New books, that is. I’ve read another couple books since these two, but none that I hadn’t read before. These two are Full Moon and Mr Mulliner Speaking. Both are by Wodehouse and the first is a Blandings novel and the second is a collection of Mulliner stories. Full Moon was the most disappointing Blandings novel I’ve read yet. It was entertaining and I smiled a fair bit, but I don’t think I laughed out loud even once. Wodehouse did recycle his plots quite frequently, and because of that it’s often possible to see how a particular book will turn out in general. But in this one even the twists and complications were telegraphed way ahead of time and they weren’t as clever as one would have expected. It’s a bit surprising that this book should be so off since it wasn’t one that was written at the end of his life, but was published in 1947. On the other hand, it’s quite possible that the problems he had arising out of his internment during World War II were a sufficient distraction to put him off of his form.
The other book was much better and had quite a few interesting and and entertaining stories including a golf story (some of Wodehouse’s best stories are his golf stories), several featuring Bobbie Wickham (who also appears in the Jeeves and Wooster tales leaving chaos in her wake), and a particular favourite of mine about the man who tried to give up smoking.
Neh 