After reading a couple of other books in the interim, I’ve returned to Entangled Life. Merlin Sheldrake (which I still think is a remarkably excellent name) writes beautifully and evocatively. It still requires some concentration to absorb the information, but this book feels like a superb way to be learning about this entirely fascinating subject (the book is subtitled “How Fungi Make Our Worlds, Change Our Minds & Shape Our Futures”). I’m again mostly reading in small doses before bed, but I clearly have a bit more mental capacity now than I did last time, so I should see it through.
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Lord Emsworth and Others is a good place to start for a sampler. It’s got a Blandings story and then a number of golf and Ukridge stories. Then a Drones Club and a Mr. Mulliner.
I was surprised at how good the three golf stories were as I’ve no interest in the game but I sailed through them. I’m not going to seek them out yet but I expected that part of the collection to be a total miss and was happy to be proved wrong. Mr. Mulliner was fun but as just a framing device I wasn’t grabbed. The ones in this collection were more Wodehouse venting spleen at the movie business. I’ve got Mulliner down to check out more at a later date. Ukridge is the one that turned me off the most. I’m not planning to seek out any more Ukridge stories. A remarkably venal and unaware character to my read. But I didn’t like the Cat in the Hat when I was a kid and felt bad for the fish in that story.
I’ve been going mostly chronological and Mike and Psmith convinced me I didn’t need to dig back into any more of the school stories.
All of Blandings has been great. I’ve started Uncle Fred in the Springtime and about halfway through that and on the strength of the Drones Club story from earlier I picked up one of those collections to drop in and try.
Right Ho, Jeeves is the first Jeeves and Wooster book that hasn’t hit as strongly for me. I think because it is 90% Bertie doing dumb things and then Jeeves fixes it in one chapter with everyone turned on Bertie. That made the thing drag on for me from about the halfway mark forward. I’d recommend Carry On, Jeeves most from what I’ve read so far as it’s early and I like watching the formula develop and it has Bertie Changes His Mind which is the only one Jeeves narrates.
Leave it to Psmith is very good but it led me to worry I wouldn’t enjoy Blandings Castle without Psmith. That was a needless worry. The ensemble approach there holds up very well so far.
I would recommend the early collection The Man with Two Left Feet. It’s got a neat two parter narrated by a dog and a fun one about a private detective following a theatre troupe.
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If you want to be a completist, Psmith is the bridge from the school stories into the grown-up writing; but as far as I’m concerned the point of Wodehouse is entertainment, and if a particular style doesn’t entertain you it’s not worth persisting with.
The Mulliner tales of Hollywood can be quite fun but it feels as though he has a limited toolbox to play with and re-uses a bunch of ideas; he is writing from experience here.
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Halfway through Termination Shock by Neal Stephenson. Pretty good, but so far it feels like a pastiche of one of Kim Stanley Robinson’s recent books in the way it uses characters to reveal ideas about geo-engineering.
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I’ve read a Wodehouse compilation1 of entirely golf-related short stories, and it was a delight. Even the brief introduction is hilarious. I have no interest in golf either, but if you know enough about the game to have an opinion on it, then you know all you need to know to enjoy these stories. The highlight for me was “The Salvation of George Mackintosh”, but I thoroughly enjoyed the whole book.
1 “The Clicking of Cuthbert”, and the internet tells me there is a second golf compilation “The Heart of a Goof”, plus half of “Nothing Serious” is golf stories. That accounts for the majority, with another ~10 stories scattered amongst a few other volumes (“Lord Emsworth” included).
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Everything I read in December:
Taking me to a grand total of 206 books read in 2022! (Not all of them were pictured for various reasons.)
I’ll be a bit less ambitious this year, I think. Not least as I’m unlikely to be binge-reading so many manga series.
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I’m listening to them on Audible - read by Stephen Fry. Recommended.
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Just finished Bitch Planet, and boy howdy that’s a good 'un. Graphic Novel, and the first episode is incredible with the rest just being “Extremely good.”
Not at all what I was expecting. Honestly, I’m not sure what I was expecting, but yeah. Highly recommend if you like thoughtful comics.
