Book reader community.
My go-to writer in bad times and good times and all the times in between. If you love witty humour, try it. Or start with the TV show with Stephen Fry and Hugh Laurie (although there are so many funny things in those stories that can't be done on screen)
I have a slight interest...
Wow! That looks fun!
It is!
There are a number of authors who can make me laugh but Wodehouse is one of the few, and the best, at actually lifting the spirits and making me happy!
I’ve always heard Wodehouse mentioned in the context of other authors like Pratchett and Adams.
What book would you recommend as a good starter?
I think you can pretty much hop in anywhere, they're loosely connected with a few recurring characters but most of them are pretty self-contained. But the Jeeves & Wooster ones are the classics so maybe that? I'm also partial to the Psmith stories myself (the p is silent, as in pshrimp.)
I love Pratchett and now I've been reminded to read Wodehouse again. I did get the Woodhouse Ultimate Collection a couple of years ago, so I guess I better get started on it after I finish my current book.
I am a librarian and I have never heard of these. I’ll have to look them up.
The Salmon of Doubt was a collection of interviews and short stories with Douglas Adams. In it he's asked his biggest influences and he mentions Richard Dawkins, the evolutionary biologist and writer of The Selfish Gene, which is one of the most influential books I've read in my life which I snagged after seeing that recommendation. He also listed PG Wodehouse as the funniest writer ever and I bought a huge book of collected stories off Amazon and have worked my way through them ever since.
Absolutely hilarious and, like you said, just leaves you coming away glowing.
Also got turned on to Wodehouse via Salmon. When I started into Psmith after exhausting Bertie & Jeeves, it felt really similar to going from HHGG to Dirk Gently. I often wonder how many Python-era comedy writers were weaned on P.G.
Oh, which is the one where he had Jeeves replaced by the drunk communist butler? Had me rolling on the floor...
I do quite enjoy Wodehouse for Jeeves and Wooster and Blandings although one unemployed summer spent a lot of time binge reading them and they become quite repetitive!
Wodehouse was criticised for repetition very early on.
In the introduction to "Summer Lightning" he wrote...
"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."
I mean that shows the self-awareness that he knew that that was part of the humour really!
Summer Lightning was one of my favourites. You can't go wrong with that one.