The Inimitable Jeeves (P.G. Wodehouse, 1923)

I've recently finished the second Jeeves & Wooster book of a 10-book collection that I got from the fantastic Book People, where I tend to buy books or collections on a whim since they're so cheap! I'm pleased with the Jeeves & Wooster purchase so far. 

The first book I read in the series was Carry On, Jeeves (1925) which was a collection of short stories. And according to Wikipedia, The Inimitable Jeeves is also a collection of short stories, but I hadn't realised this since there were connecting threads throughout. Oh well, it makes no difference, it just means that they all added up to a more satisfying whole than the previous collection.

Carry On, Jeeves was a good introduction to the characters of Bertie Wooster, his trusty manservant Jeeves, and Bertie's friend Bingo Little. The style of P.G. Wodehouse's writing is easy and flows wonderfully, with some fantastic language - lots of 'don't you knows' and 'what whats'! I like the innocence of Bertie Wooster and the 1920's world he inhabits, where the most disastrous events that can happen to he and his friends are being cut off from wealthy relatives or falling in love with the wrong women.

The thread running through The Inimitable Jeeves is Bertie's continual frustration with Bingo Little's romantic urges. Bingo is forever falling in love with inappropraite women, and it's up to Bertie and the inimitable Jeeves to help him out of sticky situations through often devious means. I'm not sure what the actual novels will be like, but these first 2 books have been a collection of 'how done it's', in that you always know that Jeeves is going to think of a way around Bertie's particular problems, but you don't know how he did it until the end of the particular storyline. 

It's not cutting edge, and it's not full of forensic crime (as a lot of the fiction I read is), but The Inimitable Jeeves is a great, easy, often hilarious read, where the quality of the language is as important as the plot.