Yesterday I shared how I was introduced to Jerome K Jerome; it was a number of years later that I made the acquaintance of PG Wodehouse.
This was back in the days when pretty much the only place to buy a book was in a bookstore, and one of my favorite pastimes was browsing used bookstores.
Of course, this was before personal computers, so the only way you heard about a book was either word of mouth (like when my best friend in 4th grade told me about The Hobbit) or by reading a book review in the newspaper. Otherwise, you “judged a book by its cover” and hoped for the best (and no going online and reading reviews before deciding to buy it!).
So, somehow, in some used bookstore in San Francisco, I managed to pick up my first Wodehouse book and started reading the adventures of Bertie and Jeeves. It was like Jerome K Jerome all over again! I was in love with another British humorist. At this point, I felt that I was perhaps a little odd; I mean, no one else I knew was raving about Wodehouse or JKJ.
Another number of years later, I found a new spiritual home at Ananda Palo Alto. Imagine my surprise and delight upon attending my first Thanksgiving banquet when, after pie and coffee, we settled in to be entertained by a readers theater version of The Amazing Hat Mystery…by PG Wodehouse! There was much I already loved about Ananda, but in that moment I knew that I had truly found “my people”!