Books like 'Semi-Tough'
Readers who enjoyed Semi-Tough by Dan Jenkins also liked the following books featuring the same tropes, story themes, relationship dynamics and character types.
historical comedy sports humor satire
-
The Poetry and Short Stories of Dorothy Parker by Dorothy Parker
Rated: 4.50 of 5 stars · 12 ratingsA collection of stories and poems by the noted American... -
![Blackadder: The Whole Damn Dynasty, 1485-1917 by Richard Curtis, Ben Elton]()
Blackadder: The Whole Damn Dynasty, 1485-1917 by Richard Curtis, Ben Elton
Rated: 4.43 of 5 stars · 14 ratingsThen look no further. Blackadder: The Whole Damn Dynasty is the book for you. Here, at last, for the first time, are the full scripts of one of British television's funniest comedies... -
![The Plays of Oscar Wilde by Oscar Wilde]()
The Plays of Oscar Wilde by Oscar Wilde
Rated: 4.36 of 5 stars · 14 ratingsThis work consists of the plays "Lady Windermere's Fan" and "A Woman of No Importance". Both the plays deal with the theme of a guilty secret. The wit of the dialogue softens the serious criticism of English manners and morals that lie behind the settings and frivolity of his plays... -
![Making Money: The Play by Stephen Briggs, Terry Pratchett]()
Making Money: The Play by Stephen Briggs, Terry Pratchett
Rated: 4.29 of 5 stars · 14 ratingsPlay based on Terry Pratchett's book, Making Money.Lord Vetinari wants to overhaul the banks of Ankh-Morpork so he appoints former con-man Albert Spangler, aka Moist von Lipwig, to the position of Mater of the Royal Mint, attached to a senior post at the Bank of Ankh-Morpork... -
-
![The Best Short Stories of O. Henry by O. Henry]()
The Best Short Stories of O. Henry by O. Henry
Rated: 4.25 of 5 stars · 16 ratingsThe more than 600 stories written by O. Henry provided an embarrassment of riches for the compilers of this volume.The final selection of the thirty-eight stories in this collection offers for the reader's delight those tales honored almost unanimously by anthologists and those that represent, in variety and balance, the best work of America's favorite storyteller... -
![The Collected Dorothy Parker by Dorothy Parker]()
The Collected Dorothy Parker by Dorothy Parker
Rated: 4.25 of 5 stars · 12 ratingsDorothy Parker, more than any of her contemporaries, captured the spirit of the Jazz Age in her poetry and prose, and The Collected Dorothy Parker includes an introduction by Brendan Gill in Penguin Modern Classics.Dorothy Parker was the most talked-about woman of her day, notorious as the hard-drinking bad girl with a talent for stinging repartee and endlessly quotable one-liners... -
![The Thurber Carnival by James Thurber, Michael J. Rosen]()
The Thurber Carnival by James Thurber, Michael J. Rosen
Rated: 4.19 of 5 stars · 16 ratings"An authentic American genius. . . . Mr. Thurber belongs in the great lines of American humorists that includes Mark Twain and Ring Lardner." --Philadelphia InquirerJames Thurber’s unique ability to convey the vagaries of life in a funny, witty, and often satirical way earned him accolades as one of the finest humorists of the twentieth century... -
![Much Obliged, Jeeves by P.G. Wodehouse]()
Much Obliged, Jeeves by P.G. Wodehouse
Rated: 4.17 of 5 stars · 18 ratingsA Bertie and Jeeves classic, featuring the Junior Ganymede, a Market Snodsbury election, and the Observer crossword puzzle.Jeeves, who has saved Bertie Wooster so often in the past, may finally prove to be the unwitting cause of this young master's undoing in Jeeves and the Tie that Binds... -
![Woe from Wit: A Verse Comedy in Four Acts by Alexander Griboyedov]()
Woe from Wit: A Verse Comedy in Four Acts by Alexander Griboyedov
Rated: 4.13 of 5 stars · 24 ratingsAlexander Griboedov's Woe from Wit is one of the masterpieces of Russian drama. A verse comedy set in Moscow high society after the Napoleonic wars, it offers sharply drawn characters and clever repartee, mixing meticulously crafted banter and biting social critique... -
![Leonora and the Lion's Venture by Alicia Cameron]()
-
![The Crime Wave at Blandings by P.G. Wodehouse]()
The Crime Wave at Blandings by P.G. Wodehouse
Rated: 4.33 of 5 stars · 6 ratingsOne of P.G. Wodehouse's most gloriously funny stories, this is the tale of bumbling Lord Emsworth, whose quiet life reading "The Care Of The Pig" and pottering among the flowers at Blandings Castle is shattered by an outbreak of lawlessness involving his niece Jane (the third prettiest girl in Shropshire), an airgun - and the trouser seat of the abominable Baxter... -
