Something Fresh

Rating:
Summary: Something fresh is truly refreshing!
Review: I first came across this book in a bookstore when I had about 3 hours to kill. I picked it up from the shelf expecting an average and rather boring reading session. How wrong I was! Something Fresh is the first book in the Blandings castle series written by Wodehouse. Although it does not introduce the famous 'empress of Blandings'(Lord Emsworth's prize pig), it is still remarkable. Imposters and thieves are very common at Blanding's castle. However, there is nothing common about their activities. Each and every character is well portrayed. The simple minded Earl of Emsworth decides to get his erring and irritating son (Freddie)married to an american heiress(Aline Peters) in order to make a man out of him. The Earl visits the American millionaire and anxious to promote the match, agrees to see the latter's famous scarab collection. In the process, the Earl flicks a priceless scarab(an act of absentmindedness and a true characteristic of Earl Emsworth). Mr. Peters believes that the scarab has been stolen deliberately. This starts a series of events that lead to humourous situations. The drama ends in Blandings castle but not without some hilarious situations. Other characters include the two thieves competing with each other to steal the precious scarab, Baxter, the suspicious and efficient secretary to Lord Emsworth, the butler Beach. The list is endless and the reader is well warned that he/she may dislocate a rib laughing. Something fresh is a wonderful way to begin Mr. Wodehouse's works. It is truly marvelous the way he weaves a web of excitement,fun and comedy. The book keeps the reader engaged and at every point, one is kept guessing. Mr. Wodehouse's works are well known for their dry and subtle humor. The narration (in this book) corroborates this and the tale is told without any serious attempt on the author's behalf to make the reader laugh. The reader will laugh anyway. In a world filled with harsh realities, Mr.Wodehouse's books come as a refreshing change. A spot of sun on a gloomy day. His language is excellent(in these days of slang)and his plots are fabulous. A must read for re establishing sanity in an insane world.

Rating:
Summary: All the intrigue of Sherlock Holmes...minus the dead bodies
Review: If your acquaintance with the wonderful world of Wodehouse begins and ends with Jeeves and that bit of a thick-o, Bertram Wilburforce W. then it's high time you came to Blandings Castle to meet Lord Emsworth and his idiot son Freddie,what?And "something fresh" is exactly where you'd want to start.Structured like a detective or spy novel and woven ever so tightly,it leaves you wondering....could all this bally intrigue be about something so incredibly silly? (and I'm far and away from meaning silly as an insult).Lighthearted and romantic without ever being lightweight, beautifully written and zanily paced, you'll want to spend a holiday as a guest at Blandings castle as soon as possible.Go ahead,satisfy your anglophilic urges...read some Wodehouse!

Rating:
Summary: The Company You Keep
Review: In P.G. Wodehouse (Thames and Hudson Literary Lives Series), James Connolly offers this advice: "Relax and reread Wodehouse; he's the boy to restore a sense of proportion." Absolutely good advice. I find rereading Wodehouse is more enjoyable than most first reads of other authors, and he's quite easy to reread, even if you don't intend to, because his stories appear in various collections and his novels were often published under various titles.

Something Fresh, officially the first book in the Blandings Castle saga, was published as "Something New" as a serial in The Saturday Evening Post in 1915, and then as a book with the same title in an American edition. "Something Fresh" is a slightly altered British edition of that book. Ashe Marson, the unknown author of the hard-boiled Gridley Quayle, Investigator series of paperback pulps, answers an ad: "WANTED--Young Man of Good Appearance, who is poor and reckless, to undertake delicate and dangerous enterprise. Good pay for the right man." Poor and reckless is a formula in Wodehouse for a good-hearted, down on his luck guy, about to be smiled upon by a beneficent Providence. It's a carry-over from his work in musical comedy and as a struggling writer, but he is one of the few authors who make his leading characters writers, and one of the very few who throws them any of the good parts.

This book is a double bonus, with not only Ashe, but a female writer, Joan Valentine, who knows even more of the hard-bitten life of the streets, and is therefore even poorer and more reckless, as a stellar second in the personnel. Throw in all sorts of millionaires and mix-ups, maids and butlers, a loveable, old, potty Earl, and the beginning of the crime wave at Blandings, and you have the makings of either a rollicking musical comedy or a long series of delightful novels. With Wodehouse it was both. He alternated between the two worlds and if Something Fresh were a film or a musical, Ashe and Joan would no doubt break into song and start dancing about the parlour, as do Gracie Allen, George Burns and Fred Astaire in the Gershwin Brothers' film adaption of Wodehouse's novel, A Damsel in Distress. Why four stars? You can't give everything five, and in my view, as good as Something Fresh is, some of the later Wodehouse novels (such as the Jeeves, Mulliner and Drones Stories) are even better.

