Review: The Pothunters

The Pothunters is P. G. Wodehouse's first book, originally published in 1902. It's a schoolboy story set in an English boarding school, with a plot involving stolen trophies and much emphasis on school sporting events.

There are some lively moments, humorous scenes, and witty lines, but The Pothunters only hints at what Wodehouse would go on to achieve. There is far too much straightforward story without the extraordinary shenanigans of the later works.

For example, the theft of the trophies – "pots" in schoolboy jargon – is a simple smash and grab, nothing like the hilarious farce of the theft of the silver cow creamer. And the direct descriptions of the schools boxing tournament and field day races are like small town newspaper accounts of real events. They hold no comparison to Wodehouse's riotously funny satire of sporting events, such as The Great Sermon Handicap or some of the games the Drones come up with.

Wodehouse completists will want to read The Pothunters, but initiates should start with one of his later works to avoid wondering what the fuss is about.

OTHER REVIEWS

If you would like your review of this book listed here, Please leave a comment with a link and I will add it.  

NOTES

The Pothunters is available in one of the cool new Collector's Editions by Overlook Press.

It is also available as a free kindle download on amazon.  It is the first ebook I read and I have to say I didn't care much for the experience.  I read it on my iPhone, using the kindle app.  I didn't care for the experience and it took me forever to finish as a result.

Share the Blog Love

It is very exciting to me that Dana at Let's Book It is featuring Rose City Reader as her Blog of the Week.

And, no, we aren't related and I didn't have to bribe her.

Thanks Dana!

I'm giddy. Just giddy.

Opening Sentence of the Day: Midnight Sun, Arctic Moon: Exploring the Wild Heart of Alaska

My pack, heavy with rocks, dug into my back as I hiked across the uneven ground twenty miles (32 kilometers) from the Arctic Circle.

-- Midnight Sun, Arctic Moon: Exploring the Wild Heart of Alaska by Mary Albanes (see trailer here).

Thanks go to intrepid book publicist, Mary Bisbee-Beek, for getting me a copy of this one.  It would be a great choice for the Memorable Memoirs challenge.

Review: Innocents Abroad, Volume One

The full title of Mark Twain's first published book gives, in quaint – and, one expects, tongue-in-cheek – 19th Century style, a synopsis of the contents: The Innocents Abroad or The New Pilgrims' Progress: Being Some Account of the Steamship Quaker City's Pleasure Excursion to Europe and the Holy Land. This is the non-fiction chronicle of Twain's adventures, on sea and land, with a group of American travelers.

Volume One of the two-volume edition covers the European part of the trip, concentrating on Gibralter, France, and Italy, with side trips to the Azores and Morocco.   Twain's account is part travelogue, part humorous essay. Parts have aged better than others – some of the jokes are a little frowsty and his descriptions of the local people can be startlingly off-color to politically correct modern readers.

But the book is still very funny and entertaining. Some of the travel essays, especially his chapters on Venice, are insightful and relevant. His humor can be clever, slapstick, or subtly sarcastic. Some of the funniest bits involve running jokes about holy relics, martyrs, hired guides, and trying to communicate in foreign languages.

Sometimes he just offers a hilarious set piece, like this one:

We wish to learn all the curious, outlandish ways of all the different countries, so that we can "show off" and astonish people when we get home. We wish to excite the envy of our untraveled friends with our strange foreign fashions which we can't shake off. . . . The gentle reader will never, never know what a consummate ass he can become, until he goes abroad. I speak now, of course, in the supposition that the gentle reader has not been abroad, and therefore is not already a consummate ass. If the case be otherwise, I beg his pardon and extend to him the cordial hand of fellowship and call him brother. I shall always delight to meet an ass after my own heart when I shall have finished my travels.

That's the kind of droll observation that can still sting, a century and a half later.

OTHER REVIEWS

If you would like your review of this or any other Mark Twain book listed here, please leave a comment with a link and I will add it.

NOTES

The Innocents Abroad, published in 1869, was Mark Twain's first published book. He'd had stories and essays published before, including the travel pieces that make up The Innocent's Abroad, but this was his first actual book. My edition is part of a matching set Hubby gave me several years ago. It is about time I started working my way through them.

This counts as one of my choices for several challenges: Non-Fiction, Back to the Classics, Classics, Mt. TBR, Off the Shelf, and TBR Pile. Because of the Venice chapters, I mention it as part of the Venice in February challenge too.

Opening Sentence: World Without End

Gwenda was eight years old, but she was not afraid of the dark.

-- World Without End by Ken Follett.

This is the sequel to the fabulous Pillars of the Earth that I read a few years back. Pillars was the story of building the Kingsbridge Cathedral in the 1100s; this one takes place 200 years later.

This counts as one of my choices for several challenges: TBR Pile, Mt. TBR, Off the Shelf, Chunkster, and Tea & Books.