![The Complete Plays of Gilbert and Sullivan by W.S. Gilbert]()
The Complete Plays of Gilbert and Sullivan by W.S. Gilbert
Rated: 4.33 of 5 stars · 6 ratingsFrom Trial by Jury to The Pirates of Penzance: the complete librettos of all fourteen Gilbert and Sullivan operas. Gilbert's verses for Sullivan's music are the most fastidiously turned and inventively rhymed in all lyric comedy. As the Savoy Operas enter their second century on a swell of renewed popularity, Gilbert's reputation as the supreme wordsmith of light opera remains secure... -
![A Pelican at Blandings by P.G. Wodehouse, Nigel Lambert]()
A Pelican at Blandings by P.G. Wodehouse, Nigel Lambert
Rated: 4.13 of 5 stars · 16 ratingsClarence, ninth Earl of Emsworth, sank back in his chair, looking like the good old man in a Victorian melodrama whose mortgage the villain had just foreclosed. He felt the absence of that gentle glow which customarily accompanied the departure of one of his sisters. Lord Emsworth needed Galahad... -
![Dumb Luck by Vũ Trọng Phụng, Peter Zinoman]()
Dumb Luck by Vũ Trọng Phụng, Peter Zinoman
Rated: 4.13 of 5 stars · 16 ratingsBanned in Vietnam until 1986, Dumb Luck--by the controversial and influential Vietnamese writer Vu Trong Phung--is a bitter satire of the rage for modernization in Vietnam during the late colonial era. First published in Hanoi during 1936, it follows the absurd and unexpected rise within colonial society of a street-smart vagabond named Red-haired Xuan... -
-
![Oblomov by Ivan Goncharov]()
Oblomov by Ivan Goncharov
Rated: 4.07 of 5 stars · 28 ratingsEven though Ivan Goncharov wrote several books that were widely read and discussed during his lifetime, today he is remembered for one novel, Oblomov, published in 1859, an indisputable classic of Russian literature, the artistic stature and cultural significance of which may be compared only to other such masterpieces as Nikolai Gogol's Dead Souls, Leo Tolstoy's Anna Karenina, and Fyodor... -
![Scepticism Inc by Bo Fowler]()
Scepticism Inc by Bo Fowler
Rated: 4.13 of 5 stars · 8 ratingsEdgar Malroy is the founder of a metaphysical betting shop. A weary atheist, Edgar challenges people to put their money where their mouths are about their faith. If someone really believes that the 16th reincarnation of the Dalai Lama is the one true incarnation, or that God is love, or that his grandfather's spirit lives in a tree, Edgar reasons he should be willing to bet money on it... -
![Troll Bridge by Terry Pratchett, LeVar Burton]()
Troll Bridge by Terry Pratchett, LeVar Burton
Rated: 4.06 of 5 stars · 16 ratingsPart of a short story tribute anthology to Tolkien, found in After the King: Stories In Honor of J.R.R. Tolkien, it was also reprinted in My Favorite Fantasy Story, in The Oxford Book of Fantasy Stories, in The Mammoth Book of Comic Fantasy and was finally released as free online fiction... -
![The New Confessions by William Boyd]()
The New Confessions by William Boyd
Rated: 4.06 of 5 stars · 16 ratingsIn this extraordinary novel, William Boyd presents the autobiography of John James Todd, whose uncanny and exhilarating life as one of the most unappreciated geniuses of the twentieth century is equal parts Laurence Stern, Charles Dickens, Robertson Davies, and Saul Bellow, and a hundred percent William Boyd. From his birth in 1899, Todd was doomed... -
![The Man Who Came to Dinner by George S. Kaufman, Moss Hart]()
The Man Who Came to Dinner by George S. Kaufman, Moss Hart
Rated: 4.06 of 5 stars · 18 ratingsThe Man Who Came to Dinner...and stayed and stayed and stayed! Sheridan Whiteside, the man who came to dinner, throws out insults with a voluminous precision volley. Maggie Cutler, his secretary, is described by Whiteside as an aging debutante supporting her two-headed brother... -
![Pygmalion and Three Other Plays by George Bernard Shaw]()
Pygmalion and Three Other Plays by George Bernard Shaw
Rated: 4.00 of 5 stars · 24 ratingsPygmalion and Three Other Plays, by George Bernard Shaw, is part of the Barnes & Noble Classics series, which offers quality editions at affordable prices to the student and the general reader, including new scholarship, thoughtful design, and pages of carefully crafted extras... -
![The Folklore of Discworld by Terry Pratchett, Jacqueline Simpson]()
The Folklore of Discworld by Terry Pratchett, Jacqueline Simpson
Rated: 4.00 of 5 stars · 16 ratingsTerry Pratchett joins up with a leading folklorist to reveal the legends, myths and customs of Discworld, together with helpful hints from Planet Earth.Most of us grew up having always known when to touch wood or cross our fingers, and what happens when a princess kisses a frog or a boy pulls a sword from a stone, yet sadly some of these things are beginning to be forgotten... -
![The Misanthrope and Other Plays by Molière, Lewis Seifert]()
The Misanthrope and Other Plays by Molière, Lewis Seifert
Rated: 4.00 of 5 stars · 16 ratingsThe Misanthrope * The Doctor in Spite of Himself * The Miser * The Would-Be Gentleman * The Mischievous Machinations of Scapin * The Learned Women * The Imaginary Invalid“The comedy,” Molière once quipped, “is excellent, and they who deride it deserve to be derided... -
![Enter Psmith by P.G. Wodehouse]()
Enter Psmith by P.G. Wodehouse
Rated: 4.00 of 5 stars · 14 ratingsAn early Wodehouse novel, this is both a sporting story and a tale of friendship between two boys at boarding school. Mike (introduced in Mike at Wrykyn) is a seriously good cricketer who forms an unlikely alliance with old Etonian Psmith ('the P is silent') after they both find themselves fish out of water at a new school, Sedleigh... -
![The Petty Demon by Fyodor Sologub]()
The Petty Demon by Fyodor Sologub
Rated: 4.00 of 5 stars · 14 ratingsThe Petty Demon is one of the funniest Russian novels. It is also the most decadent of the great Russian classics, replete with naked boys, sinuous girls, and a strange mixture of beauty and perversity. The main hero, Peredonov, is as comical as he is disgusting, he is at once a victim, a monster, a silly hypocrite, and a sadistic dullard... -
-
![The Pirates! In an Adventure with Communists by Gideon Defoe, Richard Murkin]()
The Pirates! In an Adventure with Communists by Gideon Defoe, Richard Murkin
Rated: 4.00 of 5 stars · 12 ratingsLondon, 1840: Wagner’s latest opera plays to packed houses while disgruntled workers gather in crowded pubs to eat ice cream and plan the downfall of the bourgeoisie. And the Pirate Captain––his disguise proving something of a letdown––finds himself incarcerated at Scotland Yard, in a case of mistaken identity... -
![The Farewell Symphony by Edmund White]()
The Farewell Symphony by Edmund White
Rated: 4.00 of 5 stars · 12 ratingsFollowing A Boy's Own Story (now a classic of American fiction) and his richly acclaimed The Beautiful Room Is Empty, here is the eagerly awaited final volume of Edmund White's groundbreaking autobiographical trilogy... -
![The Complete Stories of Evelyn Waugh by Evelyn Waugh]()
The Complete Stories of Evelyn Waugh by Evelyn Waugh
Rated: 4.00 of 5 stars · 12 ratingsEvelyn Waugh's short fiction reveals in miniaturized perfection the elements that made him the greatest satirist of the twentieth century... -
![The Merchant Adventurer by Patrick E. McLean]()
The Merchant Adventurer by Patrick E. McLean
Rated: 4.00 of 5 stars · 6 ratingsAn ordinary, money-grubbing Merchant struggling to make a coin off penniless, incompetent adventurers is forced to take on the impossible quest of saving his town and rescuing the woman he loves from a treacherous and powerful Wizard. A battle of wit, wits and haggling that is part homage to, part skewer of the richly worked and often overwrought fantasy genre... -
![2028 by Ken Saunders]()
2028 by Ken Saunders
Rated: 4.00 of 5 stars · 6 ratings2028. Prime Minister Fitzwilliams' instincts tell him it's time to call a snap election. His cabinet team is adequate (just), the howling protests of the doctors after the GP changes has finally died down and, best of all, the Australian Greens are in receivership... -
![The Many Loves of Dobie Gillis: Stories by Max Shulman]()
The Many Loves of Dobie Gillis: Stories by Max Shulman
Rated: 4.00 of 5 stars · 6 ratingsThis riotous chronicle of the ins and outs and ups and downs of collegiate romance was the basis for the iconic television show starring Dwayne Hickman, Bob Denver, and Tuesday Weld Including stories first published in Cosmopolitan and the Saturday Evening Post, this bestselling collection follows the romantic escapades of Max Shulman’s famed collegiate Don Juan... -
![The Miseducation Years by Ross O'Carroll-Kelly, Paul Howard]()
The Miseducation Years by Ross O'Carroll-Kelly, Paul Howard
Rated: 4.08 of 5 stars · 12 ratingsSo there I was, roysh, putting the 'in' in 'in crowd', hanging out, pick of the babes, bills from the old pair to fund the lifestyle I, like, totally deserve. But being a schools rugby legend has its downsides, roysh, like all the total knobs wanting to chill in your, like, reflected glory, and the bunny-boilers who decide they want to be with me and won't take, like, no for an answer... -
![The Pirates! In an Adventure with Ahab by Gideon Defoe, Richard Murkin]()
The Pirates! In an Adventure with Ahab by Gideon Defoe, Richard Murkin
Rated: 4.00 of 5 stars · 23 ratingsThey’re back!!! The Pirate Captain and his irascible crew of scoundrels return in their soggiest saga yet.Fresh from their mishaps with Charles Darwin and the evil Bishop of Oxford, the Pirates set sail in a bouncy new vessel——purchased on credit... -
![All About H. Hatterr by G.V. Desani]()
All About H. Hatterr by G.V. Desani
Rated: 3.83 of 5 stars · 6 ratingsWildly funny and wonderfully bizarre, All About H. Hatterr is one of the most perfectly eccentric and strangely absorbing works modern English has produced. H. Hatterr is the son of a European merchant officer and a lady from Penang who has been raised and educated in missionary schools in Calcutta... -
![At Night She Cries, While He Rides His Steed by Ross Patterson]()
At Night She Cries, While He Rides His Steed by Ross Patterson
Rated: 3.83 of 5 stars · 6 ratingsAt Night She Cries, While He Rides His Steed is a side-splitting satire that perfectly parodies romance novels and western dramas... -
-
![In God We Trust: All Others Pay Cash by Jean Shepherd]()
In God We Trust: All Others Pay Cash by Jean Shepherd
Rated: 3.88 of 5 stars · 16 ratingsA beloved, bestselling classic of humorous and nostalgic Americana, reissued in a strikingly designed paperback edition.Before Garrison Keillor and Spalding Gray there was Jean Shepherd: a master monologist and writer who spun the materials of his all-American childhood into immensely resonant--and utterly hilarious--works of comic art... -
![FUBAR by Kurt Vonnegut Jr.]()
FUBAR by Kurt Vonnegut Jr.
Rated: 4.00 of 5 stars · 6 ratingsThe waters of renewal sometimes course through the unlikeliest of settings. In the short story, “FUBAR,” we’re taken to a desolate building in a drab industrial complex, where a lonely office worker gains a fresh perspective on life thanks to the intervention of his free-spirited new female assistant... -
![The Servant of Two Masters by Carlo Goldoni]()
The Servant of Two Masters by Carlo Goldoni
Rated: 3.86 of 5 stars · 14 ratingsThe NHB Drama Classics series presents the world's greatest plays in affordable, highly readable editions for students, actors and theatregoers. The hallmarks of the series are accessible introductions (focussing on the play's theatrical and historical background, together with an author biography, key dates and suggestions for further reading) and the complete text, uncluttered with footnotes... -
![The Unpleasantness at Baskerville Hall by Chris Dolley]()
The Unpleasantness at Baskerville Hall by Chris Dolley
Rated: 3.88 of 5 stars · 8 ratingsWodehouse steampunk version of The Hound of the Baskervilles! “Jeeves and Wooster meet Holmes and Watson with a touch of steampunk in the hilarious first full-length Reeves and Worcester tale ... This laugh-out-loud parody works on several levels ... With razor-sharp wit and fast pacing that plays fair with the reader, this is an excellent genre mash-up that fires on all cylinders... -
![Augustus Carp, Esq. By Himself Being the Autobiography of a Really Good Man by Henry Howarth Bashford]()
Augustus Carp, Esq. By Himself Being the Autobiography of a Really Good Man by Henry Howarth Bashford
Rated: 3.75 of 5 stars · 8 ratingsIt is customary, I have noticed, in publishing an autobiography to preface it with some sort of apology. But there are times, and surely the present is one of them, when to do so is manifestly unnecessary... -
![Roscoe by William Kennedy]()
Roscoe by William Kennedy
Rated: 3.75 of 5 stars · 8 ratingsThe first novel from William Kennedy in more than five years and universally acclaimed as his most powerful work since the Pulitzer Prize-winning Ironweed, Roscoe shows Kennedy at his very best. It's V-J Day, the war is over, and Roscoe Conway, after twenty-six years as the second in command of Albany's notorious political machine, decides to quit politics forever... -
