P.G. Wodehouse // May Reading to Know Bookclub

This is where I sat and read The Jeeves Collection while on Spring Break earlier this month. (Most of the time anyway!) I knew that Wodehouse was not going to be by normal reading material and jumped on it right at the beginning of the month so I would finish it. This book was selected by Diary of an Autodidact, a book blogger who’s path I hadn’t crossed prior to this book club.

The Jeeves Collection contained several short stories, some of which were My Man Jeeves, Extricating Young Gussie, and Right Ho, Jeeves. I knew that if I was going to tackle this new author I wanted to pick some stories that stuck with the same characters so that I could keep them all straight. These stories center around Bertie Wooster – a rich, self absorbed member of the English upper-class, and Jeeves – his butler who has an uncanny knack of solving the trivial dilemmas of the Bertie’s friends which they seem to get themselves into.  I think my favorite story of the three I read was Right Ho, Jeeves, but I was tickled at some of the language in Extricating Young Gussie. In that story, Bertie is sent to the United States by his aunt to “rescue” his cousin who is about to marry a girl who performs on stage (insert horrified whisper from upper English society here). : ) His thoughts about New York City were worth a chuckle:

New York is a large city conveniently situated on the edge of America, so that you step off the liner right on to it without an effort. You can’t lose your way. You go out of a barn and down some stairs, and there you are, right in among it.

Now to sum up my thoughts on this month’s read:

Did I enjoy this author? Yes, yes I did.

Am I going to run out and purchase/download/borrow all of Wodehouse’s work? Probably not. I did enjoy what I read for the book club. That said, I think for me, I read too much Wodehouse, too fast. Someone (maybe Amy?) posted a thought of Wodehouse’s on their blog saying that his short stories were best read in bits and spurts, whereas I literally plowed through them during my big chunk of free reading time this month, aka spring break.

Was it worth my time to read it? Yes! I can definitely see assigning these to future homeschool students in my household and it’s always nice to say that I have read it.

Up next for May is The Adventures of Tom Sawyer (chosen by Amy at Hope is the Word). It has been YEARS since I’ve read this one and actually had to go repurchase a copy for the book club. (Went with paper over Kindle this month.) : )

For more (coherent) thoughts on the works of P.G. Wodehouse, visit Reading to Know.

My book club posts for 2012 (linked to my posts):
January: Beyond Opinion by Ravi Zacharias
February: Running Away to Home