Mix yourself a hot Scotch and lemon and dive in. Emsworth is at his finest when confronted with the horrific possibility that he may be forced to take The Efficient Baxter on as his secretary again. Also there is a Mulliner tale, 3 golf stories as related by the the Oldest Member and 3 Ukridge stories. Stanley Featherstonehaugh Ukridge has as usual tried everything to raise a few quid -- including renting his aunt's house while she is away in Hollywood, training Battling Billson the prize-fighter and pawning his aunt's diamond brooch. The funniest is the Emsworth story, while the others seem more like unfinished sketches that Master Plum (Wodehouse) was toying with.

This is an exceptional collection of Wodehouse's short stories. He hits a grand slam immediately with "Crime Wave at Blandings," which tells the hilarious tale of what happens when a senior citizen with a tendency toward nostalgia gets his hands on an air gun for the first time since his childhood. Wodehouse is the greatest when it comes to light-hearted stories that poke gentle fun at our human foibles. If you want to laugh out loud, buy this book!

I very highly recommend this book. It's very funny and entertaining. I'd give it more stars if I could. I really enjoy all of P.G. Wodehouse's books. In my opinion , this is one of his very best.

Someday I'd like to read a real biography of Wodehouse (as opposed to the dreadful "fan" bios out there) and find out what was happening to him around 1936 -- when he wrote the scathing, angry "Laughing Gas" and this one. "Summer Moonshine" uses Wodehouse plot A: boy-chases-girl-at-country-house. Yet strange feelings of hopelessness and despair creep into it, and when boy loses girl there's a bitterness like in no other Wodehouse novel. It's not bad, but you definitely get the sense that, as the author himself might put it, something's up.

I first read this book when I was 18, and like the hero, fell in love with a "not too tall girl with an upturned nose". I must have read this book atleast 200 times. You really do wish you were part of the happenings. I wish I could also howl like a wolf in a restaurant. The mysterious American uncle Sam chewing his gum, Tubby going back to his room with a Union Jack for a towel after he finds that his clothes have vanished while swimming, the house of red glazed brick, the Princess.. This is the book which made me fall in love in an Indian Summer.

The first thing that has to be mentioned about Summer Moonshine is the hero - Joe Vanringham. I think he is the best hero that Wodehouse ever created - tough; street-smart; not at all the usual 'silly ass' and yet not overly romantic or anything like that. (In fact, if you read Bachelors Anonymous you'll realise that Wodehouse's Joes generally tend to be very good!) The plot is extremely complicated as Wodehousian plots tend to be, but even more so than usual. One finds oneself flipping back to check up on what happened where. And then, on finally figuring it out, laughing like a lunatic. It's a charming book, as economical with space and as funny as one has come to expect Wodehouse to be. Sir Buckstone Abbot is one of the best characters Wodehouse has ever come up with - ditto to Sam Bulpitt, and one wonders why they couldn't become recurring characters. But Joe is the best ever! All hail Joe Vanringham! (Forgive my babbling; this is my favorite book ever, as it's not that difficult to figure out.)

This tale of Psmith and Mike's entry into the banking world is a wonderful send-up of corporate culture (and more), circa 1900. But many of the situations are just as relevant today, and anyone who's tried to navigate the waters of a new job should enjoy (and envy?) Psmith's exploits. There are many passages that are absolutely hysterical ("...Mr. Waller was a widower, and after five minutes' acquaintance with Edward [his son], Mike felt strongly that Mrs. Waller was the lucky one.") This book doesn't quite equal "Leave It To Psmith" in terms of plotting or consistent, side-splitting humor -- but it is a very enjoyable read nevertheless.

There's little I can say about this book other than if you love lighthearted comedy and 'comedy of errors', read this book. There's not a single book by Wodehouse that I haven't enjoyed to some extent, but the Psmith books are among my top favorites. Psmith's urbane charm and sly wit, combined with the typical miscommunication of a Wodehouse novel are perfect.

