Blogday Friday

Ok, Friday = Hop Time. Terribly sorry I didn't blog last week, error on my part. However I will make up for it this week with slightly more blogs than before.

Upcoming we will have:

Conan Doyle reviews.
A MFWE possibly on Wilde or Pratchett. Heck there may even be two, on on each.
Stuff about sports (mostly fencing and my aims to do more sports)
Writing stuff

Ok, who has become my blog who I am now interested in this week?

Well, I cam across this nice little blog. It really is quite nice to look at and also, they are doing a similar challenge to myself. Re; the whole alphabet.... thing. The only diference is, they are FAR more consistent than myself. They are however taking the rather nice twist of looking at a book where the main character has a name beginning with a letter of the aforementioned letter list.

Author! Author! 2: P.G. Wodehouse

Lets get the shameless plugging out of the way first. OMPADC is here.

Now that the shameless self promotion is out of the way. Let us move on to more serious matters. Namely the next name to join Alan Bennett in MFWE (for those who don't remember, this stands for My Favourite Writers Ever).

The next name to join this list (yes it is a list now there is more than one person, I asked someone) is the delightfully named Pelham Grenville Wodehouse or P.G. to his friends. