12 Funny Books for Women: Riotously Relatable Fiction and Nonfiction

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Everyone needs a good laugh every now and then, but especially moms, working women, and anyone trying to navigate the ups and downs of womanhood.

While dramas, historical novels, and literary fiction can do an excellent job capturing the feminine experience, sometimes you just want to laugh (or cry) alongside someone who gets you.

In this post, we’ve rounded up 12 hilarious books for women, including fiction and nonfiction titles that speak to the experiences of women.

Funny Books for Women

Below are 12 funny books for women that are as insightful as they are hilarious. Gift one to a woman in your life, or pick one up for yourself for some laughter-filled “you” time.

1. Bossypants by Tina Fey

Tina Fey is known for her comedic brilliance on shows like Saturday Night Live and 30 Rock, as well as a slew of films including Mean Girls and Date Night.

In this book, Fey tells her own story in a series of autobiographical essays, including parodies of her beauty routine, college romances, and what “me time” is like as a parent.

Readers will also get her “never-before-solicited” opinions on everything from breastfeeding, to photoshop, the electoral process, and more.

2. Where’d You Go, Bernadette by Maria Semple

Bernadette Fox is an opinionated wife, a revolutionary architect, and the mother and best friend to 15-year-old Bee. But when Bee presents a perfect report card and is ready to cash in on her promised family trip to Antarctica, Bernadette suddenly disappears.

Bernadette has become increasingly allergic to Seattle, and to people in general. Her agoraphobia would make a trip to the ends of the earth virtually impossible.

Bee begins compiling emails, official documents, and secret correspondences. But will she ever find her crazy mother? And is she really crazy, or just sane enough?

3. Eleanor Oliphant Is Completely Fine by Gail Honeyman

We all know an Eleanor: She’s socially awkward, doesn’t seem to have a filter, and hasn’t cut her hair in years.

But for Eleanor, nothing is missing in her carefully scheduled life of avoiding social interactions, consuming frozen pizza and vodka, and chatting for hours on the phone with her mother.

That all changes when Eleanor meets Raymond, the bumbling IT guy from her office. When she and Raymond save Sammy, an elderly man who has fallen on the sidewalk, the three become friends who will help each other out of their isolation, and Raymond’s big heart that will help Eleanor begin to repair her own.

4. Bridget Jones’s Diary by Helen Fielding

Bridget Jones’s Diary takes us through one year in a thirty-something’s quest for self-improvement. Loosely based on Pride and Prejudice, Bridget is smitten with her boss, but her parents push her toward Mark Darcy, a divorced family friend. 

While attempting to navigate her now complicated dating life, Bridget also seeks to reduce the circumference of each thigh by 1.5 inches, visit the gym three times a week (and not just to buy a sandwich), form a functional relationship with a responsible adult, and learn to program the VCR.

Her “diary” has touched millions of readers around the world who see themselves in this lovable character on a seemingly doomed (but hilarious) journey.

5. The Girl with the Lower Back Tattoo by Amy Schumer

Emmy Award-winning and Tony-nominated Amy Schumer shares a candid and laugh-out-loud funny collection of personal and observational essays.

In this “literary equivalent of a night out with your best friend,” Schumer divulges her experiences of lust-at-first-sight in the airport security line, her own views on love and marriage, and how she discovered her CrossFit instructor’s secret bad habit, and many more uproarious anecdotes.

6. I Feel Bad About My Neck by Nora Ephron

If you love Nora Ephron’s novels and films, you’ll adore her candid essays that reflect on her own ups and downs, including menopause, maintenance, and empty nesting.

With the same dry humor and accessible voice her readers love her for, Roberts chronicles her life as an obsessive cook, passionate city dweller, and well-meaning parent, all while speaking in a brutally honest (but hilarious) fashion about life as a woman of a certain age.

7. Hyperbole and a Half by Allie Brosh

Described as “funny and smart as hell” by Bill Gates, Allie Brosh’s Hyperbole and a Half is bursting with her unique voice, wit, and her ability to capture complex emotions in deceptively simple illustrations.

Discover ten never-before-seen essays and rediscover classics from the website, including “The God of Cake,” “Dogs Don’t Understand Basic Concepts Like Moving,” as well as “Adventures in Depression, and “Depression Part Two,” which are regarded as some of the most insightful reflections on depression ever written.

8. Let’s Pretend This Never Happened by Jenny Lawson

As a child, all Jenny Lawson wanted was to fit in, but those dreams were dashed thanks to an unbalanced father and an eccentric childhood.

Fortunately for readers, Lawson did learn to find the humor in the “strange shame-spiral” of her life. Here, her husband and daughter help her discover that the very moments we’d like to pretend never happened are the very ones that make us who we are.

9. Ask Me What’s for Dinner One More Time by Meredith Masony

Meredith Masony, founder of the explosively popular parenting blog That’s Inappropriate, brings readers a hilarious, genuine, and utterly relatable collection of essays on the ups and downs of motherhood.

Indulge in her riotous perspectives on sex, aging, anxiety, friendship, and much more, and finally find comfort and consolation in “a metaphorical hug for all of those moments you spend crying on your bathroom floor, thinking that you are failing at the hardest job on the planet.”

10. Sorry I’m Late, I Didn’t Want to Come by Jessica Pan

Introverts everywhere, rejoice—no one sees you and feels you more than Jessica Pan, which is why it’s such a hilarious surprise when she decides to live like an extrovert for a year.

With the help of extrovert mentors, Jessica sets up a series of personal challenges, from talking to strangers, to hosting a dinner party, traveling alone, and much worse—I mean more.

Come along for the ride and see what she learns as she tries (and sometimes fails) to be a little bit braver.

11. You Can’t Touch My Hair by Phoebe Robinson

Comedian Phoebe Robinson knows life as Black woman in America and all the puzzling and frustrating interactions that come with it.

From the titular requests to touch her hair, to her designated role as “the black friend” that somehow makes her the authority on all things racial, to the quizzical looks she gets for her love of U2 and Billy Joel, she’s ready to take all these topics and more to the page, and she’ll make you laugh while she does it.

As personal and funny as it is political, You Can’t Touch My Hair examines our cultural climate and biases with both humor and heart.

12. Is Everyone Hanging Out Without Me? by Mindy Kaling

Writer, comedian, and star of The Office, The Mindy Project, and many other films and TV shows, Mindy Kaling shares her thoughts on everything from makes a great best friend (spoiler: it’s someone who will fill your prescription in the middle of the night), to what makes a great guy, to what the perfect amount of fame is.

Is Everyone Hanging Out Without Me? puts Kaling’s girl-next-door relatable humor at the center as she shares her “unscientific observations” on Hollywood, romance, and friendship.

Have you read any of the books on this list? Tell us what you thought in the comments below!

 

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