This Is A Good Book Thursday, June 14, 2018

I’m on a P. G. Wodehouse binge because I was getting too dark in my own novel and because it’s summer and in the summer, the best place to laugh is Blanding’s Castle.  Also you have to love an author who replies to his critics this way:

“A certain critic – for such men, I regret to say, do exist – made the nasty remark about my last novel that it contained `all the old Wodehouse characters under different names’. He has probably by now been eaten by bears, like the children who made mock of the prophet Elisha: but if he still survives he will not be able to make a similar charge against Summer Lightning. With my superior intelligence, I have outgeneralled the man this time by putting in all the old Wodehouse characters under the same names. Pretty silly it will make him feel, I rather fancy.”

That’s the way I feel about people who say, “Why is there always a dog?” or “Where was the dog?” or “Why dogs?”, I just never realized Bears Will Eat Them.  Also the people who say, “Well, it’s not Shakespeare . . .”  Did the cover say, “Another great piece of Renaissance drama from Jenny Crusie”?  No?  BEARS.

Also, when Millicent drops into her chair in Summer Lightning, he describes her like this:

“She looked like something that might have occurred to Ibsen in one of his less frivolous moments.”

I think that says it all.  I also tried a New Adult romance because Krissie said they were interesting and this one was free, but I gave up a third of the way in.  I like plots in my novels.  Then I tried something about a housewife assassin and gave up a couple of pages in because the protagonist seemed unlikely to succeed at balancing her responsibilities to her children while posing as a prostitute to kill a Russian mob boss.  My suspension of disbelief was not willing.  I also circled back to another Miss Marple because those are soothing.  Mostly, though, I just worked on Act Two.  

So what did you read this week?  Any keepers?

 

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