My Man Jeeves

I read this for book club–I'd never read or seen any Jeeves & Wooster stories before but I was vaguely familiar with the premise from existing in Western pop culture. And I have to say: even though this is the first collection and some of them are explicitly first drafts of stories that were later revised and republished, and some of these aren't even about Jeeves but instead about the off-brand Reggie Pepper...this was a delight! Still some genuinely LOL moments and a lot of droll observations about human nature that honestly hold up.

Given the book is over a hundred years old and I've never read from this author before, it's difficult for me to tell whether the distinctive language style is a product of being on the cusp of the roaring twenties or Wodehouse's particular parlance. Either way, it's the most fascinating part of this collection of stories for me. I'd be willing to consider it episodic chapters in sequence were it it for the fact that Bertie and Jeeves' adventures leave off after the first three entries, for the next four with another character called Reggie, who seems to echo Bertie, only for Bertie and Jeeves to pop back for the last story. I gather this is a series, so I assume Bertie and Jeeves' will be back, but I guess now I wonder if they're just the one unifying element in a bunch of tales which are a bit formulaic. There's a silly problem that a bit of straightforward honesty would clear up, assuming the one who was interested in living without much effort was willing to take the hit, but the complicated machinations taken to avoid such first make things look okay, then grim, then by accident or design, fine and dandy. That and the generalized way women are not always spoken fondly of had me rolling my eyes every so often. The writing style is diverting, and the length of the tales means you don't spend too long with anybody being particularly silly. If you've got an afternoon and the need for a simple distraction, I think this could fit the bill.