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tani 's review for:
The Code of the Woosters
by P.G. Wodehouse
3.5 stars. I caught a nasty cold last week, and then I hurt my back, so I was feeling pretty down - low concentration and general misery. My brain wasn't up to the style of the book that I happened to be reading at the time, so I picked some random books off the shelf, including this one. They all happened to be older British works, so I guess that my brain felt that British literature is just the thing for comfort reading? Anyway, this book has been on my shelf for years, so I'm quite glad to get it off of there, no matter how it happened.
I will freely admit, this book probably deserves a higher rating. The hijinks that make up the entire plot of this book were very impressive. If it can go wrong, it will go wrong, and probably spectacularly. And yet, everything is so light and fluffy! Things go wrong, but the result is a quarrel, maybe the loss of a cook. It was a huge change from the dire consequences that I'm used to in my genre of choice, epic fantasy. It was kind of refreshing, and I certainly look back on the book with fondness.
And yet, I found that I also suffered from a problem that I often have with humorous novels. It was snicker-worthy, but it rarely elicited a laugh. (I do this same thing with Douglas Adams and Terry Pratchett.) Somehow, in writing, humor like this just isn't as funny as it should be for me. I will say, when I started the book while sick, it was getting the laughs a bit more, so I'm not sure if it became less laugh-worthy when I'm clear-headed, or if I'm just a sourpuss. Maybe both? But I felt like the humor got a little too overblown, and I just didn't enjoy it as much.
Reading this book did make me think that I really need to get my hands on the Jeeves and Wooster TV series. I really think that I would enjoy the humor more if it was spoken, rather than just read. And in the meantime, this was a fun little romp, and I now know exactly what I'm missing in my lack of a P.G. Wodehouse education.
I will freely admit, this book probably deserves a higher rating. The hijinks that make up the entire plot of this book were very impressive. If it can go wrong, it will go wrong, and probably spectacularly. And yet, everything is so light and fluffy! Things go wrong, but the result is a quarrel, maybe the loss of a cook. It was a huge change from the dire consequences that I'm used to in my genre of choice, epic fantasy. It was kind of refreshing, and I certainly look back on the book with fondness.
And yet, I found that I also suffered from a problem that I often have with humorous novels. It was snicker-worthy, but it rarely elicited a laugh. (I do this same thing with Douglas Adams and Terry Pratchett.) Somehow, in writing, humor like this just isn't as funny as it should be for me. I will say, when I started the book while sick, it was getting the laughs a bit more, so I'm not sure if it became less laugh-worthy when I'm clear-headed, or if I'm just a sourpuss. Maybe both? But I felt like the humor got a little too overblown, and I just didn't enjoy it as much.
Reading this book did make me think that I really need to get my hands on the Jeeves and Wooster TV series. I really think that I would enjoy the humor more if it was spoken, rather than just read. And in the meantime, this was a fun little romp, and I now know exactly what I'm missing in my lack of a P.G. Wodehouse education.