all kinds of blah

[flambeau]

This is very peculiar. I'm reading a Wodehouse novel I've never read before, and it's boring me. I didn't know that could even happen. It's The Coming of Bill, which was first published in 1919 (in the US, under the title Their Mutual Child, for completists), and it's... strangely dull. I'm vaguely concerned about the poor child in the sterilized

Comments

[afrai]

I'm reading a Wodehouse novel I've never read before, and it's boring me.

That's happened to me before. It was a terrible experience (not the book, but the experience of being bored by Wodehouse -- ack!), but what's really scaring me is that it wasn't the same book as the one that's boring you. Maybe he wasn't feeling well when he was writing them?

[flambeau]

That must be it. He had some bad oysters or something. (Which one was it that bored you?)

[afrai]

Damsel in Distress. It wasn't precisely bad, but it was weirdly serious in bits, and definitely not up to Plum's usual standard.

[flambeau]

Huh. Never read that one, but yeah, "weirdly serious" seems to be the problem with the ones that haven't clicked with me. It's as though he tried, a few times, to write a "normal" book, and then just said the hell with it and set the absurdity free. :)

[afrai]

I thought Damsel In Distress read a bit like Pratchett -- well, partly like Pratchett and mostly like a musical comedy. It got weirdly satirical in parts. I don't know if it was an early book, but if it was, it's sort of like he was going to become a sort of proto-Pratchett -- with the funny social commentary and everything -- and then he changed his mind and veered off into pure light-hearted fantasy.

[flambeau]

Now I'm interested - I'll have to see if I can find it at some point.

[afrai]

It's on Gutenberg, if you don't mind ebooks. -- Yeah, here.