P.G. Wodehouse Books

This isn't the reason Wodehouse is still so popular, but it's an improvement on the earlier school stories. I probably enjoyed the boys' own adventures solving the crime and defeating the baddies as much as Wodehouse's distinctive expression. This isn't saying that the adventures are superb, rather that the expression (with occasional lovely exceptions) isn't yet as his superlative peak. I dare say this was perfectly pitched at the young contemporary audience he wrote it for.

This is another of Wodehouse's early school stories, with a weak, coincidence-driven plot. It's his fourth book; the characterization and plot are a little less weak than in the preceding three, but it's still for Wodehouse completists only. The style is vaguely amusing, but with almost nothing of his later genius.

Though not Wodehouse's greatest, in the Blandings or Wooster saga, this book still remains worth every penny. In the charachters, one detects shades of one's favorite denizens of the world of Wodehouse - the efficient, effervescent, and proud young lady, the Gally-esque uncle, the Great White Hunter (with a twist), and two regular favorites, Chimp Twist and the Molloys.

Recommended highly.

I enjoy reading Wodehouse books - twice - once to find out the twisted plot and the 2nd to enjoy the language. This is one of my favorites - I dearly love the old man butler/Lord. There is a 2nd book with him in also - sorry, can't remember the name. I would recommend this book to any who likes Wodehouse books.

After defending his first novel, The Pothunters, against accusations of being too caught up in the minutiae of public school life, I have to concede in this, his second. Where was the editor? Ball by ball accounts of cricket matches can be hard going in real time, but in fictional accounts it's extremely difficult to care. Particularly about such thin characters that appear and disappear so randomly. It holds some interest as a study in the typical concerns and at times obscure social rules of `good form' in a British public school in the early twentieth century, but this is hardly why I read Wodehouse. I don't suppose I read him particularly for plot either, but this one is just too much of a mess. The uncle of the title, for example, is central and then inexplicably forgotten. Perhaps the market was for ex or current pupils that could empathise with the situations without needing to particularly engage with the characters.

This is still Wodehouse, and his characters and descriptions often display his (fabulous) characteristic wit. But his love of cricket and rugby here goes beyond charm and into tedium. Later golf books, for example, get the mix right. As I work my way through the unavoidably hit and miss vast canon I hope it isn't too long before I'm back to hits.

Like Sir Pelham's first book, _The Pothunters_, _A Prefect's Uncle_ is largely devoid of the plot, effort, and genius of his later works. There is a rather weak and uninteresting main plot, and a minor subplot that depends on a preposterous and unnecessary coincidence, and there are some slightly memorable characters, so Sir Pelham has made some progress since his first novel.

The book itself I would rate three stars, but this edition only gets one star. This is an amateuristic edition in which all French accents are scrambled. Espièglerie becomes espiglerie and pied-à-terre becomes pied-terre. The printer should look for an other job, like taxi driver.
Don't buy this book.

Wodehouse's books are usually very funny. They're full of clever wordplay, convoluted plots, and and lovable characters. Not George Washington doesn't have any of that. I only laughed once while reading the thing, and that was in the next-to-last chapter. The wordplay is not even remotely clever, in fact it's almost non-existent. The plot is slightly convoluted, but nowhere up to the usual Wodehouse standards. Quite frankly, I almost hated the main character, James Cloyster, because he's boring and a scoundrel. Trying to marry one woman when you're engaged to another is not the sort of behavior one expects from a Wodehousian hero.

This really isn't a good book at all. At best it's painfully mediocre. I can only recommend it to Wodehouse enthusiasts who want to collect copies of all of his works. Everyone else should steer clear. I can only give "Not George Washington" 3 stars, and that's being generous.

This is Sir Pelham's third book, and first collection of stories, with three essays at the end. Like his first two novels, the stories are pleasant but extremely weak tales of misbehaving schoolboys, mostly of historical interest only. There are a couple of hints of the mature Wodehouse in the story "Author!", but it quickly degenerates to his usual formula. I found the essay "Work" intriguing, especially for the claim, "People who ought to know better will tell you that Virgil is hard." "The Tom Brown Question" is an amusing parody of Homeric scholarship, with a interesting observation about the original Flashman.

A collection of 12 short stoires and 4 essays originally published in British boys magazines in the early 20th century. Their intended audience limits their interest to present-day readers, but Wodehouse's trademark use of language and story-telling skills remain in evidence.

The stories invariably feature noble boys learning valuable lessons about life. It's interesting that the only story where villainy actually triumphs (A Shocking Affair) was the only one which was not accepted for prior publication--it didn't fit the required mold. Yet, that story is most reminescent of the mature Wodehouse.

This moralistic emphasis infects such characters as Charteris. A delightfully unorthodox character in the Pothunters, he appears here as a typical schoolboy athlete who learns his lesson after breaking school rules and reforms.

The stories are still worth reading for Wodehouse fans, and who else could dream up the frauds connected with the European, African, and Asiatic Pork Pie and Ham Sandwich Supply Company? However, readers are likely to be baffled by the contemporary slang, especially in the description of school sports.

This book was referenced by Robert McCrum's biography of Wodehouse. It is a series of letters written, over many decades, by Wodehouse to a school friend, who is also an author, though much less successful. The letters give a significant insight into Wodehouse's technique and his career progression both in the UK and on both US coastlines. It confirms the contradiction, which I first came across in McCrum, that Wodehouse's life was much more orderly, and work obsessed than a reader might infer from reading his work, which is whimsical and leisurely. There are also insights into Wodehouse's naivety, though I think this might be a bit contrived, especially during the war and post war years, when he had to try to atone for his broadcasts on Nazi Radio.
McCrum mentions that the Irish playwright Sean O'Casey had disparaged Wodehouse as a `performing flea'in a review, and that, at the time, Wodehouse was quite hurt. McCrum infers that Wodehouse's choice of the title for this book, was a way of responding to O'Casey's slight.
By definition, the choice of letters, must lead to a certain air of contrivance. However they are quite enlightening about a writer's methods, if nothing else. One thing I genuinely found surprising, was that I had not heard of any of the authors who Wodehouse mentions reading.

Back before P.G. Wodehouse invented Bertie Wooster & Jeeves, back before he was the funniest writer in the English language, he was just a writer learning his craft. These stories date from then, and they owe a lot more to "Tom Brown's School Days" than anything humorous or Woosterish. Still, some sweet glimpses of life in Edwardian Britain, with all its honorable boys, and blighters, and codes of conduct, and newfangled motorcars. It would have got one more star, but the translation into ebook form on the Kindle is all screwed up, with lots of missing punctuation and truly bizarre spacing. You're better off with the print version.

Normally, I love these audio versions of P.G. Wodehouse books, but this one is awful. The combination of poor reading by Ian Carmichael (IMHO) and a derivative story with no comic timing make this one I recommend you skip.
I can not believe that Wodehouse actually wrote this one. It seems like a ghost writer took many of his favorite plot devices (star-crossed lovers prevented from getting married and a cow creamer for example) and many of his common expressions ("like the cat in the adage"), crammed them into a paper bag, shook the bag violently, and then pulled them out one by one, typing as he went.
I strongly recommend that you avoid this one like the plague.

This "Checklist" is nothing more than a reprint of the Bibliography contained in David Jasen's "P. G. Wodehouse: A Portrait of a Master." I don't know who J. Clauss is, but he is not mentioned by Jasen in his book, and J. Clauss certainly hasn't added anything to Jasen's work. I was expecting a complete checklist of Wodehouse's works (which Jasen's bibliography is not).