Carry On, Jeeves

I'd give this five stars but you have to leave some space for brilliance, don't you know.

I had a Wodehouse orgy a few years ago, read a lot of his stuff on the bus (poor location - your laughing in public will have other commuters proceed to stare at you as if somehow you were contagious) and then stopped. Well, I DON'T KNOW WHY. I love him. What a riot this book was. This is basically Bertie being his usual obnoxious self with Jeeves coming up with wonderful ideas to get him out of tricky situations. It's hilarious throughout. In one of the stories, a woman pays a young man to live the good life in New York provided she can live vicariously through his letters - oh how I would have loved for that to happen to me!

Wodehouse's world is a show more microcosm in which eccentricity is the default, and keep in mind that these characters are barely caricatures.

Pure indulgence. I regret nothing, this is a treat. show less

This was my introduction to Jeeves, and I love him! I want a rich uncle and an uber-competent butler to keep him in line and doling out a generous allowance.

I’ve been dipping into a lot of late 19th-early 20th century literature and I know that Bertie is a caricature, but find myself wondering how many of the ideal rich there were? Surely there are actually more of them now. We live in a wealthier age and a more populous planet, so in sheer quantity there must be more of them. Are they hiding behind fake jobs? Are the ‘flipping houses,’ or ‘working on their start-up,’? They could be writing their first novel, always a good line. I don’t think I have met very many of them in real life. I know several people who mare idle, show more and a few who are rich, but I can’t think of anyone who would qualify as a member of the ‘idle-rich.’

I don’t think I would make a good dependent nephew of a rich uncle, or be a good sugar baby in general. I hate to ask for anything, so constantly scheming for the handout would destroy my morale. I’d rather be Jeeves, who can laugh at his idle, hapless employer while socking away various hijinks-related windfalls until I could retire to Thailand and live like a debauched monarch in exile. show less

One of the funniest Wodehouse books I've read. Bertie's self-deprecation is charming, and Jeeves must be one of the smartest men on earth. This book is a series of short stories about Jeeves rescuing Bertie's friends, and it was getting formulaic. But Wodehouse cleverly changed the perspective in the last chapter to tell it from Jeeves' perspective. How he orchestrated Bertie's change of mind makes you wonder what else has he done.

One might think that eventually the tales of Jeeves and Bertie Wooster would become rather tiresome. After all, they hew so closely to formula. Bertie and/or one of his equally dense aristo pals gets into trouble with a woman and/or a crotchety (inheritance-controlling) aunt. Bertie and/or his pals bumble along, making the problem worse, until Jeeves uses his massive intellect to come up with a solution most ingenious. Bo-ring, right?

Not so, not so. P.G. Wodehouse could apparently wring laughter out of this situation no matter how familiar it became. Carry On, Jeeves is just as diverting as the first Jeeves collection I read, and the second, and the third...

Also! The final story in this collection, entitled "Bertie Changes His Mind," is show more actually told not by Bertie...but by Jeeves himself! Yes, we hear the man himself for a change, as Jeeves very tactfully and resourcefully relates an incident in which he rather enjoys watching Bertie get out of his (shallow) depth. He calls Bertie "mentally negligible" but says "in an employer brains are not desirable" and assures us that "I am fond of Mr. Wooster." Oh, so are we, old man, so are we. What? show less

After hearing Wodehouse's name in the wind for probably decades, I read this author of classic humor for the first time with My Man Jeeves, featuring Bertie Wooster and his iconic valet Jeeves, along with stories about an early Wooster prototype, Reggie Pepper. Not at all a bad intro to the author for me.

Then I heard tell that revised versions of those Jeeves stories are in this later collection, Carry On, Jeeves.

Well. Maybe it's because I'm still getting started with this author, but aside from a bit of story retitling and one Pepper episode rewritten as a Wooster one, I didn't notice any other revisions of the few tales I'd already read.

Enjoyed the reading anyway, though. And I liked that a joke that was particularly not to my taste show more in the formerly Pepper story is left out of the Wooster rewrite.

The author's way with language is upbeat and quirkily clever, like sketches of word caricatures. Jeeves and Wooster's tiffs are so delightfully quaint and comic, and I catch on to most of the old-fashioned English slang through context. Now, the few newer stories here I hadn't read before add a little more mild "language" (nothing that would get bleeped off of regular network television), and one of the tales has a reference to deaf people that I wouldn't have used.

But in general, as I passed the time with the hijinks in these pages, it occurred to me how rarely I've had chances as an adult to indulge in comedy reading purely for entertainment. Comedy that's comfortable for me—"PG" but not juvenile.

I often recharge my battery with classic sitcoms. I guess my reading life could use more of that type of relaxration and recharging too. Don't mind if I do partake of some more of the Wooster and Jeeves series. show less

Bertie and his many friends continue to get into various scrapes and are pulled back out of them by the deliciously well-thought out plans of Bertie's valet, Jeeves.

Another excellent collection of short stories from Wodehouse that I giggled my way through. I particularly delighted in the final story in this collection, which is told from Jeeves's perspective rather than Bertie's which made for a fascinating shift. Always reliably enjoyable.

Ten short stories about Bertie Wooster and his wise valet, Jeeves. I've read many of the books from this series, but had somehow missed this one. I loved seeing the first meeting between the two. The rest of the stories all have a similar theme, Bertie manages to get himself into a pickle, the brilliant Jeeves manages to get him out of it. But they are fun to read and Bertie's oblivious nature and Jeeves' patient condescension always make me laugh. You know what you'll get when you read Wodehouse's books on Jeeves and you're never disappointed.