Why do books not make you laugh as hard as standup comedians do?

You haven’t read Douglas Adams yet, I take it:
The Hitchhiker Trilogy (with four books)

The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy
The Restaurant at the End of the Universe
Life, the Universe, and Everything
So Long, and Thanks for All the Fish

@CyanoticWasp Yeah I have. Made me chuckle.

You’ve obviously never read ‘The Milagro Beanfield War’ by John Nichols, or Twain’s, ‘Letters From the Earth”, or Rita Mae Brown’s ‘Six of One’, or any number of religious texts.

@dunkin_donutz… ouch at “chuckle”. Parts of those books made me gasp for breath.

When you’re around other people, you laugh harder. It’s a social bonding thing.

I like Terry Pratchett’s books. I just don’t have the time to read them as I am always either doing schoolwork, destroying tanks/killing campers or being a music elitist. But seriously, I was in the middle of Maskerade and nothing else has made me laugh harder in years.

I suppose it depends on your taste.Mark Twain’s books do it for me.;)

Au contraire The Bible cracks me up every time.

Not usually. But there is a difference. With a book, all you have is the words. Reading something funny is different from hearing someone funny, which includes the person’s voice, tone, body language; that can make it a lot more effective.

I think it’s actually the sound of the audience laughing that augments our own response. I’d bet that we wouldn’t find a standup routine nearly as funny if we watched it alone and without the audio from a laughing audience.

As much as we may hate TV laugh tracks, they were widely used because of this effect of reinforcing our own reaction. We just think things are funnier when we hear others laughing.

@Harp @DominicX Good point.

A short horror story I once read called “The Toe” (A differing version of the famous Tailypo.) had me busting my guts for hours.
That may be just me though.

I laugh out loud at funny books all the time. Jon Stewart’s America comes to mind, for one. Had me in stitches.

The only book I ever read that literally made me laugh til I cried was “Don’t Bend Over in the Garden Granny, You Know Them ‘Taters Got Eyes.” By Louis Grizzard. He was a writer, kind of along the lines of Dave Barry, but funnier to me. This book was all about sex and how he learned about sex, learned to have sex, etc. It was the funniest thing I ever read.

With standup comedians the delivery is a lot of what makes them funny.

I have, actually. Whereas most standup comedy leaves me cold.

A person who is not a fluent reader may find listening easier.

Laughter is a social thing. We don’t laugh because we find something funny, we laugh so other people know we got the joke.

@Jeruba I agree. I often find myself critiquing the stand-up guy’s timing, cadence, choice of words (especially when too many of them are just four-letter words that no longer shock, only bore). Reading does it for me.

@Lightlyseared

I disagree completely. I have laughed alone many many times. My roommate goes to lacrosse practice and that leaves me here alone many weeknights. It’s after dinner so I don’t have anything to do except study and get distracted by my computer. So sometimes I find myself watching clips from Mad TV or episodes of Family Guy, South Park, or The Simpsons and I laugh out loud all the time. There’s no one here to “show” anything.

How about when I can’t stop thinking about something funny in class and I keep wanting to laugh at bad times? You really think I’m just doing that to show people I got the joke? Most of the time it’s an inside joke and there’s no one to laugh with in the first place.

Ah, @DominicX, the impulse to laugh in class, laugh in church, laugh at a funeral—different phenomenon.

Something hit my funnybone while I was stuck in an MRI for 45 minutes. I nearly burst my seams trying to remain absolutely immobile while being helpless to stop the funny thing from striking me again and again and again and again.

When they let me out, the first thing I did was let the laugh loose. I made the mistake of trying to explain it to the technician, who just gave me a very strange look and said, “Most people don’t have that reaction.”

@Jeruba more people should have your reactions.

I’ve laughed out loud at quite a few books. Janet Evanovich’s series about Stephanie Plum always have me falling over in hysterics. There’s a chapter in “The Education of Little Tree” that still cracks me up, and I’ve read that book probably 20 times.

I bet Sarah Palin’s book would make me laugh a lot, but I’d never read it. :)

Ulysses is hilarious, but Joyce’s personal letters are more hilarious. Please look them up and read them, and you will come to envy Nora Barnacle.

I laugh when reading some books (see Ulysses, though even though it’s funny it’s not usually a laugh-out-loud kind of funny, which I suppose most books aren’t that kind of funny, actually, unless you’re talking certain humorists like Sedaris who everyone seems to enjoy or certain really good writers who happen also to be really funny, whether they mean to be or not, like David Foster Wallace). I also laugh a lot while I’m alone, whether reading or using the Internet or watching a movie, or sitting in the quiet.

I also laugh in public by myself, like when I saw Avatar. Hilarious movie. No one else in the theater laughed with me though.

I have found some books extremely funny and some stand up comics just leave me wondering why anyone was laughing. I think the difference is when you read you require an active imagination to ‘see’ what is going on and with a stand up comic you don’t have to think about it. I admit to preferring the books although I do have a soft spot for Billy Connoly.

David Sedaris books make me laugh every time!

The books I read makes me laugh as hard as standup comedians.

I’ve laughed pretty hysterically when reading, myself.