Candide

This is by far the most humorous, entertaining text we've read so far. The first half was pretty good, but the second half was better. What makes it so funny is that he really seems to poke fun at people indiscriminately - the young, old, rich, poor, religious, slave, and every nationality Candide encounters, except the Eldoradeons. I could cite dozens of things I found funny, but I'll restrain myself to a few. One that cracked me up outright occurred in chapter 23. "Candide was so stunned and so shocked by what he saw, and heard, that he refused even to set foot on English soil, but bargained with the Dutch captain (without caring if this one fleeced him as the other had done, in Surinam)..." I don't know if that particular pun is in the original text or a product of the English translation, but I like it. The first Dutch merchant stole his sheep, "fleeced" him; how can you not laugh at that?
The visit to Signor Pococurante in Venice is also good. The Signor is described as a man of taste, so superior in his own thoughts that he is bored by marvellous works of art around him. He is bored to dead reading Homer, Virgil, Cicero, owns paintings by Raphael but says they are not perfect enough, and do no look like "nature itself" so he ignores them.
After reading a little Rousseau earlier in the week, centering on the "natural state of man," the episode with the cannibals is an obvious jab at those ideas. Eating each other is a natural state, says Cacambo, and the only reason Europeans don't do it is that they have a sufficient alternative food supply.
Candide and the rest of the characters suffer many misfortunes and setbacks; nothing ever seems to go right or as planned. They just can't catch a break. Not even Pangloss, who didn't even receive the courtesy of being properly hung.
On a side note, reflecting on the allegory of the Fall present in chapter 1, the rest of the book seems like a skewed version of the book of Job. Candide encounters many obstacles and disasters, however, unlike Job, he repeatedly renounced optimism only to return to it when the smallest thing went right.