The stories are all fairly similar but I still laughed aloud at the hijinks each time.

I get why this kind of humor was popular around the beginning of the twentieth century, but generally slapstick humor isn't much to my taste. The trickery of it just isn't that funny to me, and reminded me a little bit of The Canterbury Tales, which I also wasn't crazy about. This "brilliant" butler who is always making up ways to get his employer — Bertie Wooster — and Mr. Wooster's friends out of scrapes, but whose plans always get caught out or end up backfiring, and while things usually turn out fine in the end, it all seems like so much unnecessary trouble.

Plus, Mr. Wooster uses the word "chappie" too much.

I feel old and codgity.*

*My family has always used the word "codgity," but I didn't know how to spell it, so I googled it and apparently it isn't a word and my whole life is a lie. But this book counts toward Read Harder (a humor book), so yay for small wins.

My mom, who admired England from a distance through its writers throughout her life, did not pass her anglophilia to me, but she did pass down a love for P.G. Wodehouse, and especially Bertie and his man Jeeves.

I reread these books, many written almost 100 years ago, every few years and continue to find them laugh-out-loud funny depictions of a long-lost world.

I prefer the novel-length stories over these short story treatments, but that's not to say I don't love these, too.

Highly recommend all of these stories.

I love words and I'm not ashamed to admit it. Slang is great and foreign slang is the best. Perhaps that's why I love British books, the slang found therein is outstanding. I don't remember why I put this book on my "to-read" list but I'm glad I did.

Jeeves is a good old-fashioned man servant to an equally old-fashioned aristocrat, Bertie. Bertie, as far as i can tell, has but one purpose in live: to spend money. The man is rich, if that wasn't obvious by the fact the he's got a servant, and not once mentions having had a job. So that leaves plenty of time for him and his friends to stumble upon predicaments that would do a sitcom proud. How to fool a rich aunt into thinking her nephew actually does more than write, or how to get a man with a hyperbolicly bad memory to remember his wife's birthday are but two of the conundrums of the book. Neither the person with the problem nor Bertie can think of a way out. That's where Jeeves comes in. The man has an answer for everything. So Bertie always asks after his counsel.

The book isn't actually one story but rather a series of short stories. Oddly enough a few of them don't even feature Jeeves. All the stories have one thing in common: the plot is always a tad hackneyed. If I were to judge it based solely on the plot, then I don't think I'd recommend it at all. However, there's more to it than the plot. Like the aforementioned slang. Here are a few of the choicest cuts:

"...I was just brooding on life in general when I became aware of the dickens of a spate in progress down below." (p.36)

"Devilish efficient sort of chappie, and looked on in commercial circles as quite the nib!"(p.37)

"I've simply spent my life scattering largesse to blighters I didn't care a hand for; yet here was I now, dripping doubloons and pieces of eight and longing to hand them over..."(p.39)

"I've sat thought some pretty thick evenings in my time, but that one had the rest beaten in a canter."(p.49)

I’m off from work and having trouble concentrating on reading, so these short stories were perfect during this quarantine time. The middle section suddenly shifts back to Europe, which is a bit jarring, with Wooster as a different person- for a moment I thought I’d lost my mind, but it was just a shock to have happen in the middle of a book.

Pure British goofball nonsense candy. They all have the same pattern: amiable British aristocratic dummy who does nothing for a living is asked to help get a friend out of a jam; he comes up with a rather silly plan that surprisingly is effective; an unexpected curveball is thrown that ruins the whole scheme; and it turns out in the end the problem usually resolves itself, or Jeeves gives some intervention. But they're so delightfully dumb that it's entertaining to go through it every time (and it has that Winnie the Pooh-quality seriousness where kidnapping a kid and stealing a painting are handled so ineptly and half-heartedly you can comfortably read with no tension).

Minor aside: some of the stories are about Bertie Wooster, but some are about Reggie Pepper, and they are so alike that it took me a hot second to overcome the thought "wait, does Bertie have multiple names?" Jeeves is also missing from a large chunk of these stories, which is a tremendous shame. His dry humor, sly love of life (the guy can party in NYC), and his infinite patience for being right when Bertie still hasn't cottoned on.

Not my favorite narrator, a lot of rolling Rs, but still very entertaining.

A quick, fun read.

This is (sadly) my first Wodehouse.

I couldn't put it down, what. So much fun with the johnnies and the chappies and the aunts.

And Jeeves. Delightful, dry, wicked, and oh-so-competent Jeeves.

What would we do without you?

First finished: 2013-October-17