The Fuller Memorandum (Charles Stross)

I'm reading the Laundry Files series out of order, which is a little confusing, but I love them anyway. The mixture of humor, pop culture, computers, science geekery, Lovecraftian horror, James Bond, and soul-deadening bureaucracy really works for me. In this one, we learn a little about Angleton, Bob Howard's very scary boss, and find out why he's even scarier than we thought. Along the way Bob's wife Mo proves her badassery with the demon-killing violin and Bob has to face an army of cultists bent on sacrificing him to the ultimate dark lord, armed with nothing but his knowledge of computational demonology. Great stuff.

Side Jobs (Jim Butcher)

I've become a real fan of the Harry Dresden series, so I checked out this collection of short works. It begins with the first-ever Dresden story, written as an exercise for a creative writing class and never before published. Butcher acknowledges that it's not a strong story and didn't deserve publication initially, an opinion I could agree with, but I enjoyed seeing where the story began. It finishes with a novelette that Harry never even appears in, with Murphy and others of Harry's friends dealing with his apparent murder, trying to cope with the kind of evil he usually fights without him. If you like the Dresden series you will like these stories.

The Apocalypse Codex (Charles Stross)

Another in the Laundry Files series, which I love for its humor, its intelligence, and its willingness to twist genre boundaries into Moebius strips. Bob Howard is again the narrator, telling how he is threatened with promotion within the more-secret-than-secret British agency charged with protecting England and the world from Lovecraftian horrors that constantly try to breach the boundaries between the worlds and munch on our tasty human souls. In this version, the charismatic leader of a splinter faction of an evangelistic American church is demonstrating a distressingly effective ability to rally the faithful. It turns out that the Second Coming is not quite what they think it is, and Howard and a beautiful, powerful witch named Persephone have to shut them down. If you like humor and horror woven together, you'll love this one.

Dear Committee Members (Julie Schumacher)

This is a tiny jewel of a novel, made entirely of letters of recommendation written by an irascible, acerbic professor of English at a small university. His letters tell, in pointed prose, stories of financial challenges, boneheaded administrators, past loves, present feuds, and the full range of students: clueless, ambitious, timid, gifted, and poignant. It felt perfectly real next to my own academic experience, and while I more than once literally laughed out loud (and I do know what literally means), there is more to the story than comedy. I recommend it to anyone, particularly to all who toil in the ivory tower.

Cryoburn (Lois McMaster Bujold)

Any Miles Vorkosigan story is a wild fun ride. This one starts with Miles, in a hallucinatory reaction to bad drugs, stumbling through a dark maze in an abandoned cryosleep storage facility, and ends with him on the way home having wrested triumph from the grip of evil money-hungry corporate executives. Along the way various people on both sides of the struggle are kidnapped, there's a brief mixup in the shuffling of frozen folks, and some lessons in the art of soliciting bribes as an investigative technique. As Miles ages, with wife and children to think of, there is less of the frenetic action of previous stories, but still a satisfactory sense that the poor lords of commerce with their long-term plans of financial conquest have no idea what they're up against until it is far, far too late.

A Highly Unlikely Scenario (Rachel Cantor)

This is an odd story, set in a strange future where the main social conflicts are between philosophies of  fast food chains and the nature of time and reality are breaking down. A few people are thrown together to save the world: Leonard, a Pythagorian who handles phone complaints for Neetsa Pizza; Felix, his nephew with unexplained super powers; Sally, a book guide from the university; and an assortment of dead people, including Leonard's grandfather, Marco Polo, and Roger Bacon. The action is absurd, funny, and, in the end, satisfying. Nothing happens the way you think it will, but it all works out. I enjoyed it.

The Man of Maybe Half-a-Dozen Faces (Ray Vukcevich)

This is a standard detective story. The hardboiled detective with relationship issues and an addiction that leads to blackouts, the lovely woman who comes in to beg for his help, the touchy interaction with the cops, the killer who has to be stopped before he kills again -- all there. Only the detective is an individual with multiple personalities, and his addiction is to tap dancing, and the killer - well, I won't reveal too much. This story is several degrees out of kilter, and it is a zany, rollicking ride. I really enjoyed it, though from time to time the roller coaster lost me. I always got back on, and if the ending was a little contrived, still it lived up to the rest of the book (including an email to one character we never actually met, asking what it was like to be a loose end). It wasn't flawless, but the story was so much fun I forgave the problems.

Show Me the Funny (Peter Desberg & Jeffrey Davis)

This book is a collection of interviews with dozens of individuals and teams who write humor for TV and movies. They were all given the same premise, about a young woman whose father dies, leaving her mother unexpectedly without funds, so the mother moves in with the daughter and hilarity ensues. Each interview maps out a different path this premise might take, showing the varieties of creative processes, and goes into the different styles and systems different people use. I found it entertaining, but can't say I got any great insights from it.

Redshirts (John Scalzi)

This delightful book is hilarious, geeky, and still emotionally moving. Scalzi asks what it would be like to be living in a badly-written ripoff of Star Trek. Why are away missions so deadly for lower-deck folks while the main officers are rarely hurt and never killed? Why do bridge consoles keep exploding, no matter how often the circuits are checked? Why is it that decks 6-12 take damage in every attack, but never any of the other decks? How do they keep finding scientifically impossible solutions to problems, and always just moments before they are needed? The heroes find their own scientifically impossible solution to their dilemma, one that is mind-bending and convoluted and just crazy enough (and funny enough) to work. Then there are several codas and other appropriately off-kilter bits of things that bring it all to a satisfying conclusion. (I think I know who Jimmy Hanson really is. As one of the character says, "that would be recursive and meta.")

