Tag: PG Wodehouse

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Speaking of Wodehouse

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”!

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Jerome K Jerome

If you enjoy reading PG Wodehouse (as I know many of my friends do), I suggest you also give English humorist, Jerome K Jerome, a try.

I read his Three Men in a Boat for the first time when I was nineteen years old. I had borrowed it from my father, who didn’t get his copy back for…oh, about twenty years or so. Having that book had become essential to my well-being because I could pick it up at any time and be assured of reading something that would make me burst out laughing.

In fact, I realize that I should have gotten it out last night when I was feeling so glum (yes, I eventually purchased my own copy so that I could return my dad’s).

Before writing this blog post, I google Jerome K Jerome and started reading quotes from the book. Sure enough, I was soon laughing out loud. Here are just a few. If you like them, you’ll know what to do…! 😂

“With me, it was my liver that was out of order. […] I had the symptoms, beyond all mistake, the chief among them being “a general disinclination to work of any kind.”
What I suffer in that way no tongue can tell. From my earliest infancy I have been a martyr to it. As a boy, the disease hardly ever left me for a day. They did not know, then, that it was my liver. Medical science was in a far less advanced state than now, and they used to put it down to laziness.”
― Jerome K. Jerome, Three Men in a Boat

“It always does seem to me that I am doing more work than I should do.  It is not that I object to the work, mind you; I like work: it fascinates me.  I can sit and look at it for hours.  I love to keep it by me: the idea of getting rid of it nearly breaks my heart.”
― Jerome K. Jerome, Three Men in a Boat

“George got out his banjo after supper, and wanted to play it, but Harris objected: he said he had got a headache, and did not feel strong enough to stand it.  George thought the music might do him good—said music often soothed the nerves and took away a headache; and he twanged two or three notes, just to show Harris what it was like. Harris said he would rather have the headache.”
― Jerome K. Jerome, Three Men in a Boat