Thanks to Reading Project ’08, I read a decent number of books last year (I don’t have the exact figure right now, but it was more than in 2007), most of them fiction (I tried to make my top-10 lists but quit when I realized I had a dozen novels on one list and only one nonfiction book, Bonk, on the other). Technically I’m still working on Reading Project 2008, since I’m only halfway through the Jeeves and Bertie oeuvre, and that’s not the only reason I’ve decided against doing an official Reading Project ’09. There are currently 67 books on my library to-be-read list and at least a dozen unread volumes piled up on top of my bookshelf, not to mention all the books I keep swearing I’m going to reread, so I’m going to spend the year concentrating on whittling down some of that backlog. Several of my TBRs were inspired by Reading Project ’08, so there’ll be some fun little echoes here and there. It would be great if I could manage five books a month (that’s one per week, plus a little extra one crammed in here and there, which is totally doable as long as you read a lot of slender YA literature) and then blog about it in neat little increments, but we’ll see. I know that model will completely break down if I decide to revisit Dickens. Or if I travel, or start spending more time with my friends, fulfill my resolution to get a decent amount of sleep every night, or generally have a life. But luckily for you, since I spent January in a state of near-hiding, I did read five books and intend to tell you about them the next time I post.
Speaking of books: if you ever read the Little House series (and if you didn't, log off right now and get thee to a library), be sure to catch Half-Pint Ingalls’ updates on Twitter! Sample: “No Ma, I didn’t mean the squiggles of candy syrup I poured in the snow to look like they spell out I HATE YOU BABY CARRIE.”
Friday, January 30, 2009
Tuesday, January 27, 2009
JOY IN THE MORNING
Background: Published in 1947 (U.S. title was Jeeves in the Morning)
This is the one where: Bertie must deal with “the super-sticky affair of Nobby Hopwood, Stilton Cheesewright, Florence Craye, my Uncle Percy, J. Chichester Clam, Edwin the Boy Scout, and old Boko Fittlesworth—or, as my biographers will probably call it, the Steeple Bumpleigh Horror.”
The action takes place at: Bumpleigh Hall, Steeple Bumpleigh, Hampshire
Bertie accidentally gets engaged to: Florence Craye, Uncle Percy’s daughter, a novelist, “one of those intellectual girls, steeped to the gills in serious purpose, who are unable to see a male soul without wanting to get behind it and shove…I had always felt that she was like someone training on to be an aunt”
But she’s really in love with: G. D’Arcy “Stilton” Cheesewright, a policeman (“That beefy frame…That pumpkin-shaped head….The face that looked like a slab of pink dough”)
The task at hand: Help Uncle Percy negotiate a secret merger with American shipping magnate J. Chichester Clam, get Uncle Percy’s permission for Nobby to marry Boko Fittlesworth
Other characters include:
Jeeves disapproves of Bertie’s: Reluctance to take a summer cottage in Steeple Bumpleigh so that Jeeves can go fishing (although this isn’t much of a conflict, as Jeeves gets his way before the end of Chapter 4)
First paragraph: “After the thing was all over, when peril had ceased to loom and happy endings had been distributed in heaping handfuls and we were driving home with our hats on the side of our heads, having shaken the dust of Steeple Bumpleigh from our tires, I confessed to Jeeves that there had been moments during the recent proceedings when Bertram Wooster, though no weakling, had come very near to despair.”
Bertie fashion moment: Bertie excitedly purchases a Sindbad the Sailor costume (“Not forgetting the ginger whiskers that go with it”) for the fancy-dress ball, but does not get to wear it
Slang I’d like to start using: “As a dancer I out-Fred the nimblest Astaire”
Bertie gets no respect: “My best friends would have warned me what would come of letting a lunatic like you loose in the place. I ought to have guessed that the first thing you would do—before so much as unpacking—would be to set the whole damned premises ablaze.”—Uncle Percy (mistakenly believing Bertie is the one responsible for burning down Wee Nooke)
Best Jeeves moment: “I emerged from a profound reverie to discover that Jeeves was in my midst. I had had no inkling of his approach, but then one very often hasn’t. He has a way of suddenly materializing at one’s side like one of those Indian blokes who shoot their astral bodies to and fro, going into thin air in Rangoon and reassembling the parts in Calcutta. I think it’s done with mirrors.”
Best bit of description: “Boko looked at me, and raised his eyebrows. I looked at Boko, and raised my eyebrows. Nobby looked at us both, and raised her eyebrows. Then we looked at Stilton, and all raised our eyebrows. It was one of those big eyebrow-raising mornings.”
Best bit of dialogue:
Bertie: “I’ll be dashed if I’m going to be made a—what’s the word?”
Jeeves: “Sir?”
Bertie: “Catspaw. Though why catspaw? I mean, what have cats go to do with it?”
Jeeves: “The expression derives from the old story of the cat, the monkey, and the chestnuts, sir. It appears—”
Bertie: “Skip it, Jeeves. This is no time for chewing the fat about the animal kingdom. And if it’s the story about where the monkey puts the nuts, I know it and it’s very vulgar.”
My review: Four stars. Plenty of Wodehousian style, but even less substance than usual. My beloved Aunt Dahlia is absent, ubervillain Aunt Agatha barely makes an appearance, and while Uncle Percy ends up being pretty funny and Edwin is suitably annoying (the best part of the book is when Bertie gets to give him a well-deserved kick in the pants), the two couples (Florence and Stilton, Nobby and Boko) are bland, at least compared to Gussie Fink-Nottle or Madeline Bassett. The plot was amusing but could have been twistier. Didn’t love it, but still liked it plenty.
