The more things change...

P.J. O'Rourke is the honored author of one of the few books my parents would not allow us to read as kids, MODERN MANNERS. Now I'm a putative adult and I do what I want, which is why I read this book in a flurry the weekend before the 2012 presidential election. It was worth it, and I don't think I got any more corrupted from it.

The book is a loose collection of essays examining different aspects of the federal government, from the president to military spending, written and published around the time of the 1988 election. (Yes, there is a random Joe Biden mention, thank goodness.) O'Rourke re-balances the federal budget, sits in on a session of Congress and analyzes the workload of the Supreme Court, as well as joining the reporter "pool" during the 1988 election to cover the people covering the candidates. (O'Rourke's biography in the back of my edition, which bears this cover at left, lists him at the time as a correspondent for Rolling Stone -- still a surprisingly rich source of political reporting and analysis -- so I'm assuming some of this book began life in its pages.)

I knew from his odd appearances on Wait! Wait! Don't Tell Me that O'Rourke leans conservative, so he naturally approaches the government with suspicion, even the parts that conservatives have traditionally held up. In the last essay, he moves from national to local level and describes sitting through a city function in his New England hometown and feeling himself bubbling over with rage as the deliberations stretched on without end or point. But he doesn't hate it completely; he shows a lot of respect to the congressperson who lets O'Rourke shadow him for a day (and some restraint in withholding his name), and stands duly impressed in front of a military installation.

His anger at government as an organism is one I think even people on my side of the political spectrum might have felt at one time. To paraphrase Avril Lavigne: why did our nation, framers and elected representatives have to go and make things so complicated? One layer below the eighth-grade-U.S.-history "three branches"  explanation of government and the head swims. (This week, for instance, we learned about the part of the CIA that might read your emails in case you are highly classified, yet suspected of a security breach, and guess from that what kind of breach you have committed, of which there are many. Did I make that explanation dry enough? Cool.) I thought most of O'Rourke's non-governmental vitriol was misplaced, but there were moments when I agreed with him -- a good frame of mind to enter at the end of the election cycle after all.

Books That Make You Laugh

Back when I wrote my list of books that make you cry I promised to write its counterpart later in the year when it would be necessary. What I didn't consider was that really, there are two potential opposites for books that make you cry, being those that make you laugh (the direct correlation) and books that somehow make you feel better or uplifted, but aren't necessarily funny. I've been pretty grumpy recently so I will now hold forth on the former.

Sentimental favorite: Gordon Korman, NO COINS, PLEASE. This is the first book I can remember reading and laughing at; it's a middle-grade chapter book about an eleven-year-old con artist on a chaperoned trip across America who runs a new scam in every city. What's even cooler about it is that Korman was a writing prodigy who published this book when he was just 21.

Sentimental favorite II: P.J. O'Rourke, MODERN MANNERS. As I wrote before, my parents took this book away from my sister and me after we discovered it and thought it was the funniest thing in existence. Now I'm grown-up and no one can stop me from owning a copy of this book, or from listening to him on "Wait Wait... Don't Tell Me!" I even think he's kind of handsome in an elder-statesmanly way, which: yeah, I know.

Algonquin Round Table pick: I love Dorothy Parker, but you all know about Dorothy Parker, so might I direct you to the Robert Benchley collection THE BENCHLEY ROUND-UP? As a miniaturist writing about topics like how to read a newspaper in public and the psychological benefits of chewing gum, he is often overlooked in the pantheon, but I think it was his work more than any other's that shaped the Shouts & Murmurs column as it appears today.

Funny and best-selling for a reason: The writers of "The Daily Show" could have just regurgitated some of their best known bits into book form. Instead they came up with AMERICA: THE BOOK, which resembles a real(ly unorthodox) textbook, including wacky definitions and a recurring sidebar entitled "Would You Mind If I Tell You How We Do It In Canada?"

Funny in 2009: Steve Hely, HOW I BECAME A FAMOUS NOVELIST. I mentioned this book last week in the context of Colson Whitehead's "What To Write Next," but I'm plugging it again here. This satire of a frustrated writer can get pretty cutting and if I were Hely's publisher, it might not be the kind of mirror I'd want to see myself in, but it's funny enough to risk the injury. The four people I know who actually took my advice and read it all liked it, and how can a not-at-all random sampling of four people be wrong?

Funny, but also sort of uplifting: Mark Salzman's memoir LOST IN PLACE: GROWING UP ABSURD IN SUBURBIA has been one of my favorites for going around 10 years now. The author was a teenage cello-playing dork who one day became obsessed with kung-fu movies and decided his true calling was to become a Buddhist master with a black belt. Sometimes, he acts like a complete idiot, but his reckless passions are enviable -- maybe I'll regret sneaking it onto this list when it comes time to do the other.

What are the books that make you laugh the most?