Humor audiobooks are a different beast from reading a funny book on the page. The timing, the pauses, the absurd little voice an author gives a character — it all lands so much harder when someone’s performing it for you. David Sedaris reading his own essays is basically a comedy special. That’s the category’s secret weapon: narration turns wit into something closer to live performance.

If you genuinely laugh out loud while listening alone in your car, this is your category. Fans of dry British comedy tend to gravitate toward authors like Terry Pratchett, while Americans often go straight for memoir-style humor, think Tina Fey’s “Bossypants” from 2011. Start with something narrated by the author and you’ll understand immediately why humor belongs in audio.