I read this book a dozen times and it still makes me laugh out loud. In the ten years since I have read it, I have given it away as a gift, and lent it out to scores of people, all of whom have enjoyed and went on to read other works by Wodehouse. What makes it so enjoyable? Perhaps the autobiographical nature of it (wodehouse worked in a bank and hated it) that adds an authenticity, and is just as fresh as when it was written over 80 years ago. But mainly, it is the character Psmith, one of the most delightfully eccentric characters in literature; based on an aquaintance his cousin knew at a public school, who was "impeccably dressed in savile row suits", called his fellow students comrade and had a "fatherly" way of talking to his headmasters. Also highly rec. is "leave it to Psmith"

The course of true love never did run smooth with the "Damsel in Distress", naturally. Love may not care if time totters, light droops, and all measures bend. The problem, of course, in this boy loves girl and vice versa romance, the respective love-light is shining at the wrong object d'amour. This merry mix-up is further complicated by the differences in class ("blood").

In this delightful comic tale, Wodehouse reminds us once again the universal truth mused by e.e. cummings: love's function is to fabricate unknownness. That known is being wishless, but love, is all of wishing.

Wodehouse's "Damsel in Distress", like all his other works, is framed in the Edwardian Era. In contrast to the acme of vulgarity of this prosaic age, no one could write like he did, nor would want to. His large collection of works is held like an extinct specimen in the amber of the moment - capturing the bubbling gaiety and the insouciance of the Gilded Age.

Life does move on. Once a while though, it's pleasing and reassuring to hold and peer with appreciation inside the polished resin that was Wodehouse - knowing that the English language is still at its zenith, and few has mastered it.

George Bevan, burgeoning young american musical composer, fancies himself a knight-in-shining-armor when in the middle of Piccadily Circus a fair maiden flings herself into his cab to escape the obese pursuit of the dragon - her brother Percy, heir to the family title and vigilant protector of the family name. Our hero's fair lady Maud does indeed live trapped within the tower of Castle Belpher to which he repairs in swift pursuit of happiness.

George will face grim prospects in scheming servants, an evil aunt, a kindly but aunt-dominated Lord Marshmoreton and worst of all the fact that Maud is in love with another. The whole setting has obvious similarities to Blandings for those familiar with the Lord Emsworth stories. I wasn't roaring with laughter, but I was attached to the characters and couldn't put the book down. It is hard to say which book is a good introduction to Wodehouse because they are all so good!

This was my first Wodehouse and one of my absolute favourite books. A dream of wonderfully comic characters, from the preoccupied Earl of Marshmoreton, sulky Lord Belpher, radiant Lady Patricia (aka Maud) and all-round good guy George Bevan, as well as a bevy of funny support characters (like the house staff who make bets on the romantic attachments of the inhabitants). Utterly delightful, with laugh-out funny scenes throughout. If you haven't read this, you're missing out!

I would never have the audacity to reveal the inticate plot of "Cocktail Time," (or any other Wodehouse novel, for that matter.) Suffice it to say that "Cocktail Time" is vintage Wodehouse. The novel contains a variety of familiar Wodehouse characters such as Lord Ickenham (the Uncle Fred of several novels and short stories), Beefy Bastable, and Cosmo Wisdom, a typical Wodehousian "black sheep" of the family. The novel is also filled with eccentric British peers, American con artists, and incompetent law enforcement agents. It even has a scene at the notorious Drones Club, so beloved by Bertie Wooster in the Jeeve's series. It's all very much fun. Wodehouse once described his novels as "musical comedy without music, ignoring life altogether." "Cocktail Time" is indeed reminiscent of a 1920's musical comedy without the music in which Wodhouse skillfully juggles a variety of characters and situations, and creates a satirical and humorous novel that is immensely enjoyable. The novel also ignores the realities of life, a quality that can make it infinitely enjoyable to any reader desiring to escape the crudities of early twenty-first century life.

I highly recommend this book. It is very good and entertaining. It's very funny too. Any fan of P.G. Wodehouse's work will really enjoy it.