Rating:
Summary: First=Finest
Review: Something Fresh is the first book of the Blandings Castle series, and in my opinion, the best. It is about a person named Lord Emsworth who accidentally steals a millionaire's scarab. The millionaire also happens to be his son's future father-in-law. The millionaire hires a man to find it, while the man's friend also gets information on the scarab. So both try to steal, while the Lord Emsworth's secretary, not knowing that it is the millionaire's, tries to prevent them from recovering the scarab. The encounters between the man,his girl friend, and the secretary will keep you laughing. Not only I, but also other people, who have read this book after I recommended it, share the view that Something Fresh is an extraordinary book. Get your hands on this book as fast as you can, and soon you will be famished for more books by P.G. Wodehouse. It will, and I am totally serious here, make you laugh until you have laughed all the laughs you can laugh, and cried all the tears you can cry. Hope you enjoy!!!! Cheers!!!!! : )

Rating:
Summary: Something Marvelous
Review: The next time your strolling in a peaceful wood where the birds are singing, the squirrels chattering, the brook babbling, and your heart fills with joy, you'll know exactly the type of experience you get when reading a Wodehouse novel. Wodehouse writes about a happy world, where pratfalls rule and coincidences are the norm. This is world where your not in tune if you don't fall in love at first sight. Something Fresh is all of this: happy, filled with pratfalls and coincidence, and brimming with lovers. What should a person recommend more? The wonderfully convoluted plots? The large cast of absolute eccentrics? Wodehouse's command of the English language (and how to use it humorously and dramatically)? Since I love all of the above, it is not difficult to imagine giving this book anything but a glowing review. And what is more amazing is that this is not even his funniest book!! But Something Fresh is a great place to start if you never have read Wodehouse before. It is a good introduction to those wonderful folks of Blandings Castle. And you'll know that having a cheerful "tra-la-la!" on your lips will get you a lot further in life than a frown and a lawsuit. Having Wodehouse in my life has improved things immensely.

Rating:
Summary: Funny,Humourous,Witty,Wonderful,Marvellous,Out of this world
Review: This is my 3rd book of P.G Wodehouse & I'm simply hooked!! P.G Wodehouse is one of a kind! Any body can write a story, but it takes real talent to write something which will make people laugh. I liked this book not so much for the story as for P.G Wodehouse's style of writing. The plot is well-made & skilfuly woven.What happens when a scarab gets stolen? 'A scarab?' you think. Yes, a valuable scarab from Mr. Peter's collection & an offer of 10,000 dollars for it's retrieval. This has caught your attention. So has it caught Ashe Marton & Joan Valentine in a web of lies, confusion & humour. Both of them vye for the reward, posing as impostors in Blandings castle. Ashe Marton, as Mr. Peter's valet & Joan Valentine as Aline Peter's maid. The Efficient Baxter, Lord Emsworth's seceretary, gets to know of the plan & spends many sleepless nights hoping to catch them red-handed. But none of them know that somebody else is interested in the scarab too, & will very soon take it away right under their noses! The side characters who contribute a lot towards the humour situation, are Mr. Beach, the butler, who 'Suffers from His Feet, From Nervous Disorders', & 'whose Stomach Lining is not what a stomach lining should be.' I'm sure you'll all love this hilarious story.

Rating:
Summary: Blandings Castle is never bland nor dull!
Review: This is the first Blandings Castle novel, and the first novel in what we now think as the true P.G. Wodehouse style. For the first time, the interplay between absent-minded peers, quick-to-anger relatives and friends, and those amazing good-natured yet good-for-nothing younger sons come together in a comic dance of quick assumptions, identity switches, flirts with embarrassment, and, oh yes, love.

If Wodehouse wasn't so widely admired by the critics, I would have to claim him as a guilty pleasure. Although I can quote style and form with the best of them, the real truth is that I read Wodehouse because he amuses. In Wodehouse's hands, the sly wink equals the over-the-top exaggeration, and only one will work in the place that he puts it.

I tried to slow my reading speed down on this book, to gain an understanding of the flow and the way the language worked. I failed miserably--before I realized it, I was caught up once again in the action of the story and I wasn't observing but enjoying. I'm thinking that to truly study a novel, I am going to have to force myself to retype it.