The Reading Challenge Group discussion

This month's genres are comedy or tragedy. You can read novels, plays, short stories, or even poetry if you like, since there is a lot of humorous verse.
Happy reading, everyone.

I think I'm going to have a harder time finding tragedy that I want to read. But for now, I have some potentials for humor, a lot more than I thought I would! Here are some possibilities if I'm thinking of them correctly as being humorous:

The Last Black Unicorn
Pride and Prejudice and Zombies
Dreadfully Ever After
Unholy Night
"Surely You're Joking, Mr. Feynman!": Adventures of a Curious Character
We're All Damaged
The Gospel According to Luke (this may or may not be as humorous as I am thinking)
This Is Not Fame: A "From What I Re-Memoir"
No Land's Man: A Perilous Journey through Romance, Islam, and Brunch
Have a Nice Day
Agent to the Stars
The Overdue Life of Amy Byler
And I'll probably give Fortunately, the Milk another listen since I really like Neil Gaiman and I remember that being funny.

I’ve been working my way through the novels of PG Wodehouse, so I’ll focus on those in May. And the pickup some tragedy/drama with Chekhov or Ibsen. I haven’t read much of either and feel I’m lacking in that department.

I should probably try to read at least one tragedy, so I will be looking to this group for suggestions!

eta: Actually, my younger daughter JUST finished Five Feet Apart and she said it was SOOOOOOOOO sad, but SOOOOOOO good, and Mom, you HAVE to read it! So I might read that as my "tragedy" pick? I get the feeling I will be weeping with this one!

From what I understand of Five Feet Apart, it should fit as a tragedy Eileen.
I think I'm goanna go old school and read some Shakespeare this month. One Comedy and one Tragedy. For Comedy, I am thinking Much Ado About Nothing, Loves Labor's Lost or The Taming Of The Shrew and as for Tragedy Macbeth or Hamlet, possibly Henry IV parts 1 and 2, if that's considered Tragedy rather than History.

I thought about Shakespeare, but I'm not sure I'm ready to go there this month. We'll see. For now, I'll do Five Feet Apart and Looking for Alaska, which my daughter thinks fits the whole tragedy theme well, lol. And I'm ready for lots of humor, lol.

I am planning to read Love's Labour's Lost by William Shakespeare too, Jenny.

Britt-Marie Was Here is mentioned as a humorous book and seeing that the movie is coming out soon I'll be reading that one.
And The Seven Husbands of Evelyn Hugo sounds quite tragic.

My other planned reads (which I don't see fitting into this challenge although they all have tragic elements):
Froi of the Exiles
Gemini
The Gunslinger
Good Omens: The Nice and Accurate Prophecies of Agnes Nutter, Witch
The Ballad of Black Tom

This one is a little harder for me, but for my first book, I've finished
In Such Good Company: Eleven Years of Laughter, Mayhem, and Fun in the Sandbox - stories of the Carol Burnett show. Loved this - it was fun to read about a show I loved!

I read the Carol Burnett memoir. It was really cute especially if you loved the show.

I loved the Carol Burnett show, especially the episodes with Tim Conway.

Yes, me too! My siblings and I would laugh ourselves silly over some of their antics and rewind the VCR tape over and over during some of them.

I always loved how Tim Conway could crack up the rest of the cast. Burnett talks about how there were 2 tapings and one would be more or less done according to the script and one was a little freer. The freer one always had Conway riffing on the script. He was a brilliant comedian!

Susy wrote: "Britt-Marie Was Here is mentioned as a humorous book and seeing that the movie is coming out soon I'll be reading that one.
And The Seven Husbands of Evelyn Hugo sou..."


I didn't know that there's a movie coming out of the Britt-Marie book!

I needed to read a book that has been on my shelf for a long time, so I think I'm going to read To Kill a Mockingbird (first time to listen to it rather than reading it) and I think that should qualify as a tragedy. I remember weeping buckets the last time I read it!

hi guys..can anyone suggest me a tragedy????..

