Funniest Books of 2011

This post should really be entitled, 3 Books That I Found Highly Amusing, since these are the only humor books I read in 2011, thanks to my Grief Memoirs phase (that I'm starting to think is probably not a phase).

Bossypants by Tina Fey
It's a law of physics that Tina Fey can do no wrong, and this book proves it page after page. Smart and funny, yes. See also: sharp and insightful. Though it serves up a generous helping of LOLs, Bossypants is more memoir than "humor book", with a narrative thread that brings you deeper into the heart and head of America's favorite comedy writer.

Is Everyone Hanging Out Without Me? (And Other Concerns) by Mindy Kaling
I downloaded this one onto my Kindle after reading Kaling's essay Flick Chicks in the New Yorker (which is also in the book). It didn't disappoint (and it's a super quick read). An emmy-award winning writer of the popular television series The Office (and the actress who plays Kelly Kapoor on the show), Kaling shares her "unscientific observations on romance, friendship, and Hollywood, with several conveniently placed stopping points for you to run errands and make phone calls." And she's nice. Kaling's observations in "Is Everyone Hanging Out" reveal a bleeding heart (she shares my aversion to the celebrity roast, for example, and worships and adores her parents), which is a nice change of pace from the relentlessly raucous, and often nasty, shock jockeying of other comic writers.

Go the F**ck to Sleep by Adam Mansbach and Ricardo Cortes
This one stirred up some serious controversy between parents who have a sense of humor and parents who have extra large garden spades shoved up their a--I'm sorry did I write that out loud? Make no mistake. Go the F**ck to Sleep is a humor book. For grown ups. And any parent who has held their breath and tiptoed out of a finally sleeping toddler's room and headed directly to the liquor cabinet (or the Doritos closet--to each his own) should wholeheartedly relate to the comedy within. Plus, it rhymes.

-Amanda O'Brien