P. G. Wodehouse | Where to Begin

hey guys here today to talk to you about PG [Music] Woodhouse so please ignore my background today uh I'm in the middle of reorganizing my books and it is uh taking longer and much more effort than I was anticipating a bunch of you have actually been asking for um a new bookshelf tour sometime soon the last one I did was in 2014 and it is long and epic and it took me uh hours and hours to film and then even longer to edit so um that's daunting I actually currently have five different bookcases there's three along this wall and two over there um so I'm thinking that maybe I will split it into five and do a separate video for each bookcase make it a little bit more manageable uh but let me know what you guys think of of that now on to the actual reason for this video every time I bring up Woodhouse I get questions on where to begin with him so I thought it was about time I did a whole separate video on the matter I completely understand being a little bit overwhelmed or intimidated by Woodhouse he is a super prolific writer he's writing cous band from I think 1902 to 1974 so that is massive and he wrote a lot during that time he has over 90 novels over 40 plays over 200 short stories it's a lot for those of you completely unfamiliar with Woodhouse he is a British comic novelist he mostly writes about the upper classes he's particularly well known for two different series of books and that is his je series which is about the title character of Jeeves who is a gentleman's gentleman and he works for the character of Birdie Worcester and birdie is an upper class twit and he is completely wonderful um not always all there and Jes basically runs Bird's life for him sometimes with Bird's permission sometimes not so much but both characters are wonderful and their Dynamic is perfect and the other series that he's particularly known for is the Blanding series and that is all set on the blandings estate blandings castle and the main characters for blandings are Lord Emsworth who is a middle-aged to elderly very very scatterbrained man he is the master of blanding's Castle um there's also his youngest son Freddy who is just completely wonderful a very similar character to birdie but maybe even um a little bit sillier there's also Beach who is the butler for blandings and uh a various array of other characters including uh many of Freddy's aunts Lord Emsworth has I think either six or seven sisters and they all come in and out of the stories as we go Woodhouse definitely had a thing about aunts because aunts also play a large part in the G's books um birdie has several of them and most of them are terrifying so as well as those there are some other reoccurring characters here in there but mostly his other books are just Standalone and they're still fantastic and they often have a very similar feel to his jees and his blandings books essentially if you've tried a couple of Woodhouse books and didn't enjoy them chances are you won't enjoy any of it because he has a very specific style he a lot of his writing was very formulaic so it is really something you either enjoy or you don't and I happen to love it now as for where to start I think you should probably start with either a jees or a blandings book and it 100% does does not matter what book you choose if I'm going through and reading a bunch then I will normally attempt to read in chronological order just of publication date but it's not necessary and I've definitely skipped around and for the most part stories uh don't have a tenuous link it's just stories about the same characters so they really don't have to be read in a specific order as far as personal recommendations go I really love for the jees books this is the collection of short stories called very good jees it is wonderful uh thank you jees is also really great this is a novel and carry-on jees and the inimitable jees are also really fantastic all four of those really good places to start within the je series as far as blandings goes I've read less of those so far although it is my goal to read as many as possible this year um but summer lightning is my favorite so far it is a novel and it a lot of it centers around the empress which is Lord Emsworth Pig and it is just so good so so funny and the first book that includes blandings characters is called something fresh and I reread that uh in January and I love it highly recommend and if you start reading these books and fall in love with the characters the way I did there are um some great adaptations actually as well for Jeeves there is a series called Jeeves and Worcester which I believe is from the 80s and it's Stars Steven fry as jees and Hugh Lori as birie Worster and they are hysterically funny it is so good and so so true to the text it just feels perfect they're just so so wonderful I love them in general but jees and Worcester is like serious career highlight there and as for something a little newer uh a few years ago there was a Blanding series that came out a BBC series that has uh Timothy SPO as Lord Emsworth and Jennifer Saunders as one of the aunts Aunt Connie and it was just excellent there's been two Series so far it did get canc but there is word that it's coming back so I'm excited but I really do highly recommend both of those blandings is a little bit more over the top but then the G Series but once you start watching and really get involved in the characters I just feel like it's perfect now I just want to quickly talk a little bit about additions as far as Woodhouse goes so when I first started reading Woodhouse these additions were available and I only have two of these regrettably but these were sort of '90s early naughties editions and they're just little compact really nice to read I really like the uh illustrations on these so if you can find these secondhand I really do recommend them they're very very nice these are penguin editions but as for the current Woodhouse editions that you can buy now that are still in print the most common are these by Arrow they're fine I don't love the design on these but they work they do the job they're the books but the one thing I really do like about these is you'll see if I hold these up these each have a different image on the spine here and they denote actually what series they are from so on the jees books these have a little top hat and gloves and that will tell you that it's a jebs and Worcester novel this one here has the empress Lord Emsworth Pig on the side here so that is a blandings book and this one here with just a martini glass is just a standalone PG Woodhouse novel so I think that's a really nice touch next up and my current favorites are the Norton editions so these look like this they have very matte covers they're very flexible paperbacks they feel lovely to read the paper quality is really really nice so this one here is heavy weather and then this one that I showed earlier is very good Jeeves and I just I love these I think they're beautiful but there are also these little hard cover Everyman editions and I only just got two of these recently I didn't think that I was going to like them that much but they're actually really nice they're very small hard covers just very plain illustrations they have nice ni end papers the actual hard cover is clothbound inside and I just they're a nice option and obviously nice and sturdy and they're going to last better than just a regular paperback and I am not sure if any additions actually have all of Woodhouse so since there's just so so much Woodhouse to collect I don't worry too much about my additions matching I just like having quite an Eclectic mix of my Woodhouse volumes because uh there's just too many so I can't be precious about it I know for certain that the Norton ones don't have everything um in them yet I don't know if they will continue to keep releasing new ones I'm hoping that they will because I think the nton ones are just the best as far as my personal taste goes but all of them are quite nice and I can definitely recommend them um obviously if you are more of a library person then go check some out I'm sure that any Library you go to will have a decent selection of the J's books and the blendings books and probably a few standalones I'm assuming most most libraries aren't going to have the full Woodhouse because once again it's a lot of books but you never know have a look around and secondhand is always a good idea for Woodhouse as well just because he has been in print for such a long time um and he was just so prolific I always like checking secondhand stores uh for whatever Woodhouse I can find so that was it guys I hope that was at least somewhat helpful I really just think if you like comic novels then Woodhouse is worth a try and the great thing about him is if you do end up liking him uh you've got a lot to read so that's always exciting thank you guys for watching I hope you enjoyed this and I'll see you soon

Channel: Lesley Rickman

Views: 35,291

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Id: 0eGi7nv2uZ8

Length: 9min 39sec (579 seconds)

Published: Thu Feb 18 2016