@Cindy: Neither did I! I’m doing a book-to-movie reading (and watching) year and I thought I was well prepared, had done my research and then suddenly this one showed up! In the Netherlands the release date is July 11th.

Voices from Chernobyl is a book about the nuclear accident, written from eyewitness accounts of the disaster. I recommend it highly for the tragedy component.

I also found some ideas this way: https://www.goodreads.com/shelf/show/...

Several of my TBR books are in this list.

Rosemarie: do you mean the one by Alexievich or the one by Storholmen?

The book by Alexievich. It was a powerful read.

Rosemarie wrote: "The book by Alexievich. It was a powerful read."

Thank you Rosemarie, added to my TBR!

Eileen wrote: "I should probably try to read at least one tragedy, so I will be looking to this group for suggestions!

eta: Actually, my younger daughter JUST finished Five Feet Apart and she sai..."

Sounds like a PLAN!!

These two genres get me every year... I read The Indifferent Stars Above: The Harrowing Saga of a Donner Party Bride during February...while the Sierras were filling with the 188% of average snowfall this year.... I read No Easy Answers: The Truth Behind Death at Columbine last month...
So a BIG thank you to Eileen for the link to the list of Tragedies. I scanned deep, and happened to find one of my wishlist books among the titles...so I shall be reading....
The Things They Carried Otherwise I was headed to Five Feet Apart too!
It's now May 28th and I'm cramming to get George Carlin's Brain Droppings read by the end of the month! I started The Things They Carried, but it's darker than I was prepared for. Not bad...just not a light read.

Oooh, awesome! That's great you were able to find something! AND you've already read a couple of books this year that also happen to fulfill this genre. :) I'm currently working on the Harry Potter challenge and my current challenge is to read one historical fiction book (I'm going to read Unholy Night, which also qualifies as humor for this genre challenge), one book that has been translated into English (I'm reading All this I will give to you, which happens to be a mystery), and one book that has been on my library for a very long time (I'm reading To Kill a Mockingbird, which has been in my library since 2015, and also qualifies as a tragedy). So trying to do some combining here. :)

I have to watch the movie of Britt-Marie! I know A Man Called Ove has a movie, and my libary has it. Now I just need to read those...
Funnily enough, I'm reading Beartown by the same author and thinking it may be considered tragic...

My first comedy of May is The Inimitable Jeeves! Quite funny so far. All my time with Jeeves & Wooster this year has inspired me to track down the BBC series with Stephen Fry and Hugh Laurie. I watched the first last night and it was just brilliant. Such marvelous comic timing couched in perfect staging. I can feel an obsession coming on!

I love that series!

Okay, so the discovery of Jeeves and Wooster is every bit as addicting as I expected. Wow, these are good! And I love knowing which stories each episode references. Of course, this means I spent 2 hours gazing at a screen yesterday instead of going out into the gorgeous spring sunshine... but today is rainy so there will be less guilt if I binge!

I also listened to The Seagull by Chekhov and The Imaginary Invalid by Moliere. The latter is a comedy but since Moliere basically died on stage coughing up his lungs while playing the hypochondriac lead... the overall impression is mixed.

I have finished reading Love’s Labour’s Lost by Shakespeare. I enjoyed the stage version more than the written version since the writing is not as good as in some of his other comedies but it does have a fun plot.

Just finished Since You're Leaving Anyway, Take Out the Trash - sort of a Stephanie Plum-type mystery set in West Texas. Lots of humorous elements and quirky characters in a West Texas setting. Mindless fun and great title.

Five Feet Apart
is this good for this challenge????

I am not sure. Has anyone read Five Feet Apart? According to goodreads it is listed as contemporary fiction, YA or romance.

Rosemarie wrote: "I am not sure. Has anyone read Five Feet Apart? According to goodreads it is listed as contemporary fiction, YA or romance."

According to my daughter, this would make a very good tragedy in the sense that you'll be sobbing at the end. She implied that it does not have a happy ending, but she didn't want to ruin it for me. But keep in mind that she is 12, lol. I'm planning on reading this as one of my first tragedies. To Kill a Mockingbird will be my first.

