Cecily's book reviews

In general I've written reviews of every book I've read since I joined GoodReads (RIP) in May 08, along with one or two I read prior to that. More recent reviews tend to be longer (sometimes a tad too long?). I always carry a book, though I don't get as much time as I'd like to get engrossed - life is busy, but in a good way. Too many of my favourite authors died without writing enough! Apart from reading, and writing about reading, I enjoy Scrabble, good restaurants, woodland, and attending the theatre.
Aunts Aren't Gentlemen - P.G. Wodehouse Not one of the best Wodehouse novels, but still an amusing romp.

This particular story is actually narrated by Bertie Wooster and the slightly modern setting is disconcerting on the rare occasions it impinges. Anyway, Bertie gets pink spots on his chest and his doctor prescribes a restful spell in the country. Of course, life in a quiet English village is anything but quiet.

It has many of the aspects of classic Wodehouse: feuding neighbours, plots to purloin/borrow/kidnap/nobble, an absent-minded old buffer, animals (cats and horses), aunts, mistaken identity and romantic entanglements changing by the hour.

Although the trademark metaphors are not as numerous or elegant in some of his other works, they are still there:
* "If she ever turned into a werewolf, it would be one of those jolly breezy werewolves whom it is a pleasure to know."
* Of Jeeves, "he betrayed no emotion, continuing to look as if he'd been stuffed by a good taxidermist"
* Jeeves' aunt stays with a friend whose address is "Balmoral, Mafeking Road" in an English village!
* "I thought at first that my guardian angel, who had been noticeably lethargic up to this point, had taken a stiff shot of vitamin something and had become the ball of fire he ought to have been right along".
* After falling, clothed, into a swimming pool, "It was with mixed emotions that I rose to the surface. Surprise was one of them."

Readers might also find it useful to know the Latin phrase rem acu tetegisti (and variants thereof) means "you have touched the matter with a needle; you have described it accurately".

Currently reading

The Illustrated Gormenghast Trilogy
Sebastian Peake, China MiƩville, Mervyn Peake
Gormenghast
Mervyn Peake