I’m about halfway through On a Sunbeam, which is another graphic novel. The art style is very jarring… not “bad,” but monochromatic but the colour switches periodically (bi-chromatic? Like, everything is white, black, and one other colour, either orange or blue or green, depending on the chapter). Not my kind of sci-fi (like the tech itself all looks organic… giant flying fish-ships, that kinda thing), but I’m willing to forgive it thus far.
Today I start my course readings, so wish me luck. I think the first is called Motorcycles and Sweetgrass.
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Canadian, magical realism, I can see how it might be included. I’m hoping that one of these days you’ll mention one of your required readings and I can say “oh, I know that, it’s great fun”. But it hasn’t happened yet.
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Sadly it’s been on hiatus for the past 5+ years. Apparently more is planned but I can’t see any info on when it will happen.
I highly recommend other stuff by Kelly Sue DeConnick. Pretty Deadly is entirely different from BP, but just as good. Don’t know if more is planned, but each volume is stand-alone.
And her run on Captain Marvel is basically why she’s a well-known character now.
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I finished reading Uncle Fred in the Springtime and I liked it very much at first but it got weaker as it went on and the end felt abrupt and unsatisfying. It felt like 0.75 of the plot of a quality Blandings novel spread over 1.5 times the characters needed for a Blandings novel. It’s almost like I can feel Wodehouse and Uncle Fred get tired of each other around chapter 16 and start edging toward their respective exits.
This is the second ending in a row for Wodehouse that has felt abrupt and dissonant to me. It’s got me a little nervous about my next one because I went from 1934 to 1939 and am dodging back to 1938. I’m hoping this isn’t a longer mid-season slump.
The language and dialogue are still marvelous though and I get regular audible chuckles which my daughter rolls her eyes at, so that’s entirely positive.
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I’ve just finished the 2nd one (Moon Over Soho) and enjoyed it. You’ve got me worried about the 3rd one now…
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FWIW I rate 1 and 3 as the best. 
I finished reading the first of the „Surprise“ Novels from Brandon Sanderson‘s Kickstarter. After reading almost no fiction at all for the better part of the last 2 years… it makes me incredibly happy to have found joy in reading this book. Double joy so to say. I can‘t wait for the other books and maybe maybe I am ready to read more again? I‘d love that.
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My blog is largely book reviews and I try not to link it all the time here, but here’s my summary of things read in 2022.
F&SF which caused me to go “ooh”:
- Nicole Kornher-Stace, Firebreak
- Suzanne Palmer: The Scavenger Door
- Natalie Zina Walschots: Hench
- Emma Newman: Before Mars
- Emma Newman: Atlas Alone
- Katherine Addison: Witness for the Dead
- Frances Hardinge: Unraveller
- Tamsyn Muir: Nona the Ninth
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I liked 1 and 2 more than 3, but then I really liked the following ones, specially Foxglove Summer (maybe specially because of the setting, I was living in the West Country at the time) and The Hanging Tree (so 5 and 6??). Out of the novellas, I loved the one set in Germany, The October Man. Some books are better than others, in my opinion, but I like the general vibe and the setting idea, so I tend to be very involved when I read them. You could say they click with me.
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Finished up the first three volumes of the comic Something’s Killing the Children. Really good stuff, but definitely dark and gory, so probably not recommended for all audiences.
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I love this series.
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So I probably asked this before… one of the reasons I haven’t been reading is ebooks and amazon and that I am sick of amazon. At first I was quite happy having everything via amazon on my kindle. But with more and more often books or magazines coming from humble bundles, patreon and various places I just needed a single place where I have my library and amazon just doesn’t want to play nice. Also amazon. On the other hand they are still the major peddler for standard published books… I just looked around and where do I buy ebooks these days? There has to be some kind of online device agnostic competition for amazon? Something that is not google or apple. Something that is not Big-Tech?! I feel like it is my fault for not looking earlier…
https://www.ebooks.com ? Is that any good? I feel so… clueless.
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I’ve heard good things about ebooks.com. I’m very much of the “get the file and back it up somewhere” school, though.
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