Also, based on her recommendation, I'm planning on reading Looking for Alaska. I loved Fault in our Stars even though I cried through parts of it. I suspect the same will be the same for Looking for Alaska.

Thanks for the information, Eileen. The book sounds like a good choice for the genre of the month.

Eileen wrote: "I should probably try to read at least one tragedy, so I will be looking to this group for suggestions!

eta: Actually, my younger daughter JUST finished Five Feet Apart and she sai..."

I loved it. When I read my sisters keeper, I passed it on with a pack of tissues. This is definitely one of those x

Carrie wrote: "Eileen wrote: "I should probably try to read at least one tragedy, so I will be looking to this group for suggestions!

eta: Actually, my younger daughter JUST finished [book:Five Feet Apart|399394...

I loved it. When I read my sisters keeper, I passed it on with a pack of tissues. This is definitely one of those"

Oooh, good to know! Looking forward to it. I promised myself I would read TKAM first, but then I'll give this a try. I'm trying to alternate between humor and tragedy if I can though.

I’m reading Loitering With Intent by Muriel Spark for Comedy. So far I like it better than “The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie”, though I don’t find it very funny.

Okay, finished a couple of books unrelated to this challenge and now I'm back at it with To Kill a Mockingbird. Looking forward to rereading this book!

I finished Loitering With Intent today. After an ok start it got steadily worse & I didn’t find it funny at all. I definitely don’t recommend it & don’t plan to try reading anything else by Muriel Spark. It’s another book that I can’t understand being on the Guardian list.

So that was supposed to be a comedy?!

Eileen wrote: "So that was supposed to be a comedy?!"

Yes, it’s on the comedy section of the Guardian list. So is “The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie” which I read a while ago. The film is good, mainly due to the wonderful Maggie Smith in the lead role, but I didn’t enjoy that book either.

I rarely read funny books as I don’t like them much. The exception, but only for those who like cats, has to be the books by Doreen Tovey. She wrote a series, starting with Cats In The Belfry, which I really enjoy.

I like Doreen Tovey too.

Sonia wrote: "I finished Psmith in the City yesterday. It was gently amusing and I might look out for the other Psmith books by Wodeshouse. I have never read a book which had an exciting cricket ma..."

I’m glad you liked this, Sonia. I hadn’t heard of it before, but have added it to my TBR list.

I just finished To Kill a Mockingbird, which is just as powerful today as it was several years ago when I did a reread because I had students reading it. Sadly, even though some things have improved since that time period, there are similar examples of that kind of injustice happening even today. I think this book is so important for people to read, especially our young people. Anyway, I'm going to read a couple of humor books I think, starting with Unholy Night.

For tragedy, I read Tragedy in the Shenandoah Valley: The Story of the Summers-Koontz Execution - it was a sad post-script to the Civil War. This was a short book, apparently written by a local historian, that details the execution of two Virginians in July 1865 for the theft of a few horses from some Union troops. They had quickly returned them and were pardoned by the colonel in charge of the local troops and gone home to resume their lives. Events conspired to result in the arrest and summary execution of 2 young men without even a trial.

I just finished Unholy Night since it was categorized as humor. But while there were some pretty funny parts, overall, I would not necessarily classify it as humor. Maybe satirical? The book is much better than simple humor and there were even some seriously sad parts. Gruesome parts too. This would be a difficult book for me to categorize, actually. I'm listening to his Pride and Prejudice and Zombies right now and it's hysterical (I also saw the movie). It's got a much different feel. I would still recommend Unholy Night, but although it is categorized as humor, I think it's more than that. I've also started making progress with Anna Karenina and can already see the tragedy forming.

Thanks to Sonia for the recommendation, I have read Psmith in the City today. I agree with her description that it was “gently amusing”.

Started I'm Judging You: The Do-Better Manual for another funny book but this one is DNF. Moving on.

I’ve just finished reading Salt to the Sea by Ruta Sepetys for tragedy. It’s historical fiction, but based on true events. A wonderful book which I couldn’t put down!