Evelyn Waugh
Vile Bodies

One of the weblogs I frequent was praising this as Waugh's funniest book - it might be the basis for a forthcoming moving picture.

So, I summoned it and tried it.

This is social satire aimed at a people and a society. It failed, at least for me. I see no reason to read a book in which all of the characters are detestable and the world they live in is both banal and brutal. Waugh did make fun of his characters, and he projected his world into a near future dystopie, but I got no pleasure in reading about people I did not like being made fun of. It was an exercise in being mean. And mean for its own sake is boring. So I stopped reading it.