OVER THE TOP

A Raw Journey to Self-Love

By Jonathan Van Ness

Read by the author

DEAR GIRLS

Intimate Tales, Untold Secrets & Advice for Living Your Best Life

By Ali Wong

Read by the author

MEDALLION STATUS

True Stories From Secret Rooms

By John Hodgman

Read by the author

Whenever anyone asks me about writing comedy, I always say the same thing: What’s funny to me isn’t necessarily funny to you, and that’s what makes it so damn hilarious. I love a bad pun and a nonsense line about what’s “technically a ravioli.” Give me your worst knock-knock joke and I’ll gladly share mine. When I’ve considered the ways that humor careens wildly through different forms — in stand-up acts, in writing, on the hell application by the name of Twitter dot-com — I always circle back to the idea that it is often the performance of a thing, how it resonates within a body or a collective group of bodies, that makes it interesting. When it comes to humor, no way is the right way, and the tension of that duality often makes for a very good joke.

This fall saw the releases of three audiobooks by famous comedians that apply the complexities of humor and the human condition with aplomb. Jonathan Van Ness, Ali Wong and John Hodgman all chose to narrate their memoirs themselves — a savvy move if for no other reason than that they all have distinctive voices, their patterns of speech unmistakable. Though the audiobooks deal with a variety of life situations particular to each author, they mirror one another in the more serious notes. It’s this seriousness, the small ache, the tender aside, that manages to make those jokes that swell immediately afterward so delightful and necessary. Give us the little hurt, and we’ll laugh along with you through the pain until we see the light on the other side.

Van Ness, known for his role as the grooming expert on the Netflix series “Queer Eye,” opens his memoir, “Over the Top,” with a floral metaphor for self-discovery: “You know those plants that are always trying to find the light? Maybe they were planted in a location that didn’t necessarily facilitate growth,” he says, before describing his younger self as “a chubby, slightly snaggletoothed kid with a voluminous mop of frizzy curly hair that screamed through layers of gel for what I desperately wanted to be a Hanson-esque, smooth collarbone-length center-parted man-bob.” As an “extremely flamboyantly jubilant and oh so gay” adolescent in conservative small-town Illinois, Van Ness always felt himself to be moving desperately toward a light that would allow him to be confidently, exuberantly himself.