I see that my fellow reviewers of this tasty comic novel are willing to weigh in at only four of the possible five stars. I dissent vigorously and award the full five. Nothing less than five will do for a storyline so perfectly convoluted, language and syntax so recklessly heedless of anything real or centered. The characters are familiar Wodehouse types: quaintly erratic and utterly dependable for their supply of humor. Feydeau never plotted anything as neat and door-bangingly twisted, and the master Wodehouse provides page after page of crackpot ways to describe all of the door-slamming action.

Like the last Wodehouse I read, this is more like Damon Runyon than later Plum. I suspect that this was written when Wodehouse first visited America and was trying to break into the American markets (it would be interesting to compare this impression with Wodehouse's biography and see what it has to say about the Runyonesque qualities of these early novels). The Little Nugget of the title refers to the only son of an American millionaire, the nickname given to him by the American hoodlums who want to kidnap him and hold him for ransom. Wodehouse spends a lot of verbiage describing how odious the Little Nugget is, but yet the plot isn't really about the kid's nature, but his value.

There was one bit that was perfect, especially considering I had just read The Friendly Shakespeare. One of the characters is mistaken for the famous American criminal "Smooth Sam Fisher." Actually, he's not just mistaken--the other character insists that he is Sam Fisher. The response? "Verily, some have greatness thrust upon them." Wodehouse was quite a lover of Shakespeare, and it would be quite a large project to list all the Shakespearean allusions, puns, and outright quotes in his books . . . but it's certainly fun when you do catch one yourself.

This book, from early in Wodehouse's career, is wonderful. It starts a bit slow with some necessary setup info, but once it switches to first person about thirty pages in, it crackles right along to the end in P.G.'s funhouse style. Four separate kidnappers, a lost love, and a wealthy young man getting his first taste work all swirled together the Wodehouse way equals a sure cure for what ails ya.

Maybe I've had an overdose of Wodehouse lately, having read Piccadilly Jim, Biffen's Millions, Plum Pie, and this book practically in a row, but I was simply not entertained by Psmith Journalist at all.

Perhaps it was Jonathan Cecil's reading (and I know that had a lot to do with it). His characterizations are indistinguishable and his attempt at an American accent is laughable (if you have heard any Monty Python, you'll recognize it).

But I think that could have been overlooked (or overlistened?) if the story had grabbed me. It seemed to be about Psmith taking over a New York rag and making it into a scandal sheet, involving a boxer somewhere along the way, but I can't be sure. I just didn't care, and I found nothing funny at all.

There is nothing to offer the casual Wodehouse fan in this novel. However, I will read his work again, as he has so much to offer in other books.

But I really think it's mainly Jonathan Cecil's fault.

This sharp and witty book is a must for any intellectual humanoid! The language is simply divine! It is a younger Frasier Crane working a Ph.D in linquistics of English, full of energetic laughter and irony.

This was the first Psimth book which I read, and though there was a bit of the real world, and sentimental stuff too (unlike the Jeeves' series), I thouroughly enjoyed it. A must read for Wodehouse fans.

Wodehouse is finely honing the comical style that characterizes the later novels. This novel, however, is very dissimilar to Bertie/Jeeves. Instead, it's more like Damon Runyon, if Runyon had written a novel. The characteristic near-misses and misunderstandings of Wodehouse are present, as is the jocular young man in spats (here called Smith, supposedly American, but reading like the Psmith of the Wodehouse books of that name), but the two main characters are college-educated Americans. It is the subplot in the last half of the story involving gangs and their "canisters" (guns) that makes it almost unbelievable that this is Wodehouse. Although comedic, the real level of danger presented to the characters is great, especially compared with later novels in which danger is usually in the form of an avenging aunt who threatens to cut off the money supply. Imagine what Wodehouse would have been like if he had chosen to follow the path of this novel rather than the Psmith novels or the Bertie/Jeeves stories!

Wodehouse does a wonderful bit of satire here on the "wholesome" newspapers of the day, probably little knowing that his fare would be held up as wholesome in later years.