonderful fun to read (and hilarious to boot). She happily dedicates a whole essay to her appreciation for the musical works of the terminally-uncool Dave Matthews. In another, she gives the reader a frame-by-frame description of her favourite pornographic film. She waxes rhapsodic about well-stocked bathrooms, high-speed internet, elastic-waist pants, the home shopping network, and getting stoned while watching videos about whales. Read my full review of Quietly Hostile here.
Read Quietly Hostile on audiobook via Libro.fm here.
How To Kill Your Biggest Fan by Helen Blair
In How To Kill Your Biggest Fan, Hazel Witt (a deeply cynical spinster and veteran romance novelist) receives a strange and disturbing letter from a fan. With the help of her hilariously deadpan assistant, Hazel digs out the previous letters from this fan and quickly realises that she has a stalker – one whose ex-boyfriends often wind up dead under mysterious circumstances. The bright yellow illustrated cover suggests that it’s a cozy mystery, it’s actually rather dark – and yet very, very funny. Read my full review of How To Kill Your Biggest Fan here.
Read How To Kill Your Biggest Fan on audiobook via Libro.fm here.
The Rosie Project by Graeme Simsion
The narrator of The Rosie Project, Professor Don Tillman, is… different. He’s never had much “luck” with women, which should come as no surprise given that his proposed solution to that problem is to create a questionnaire to assess the suitability of each “potential mate”. The titular Rosie fails the checklist spectacularly, but Don isn’t really interested in dating her anyway; he’s more interested in using his genetics lab at work to help her track down her deadbeat dad. At first. Read my full review of The Rosie Project here.
I Feel Bad About My Neck by Nora Ephron
Nora Ephron is one of the most underrated literary geniuses of the 20th century. Be it her romantic comedy films, her brilliantly witty novels, or her incredibly funny memoirs, everything she wrote is hilarious (not to mention insightful and touching). I Feel Bad About My Neck is a book of essays about womanhood, domestic life, and aging. Ephron articulates the deeply held fears and horrid truths that we don’t often dare speak aloud, all the while making us laugh.
Read I Feel Bad About My Neck on audiobook via Libro.fm here.
Less by Andrew Sean Greer
As the mysterious narrator tells us in Less, Arthur Less worries that he is the “first homosexual to ever grow old”. He finds himself suddenly single, when his long-time fuck-buddy dumps him to marry a far more eligible (and age appropriate) bachelor. Arthur Less decides that he must act. He can’t RSVP “no” to the nuptials and admit defeat, but he couldn’t possibly attend either, especially with his 50th birthday looming… so, he proceeds to accept every half-baked invitation he’s received to literary events around the world, and sends his ex his regrets, citing “unfortunate” prior engagements. Read my full review of Less here.
Read Less on audiobook via Libro.fm here.
Once Upon A Tome by Oliver Darkshire
If you’re familiar with Oliver Darkshire, it’s probably because you’ve come across his Tweets about working in Sotherans, one of the worlds oldest bookstores. His 240-character anecdotes about the peculiarities and absurdities of his workplace were so popular, he penned a memoir about it: Once Upon A Tome. Subtitled “the misadventures of a rare bookseller” and described as “by turns unhinged and earnest”, Darkshire details the best and the worst of his normal job in his unusual workplace, from the weird clientele to the bizarre books to the resident ghost on site.
Read Once Upon A Tome on audiobook via Libro.fm here.
The Helpline by Katherine Collette
The Helpline is a charming, heart-warming story for anyone who loves a good oddball protagonist. Germaine’s quirky narration is immediately endearing. Of course, the underlying truth that makes these kinds of books enjoyable is the disconnect between the way the narrator sees the world and the way we know it to be, but the comedy is magnified by the fact that we can also recognise the truth in Germaine’s dealings with bureaucracy and office politics. Read my full review of The Helpline here.
Read The Helpline on audiobook via Libro.fm here.
Mammoth by Chris Flynn
The premise of Mammoth is bold, ludicrous even: thirteen thousand odd years of natural history narrated by the fossil of an American mammoth (Mammut americanum, though he goes by Mammut). It sounds like it couldn’t work, it shouldn’t work… but it does, even in audiobook format. On the night before the New York Natural History Auction in 2007, Mammut tells the story of his life, death, and resurrection as a fossil. He’s been bandied about across the world for centuries by humans, “hominids”, to their own (often nefarious) ends. Read my full review of Mammoth here.
Read Mammoth on audiobook via Libro.fm here.
Servo by David Goodwin
In Servo, David Goodwin offers the reader “a six-year voyage of sex, drugs, and sausage rolls”. He recounts his time working the graveyard shift at a suburban Melbourne service station: the good, the bad, and the very, very weird. All the crazies come out at night, and some of the ones Goodwin encounters will have you wheezing. He seems to attract lunatics in his personal life as well as at work, so his friends (like the Hungarian champion shitter Stevo) are good for plenty of laughs, too. Read my full review of Servo here.
Read Servo on audiobook via Libro.fm here.
The Martian by Andy Weir
Andy Weir probably wouldn’t want us describing The Martian as a comedy, but that’s too bad, because it’s really, really funny. It’s a little scary at times, sure, and there’s a lot of Mars facts, but it will make you laugh out loud again and again. Mark Watney is a fantastic narrator. He’s so likeable that Australian scientists have actually – like, in real life – named a new species of bush tomato after him (Solanum Watneyi). Read my full review of The Martian here.
The Land Before Avocado by Richard Glover
If you’ve ever had the privilege of hearing Richard Glover spin a yarn, you’ll know that he can make anything funny. In The Land Before Avocado, he turns his focus and his pen to the Australia of yesteryear, peeling back the layers of nostalgia to reveal what it was really like growing up in the ’60s or ’70s. This book will have you howling with laughter when your jaw isn’t dropping in disbelief, and you’ll want to download the audiobook onto the phone of Baby Boomer who moans about ‘how it used to be in their day’.
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