Had I read it before? I don’t think so. Stilton, Florence, and Edwin were familiar to me from the short stories, but Nobby and Boko didn’t ring a bell.
Next up: The Mating Season
This is the one where: Bertie must deal with “the super-sticky affair of Nobby Hopwood, Stilton Cheesewright, Florence Craye, my Uncle Percy, J. Chichester Clam, Edwin the Boy Scout, and old Boko Fittlesworth—or, as my biographers will probably call it, the Steeple Bumpleigh Horror.”
The action takes place at: Bumpleigh Hall, Steeple Bumpleigh, Hampshire
Bertie accidentally gets engaged to: Florence Craye, Uncle Percy’s daughter, a novelist, “one of those intellectual girls, steeped to the gills in serious purpose, who are unable to see a male soul without wanting to get behind it and shove…I had always felt that she was like someone training on to be an aunt”
But she’s really in love with: G. D’Arcy “Stilton” Cheesewright, a policeman (“That beefy frame…That pumpkin-shaped head….The face that looked like a slab of pink dough”)
The task at hand: Help Uncle Percy negotiate a secret merger with American shipping magnate J. Chichester Clam, get Uncle Percy’s permission for Nobby to marry Boko Fittlesworth
Other characters include:
- Aunt Agatha, “my tough aunt, the one who eats broken glass and conducts human sacrifices by the light of the full moon”
- Percival, Lord Worpleson, Aunt Agatha’s second husband, a shipping magnate (“In disposition akin to a more than ordinarily short-tempered snapping turtle, he resembled in appearance a malevolent Aubrey Smith, and usually, when one encountered him, gave the impression of being just about to foam at the mouth…. Given the choice between him and a hippogriff as a companion for a walking tour, I would have picked the hippogriff every time”)
- Edwin, Worpleson’s son, “as pestilential a stripling as ever wore khaki shirts and went spooring or whatever it is that these Boy Scouts do”
- Zenobia “Nobby” Hopwood, Worpleson’s ward, “a girl liberally endowed with oomph”
- George Webster “Boko” Fittlesworth, a writer “with a face like an intellectual parrot. Furthermore, as is the case with so many of the younger literati, he dresses like a tramp cyclist, affecting turtleneck sweaters and grey flannel bags with a patch on the knee and conveying a general suggestion of having been left out in the rain overnight in an ash can”
Jeeves disapproves of Bertie’s: Reluctance to take a summer cottage in Steeple Bumpleigh so that Jeeves can go fishing (although this isn’t much of a conflict, as Jeeves gets his way before the end of Chapter 4)
First paragraph: “After the thing was all over, when peril had ceased to loom and happy endings had been distributed in heaping handfuls and we were driving home with our hats on the side of our heads, having shaken the dust of Steeple Bumpleigh from our tires, I confessed to Jeeves that there had been moments during the recent proceedings when Bertram Wooster, though no weakling, had come very near to despair.”
Bertie fashion moment: Bertie excitedly purchases a Sindbad the Sailor costume (“Not forgetting the ginger whiskers that go with it”) for the fancy-dress ball, but does not get to wear it
Slang I’d like to start using: “As a dancer I out-Fred the nimblest Astaire”
Bertie gets no respect: “My best friends would have warned me what would come of letting a lunatic like you loose in the place. I ought to have guessed that the first thing you would do—before so much as unpacking—would be to set the whole damned premises ablaze.”—Uncle Percy (mistakenly believing Bertie is the one responsible for burning down Wee Nooke)
Best Jeeves moment: “I emerged from a profound reverie to discover that Jeeves was in my midst. I had had no inkling of his approach, but then one very often hasn’t. He has a way of suddenly materializing at one’s side like one of those Indian blokes who shoot their astral bodies to and fro, going into thin air in Rangoon and reassembling the parts in Calcutta. I think it’s done with mirrors.”
Best bit of description: “Boko looked at me, and raised his eyebrows. I looked at Boko, and raised my eyebrows. Nobby looked at us both, and raised her eyebrows. Then we looked at Stilton, and all raised our eyebrows. It was one of those big eyebrow-raising mornings.”
Best bit of dialogue:
Bertie: “I’ll be dashed if I’m going to be made a—what’s the word?”
Jeeves: “Sir?”
Bertie: “Catspaw. Though why catspaw? I mean, what have cats go to do with it?”
Jeeves: “The expression derives from the old story of the cat, the monkey, and the chestnuts, sir. It appears—”
Bertie: “Skip it, Jeeves. This is no time for chewing the fat about the animal kingdom. And if it’s the story about where the monkey puts the nuts, I know it and it’s very vulgar.”
My review: Four stars. Plenty of Wodehousian style, but even less substance than usual. My beloved Aunt Dahlia is absent, ubervillain Aunt Agatha barely makes an appearance, and while Uncle Percy ends up being pretty funny and Edwin is suitably annoying (the best part of the book is when Bertie gets to give him a well-deserved kick in the pants), the two couples (Florence and Stilton, Nobby and Boko) are bland, at least compared to Gussie Fink-Nottle or Madeline Bassett. The plot was amusing but could have been twistier. Didn’t love it, but still liked it plenty.
Had I read it before? I don’t think so. Stilton, Florence, and Edwin were familiar to me from the short stories, but Nobby and Boko didn’t ring a bell.
Next up: The Mating Season
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