![Seven Men by Max Beerbohm]()
Seven Men by Max Beerbohm
Rated: 3.83 of 5 stars · 6 ratingsIn Seven Men the brilliant English caricaturist and critic Max Beerbohm turns his comic searchlight upon the fantastic fin-de-siècle world of the 1890s—the age of Oscar Wilde, Aubrey Beardsley, and the young Yeats, as well of Beerbohm's own first success... -
![Herb 'n' Lorna by Eric Kraft]()
Herb 'n' Lorna by Eric Kraft
Rated: 3.83 of 5 stars · 6 ratingsOn the surface Herb and Lorna Piper are typically sunny 1950s American adults. Herbs sells Sudebakers to the citizens of Bebbington, a Long Island seaside town, and Lorna is his cheerfully coy and clever wife. Their story seems like an American small-town origins, Jazz Age romance, Depression trials, postwar prosperity... -
![Extract from Captain Stormfield's Visit to Heaven by Mark Twain]()
Extract from Captain Stormfield's Visit to Heaven by Mark Twain
Rated: 3.84 of 5 stars · 10 ratingsTwain's witty vision of what heaven "is really like" is told from the point of view of the recently deceased Captain Stormfield. In a folksy narration peppered with sailor's jargon, the amiable, altogether down-to-earth merchant marine describes a series of amusingly disconcerting revelations about the next world... -
![Olympiad by Tom Holt]()
Olympiad by Tom Holt
Rated: 3.67 of 5 stars · 6 ratingsThis historical novel takes as its basis the fact that 2776 years ago a group of men ran between two piles of stones, and invented history. If, that is, history can be believed. All we know now is the name of the man who won the race in the first ever Olympic Games in 776 BC... -
-
![Novels, 1930-1942: Dance Night / Come Back to Sorrento / Turn, Magic Wheel / Angels on Toast / A Time to Be Born by Dawn Powell]()
Novels, 1930-1942: Dance Night / Come Back to Sorrento / Turn, Magic Wheel / Angels on Toast / A Time to Be Born by Dawn Powell
Rated: 3.67 of 5 stars · 6 ratingsFor decades after her death, Dawn Powell's work was out of print, cherished by a small band of admirers. Only recently has there been renewed awareness of the novelist who was such a vital presence in literary Greenwich Village from the 1920s to the 1960s. With these two volumes, The Library of America presents the best of Powell's quirky, often hilarious, sometimes deeply moving fiction... -
![The Marriage of Bette & Boo by Christopher Durang]()
The Marriage of Bette & Boo by Christopher Durang
Rated: 3.67 of 5 stars · 6 ratingsNever have marriage and the family been more scathingly or hilariously savaged than in this brilliant black comedy. The marriage of Bette and Boo brings together two of the maddest families in creation in a portrait album of family life’s uncertainties and confusion... -
![Nostradamus Ate My Hamster by Robert Rankin]()
Nostradamus Ate My Hamster by Robert Rankin
Rated: 3.75 of 5 stars · 12 ratingsDO HOLOGRAMS DREAM OF ELECTRIC CINEMA? He wanted Hollywood. He got Brentford. He wanted Spielberg. He got Fudgepacker. He got who?Fudgepacker. Ernest Fudgepacker. Directed all those weird B-movies back in the Fifties. Whatever happened to him? He retired. Opened Fudgepacker's Emporium, a prop house catering to the more bizarre needs of the film industry. Amazing place... -
![The Unbearable Bassington by Saki]()
The Unbearable Bassington by Saki
Rated: 3.70 of 5 stars · 10 ratingsSaki, the famous pen name used by British writer H.H. Munro, was one of the most famous and influential short story writers ever. His satires and bizarre stories continue to be extremely popular today, 100 years after his death... -
![The Hearse You Came in On by Tim Cockey]()
The Hearse You Came in On by Tim Cockey
Rated: 3.70 of 5 stars · 10 ratingsIntroducing a clever and gripping first mystery novel featuring an unconventional undertaker -- who also happens to be one of Baltimore's most eligible and charming bachelors... -
![Living by Henry Green]()
Living by Henry Green
Rated: 3.63 of 5 stars · 8 ratingsA timeless work of social satire, set in the 1920s and considered one of the most insightful Modernist depictions of England's working class Living is a book about life in a factory town and the operations of a factory, from the workers on the floor to the boss in his office...
Or - use our amazing romance book finder to get recommendations based on your favorite content tropes and themes. Mix and match at will.
