What I'm reading right now is Anthony Trollope's Can You Forgive Her? (Free e-text here.)

The Gift is gorgeous, my favorite of VN's Russian novels for many reasons, but if anything for its rapt descriptions of being poor and in love and happy in a foreign land. Also read Lilek's The Gallery of Regrettable Food--the recipes are real, the mold-fixation was apparently real, and so yes: very funny.