Strip (Thomas Perry)

I've really enjoyed his Jane Whitefield books, but this one didn't work as well for me. It is that form of humor where nobody  is really likable, which I guess gives the author the freedom to do outrageous things to them. I don't like a book, though, where there's nobody I can see as a good guy. I need someone to root for, and some way to feel that there's a happy ending. This book has neither. The aging owner of several strip clubs in LA is robbed by a masked man. There's some minor suggestion implicating someone who turns out to be innocent, so he sends his goons to kill him. The man fights back, and along the way lots of people wind up dead or cheated. I stuck with it to the end, but it left a bitter taste.

Blameless (Gail Carriger)

This series maintains its level of wit for a third book. Alexia is as stubborn, resourceful, and funny as ever as she battles vampires and Templars in her attempt to prove that, unconventional though she may be, unfaithful she has never been.The only disappointment is that, while we get to see both Alexia and her werewolf husband throughout the story, we don't get more than a glimpse of them together. I can definitely picture this series as the basis for some terrific movies.

Unseen Academicals (Terry Pratchett)

More Discworld zaniness. A long-forgotten rule says that the Unseen University, where magicians in Ankh-Morpork train, must field a team to play the traditional game of foot and ball, something very distantly related to football (or soccer, for American readers). The magicians are not known for their athletic prowess, but fortunately there is an odd young man in the cellar who has strange abilities, perhaps including skill at football.  Actually, two young men in the cellar. And two very unusual cooks in the kitchen as well. It all comes out well in the end, as these stories generally do, but with many unexpected turns along the way. Very enjoyable.

Snuff (Terry Pratchett)

Sam is dragged away on a vacation in the country by his determined wife, away from his beloved city streets, and anticipates two weeks of mind-numbing boredom until his sensitive cop's nose detects a whiff of crime. Before he has unraveled the whole sordid ball of string, he has been proved a hero yet again, on land and sea, solved crimes of murder and smuggling, and helped to recognize an entire new race of sapient creatures. Just his kind of vacation!  In the hilarious, fantastical world that is Discworld, the subset of Sam Vines books put less emphasis on madcap hijinks and more on an examination of what it means to be a good cop in a chaotic world. Not to imply that there isn't plenty of hilarity to go around! Still, much of the story is about how to make things right within the law. I enjoyed it quite a lot.

Lunatics (Dave Barry & Alan Zweibel)

I have loved Dave Barry's other books, both his essay collections and his novels, but this one I didn't like. Perhaps it was the influence of his co-author. Perhaps it is a change in my own perspective. In any case, the humor here seemed forced and mean-spirited, compared with the self-deprecating joy in the zaniness of life of his other works. This book brings together two unlikely allies: a foul-mouthed, bigoted nut job and a Prius-driving, politically-correct pet store owner. They become embroiled in an increasingly far-fetched series of adventures, starting with a kidnapped lemur and stolen insulin pump and escalating from there to police officers shot in helicopters, thugs mauled by bears, naked nuns falling overboard, and on and on. It didn't work for me.

Mostly Harmless (Douglas Adams)

This is the fifth book in the Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy series, which makes about as much sense as the books do. They are zany, imaginative, mind-blowing, and funny. It's been a long time since I've read one of them, which may be why this one didn't appeal to me as much as the others did, though I still enjoyed it. The usual characters (Arthur Dent, Ford Perfect, and assorted aliens and humans) careen around the universes like pinballs on TILT, running up against corporate greed, multidimensional bison, unexpected offspring, and Elvis in the process.I was mostly disappointed in how it ended, or didn't; the major issues of the book are entirely unresolved. The ride was fun, but the destination left something to be desired.

Making Money (Terry Pratchett)

Classic Discworld mayhem and hilarity. The hero of "Going Postal" is back, applying his extensive past experience with running cons and minor thievery to a new challenge, now that the Royal Post is running so smoothly: The Royal Bank. Along the way he runs afoul of a Master Clerk who is more than he seems, a madman trying to become the Patrician through sympathetic magic, a cellar-filling hydraulic economic model, and golems. Great fun!

Watch Your Back (Donald Westlake)

An especially fine example of a Dortmunder comic crime novel. A pompous and wealthy financier is at Club Med hiding out from his ex-wives and their lawyers, leaving his New York apartment empty and vulnerable to Dortmunder's crew. Meantime, some Mob-connected guys have their talons into the OJ, where the crew meets, so they decide to do something about that also. Everything goes south, of course, in the most unexpected ways. Quite a ride!

What's the Worst That Could Happen? (Donald Westlake)

I've read this before, and loved it just as much the second time! Max Fairbanks, a spoiled, rich egomaniac, caught Dortmunder red-handed in a botched small-time robbery, and added insult to arrest by laying a claim to a ring Dortmunder's lady May had given him. "What's the worst that could happen?" he asked, smugly. The rest of the book answers that question, as Dortmunder and his gang of quirky crooks make it their single-minded mission to relieve Fairbanks of the ring, and whatever else of value they could take in the process.

The Road to Ruin (Donald Westlake)

Classic example of a Dortmunder story. He and his band of merry crooks devise a clever plot to steal the classic car collection from a sleazy ex-corporate executive who has ripped off everyone who ever had dealings with him. Unfortunately, several other groups have devised clever plots of their own. All these plots collide in the usual hilarious fashion. Lots of fun, and some great lines. (The executive is safe from the law because "You can't touch these guys, every one of them is surrounded by a moat filled with man-eating lawyers.")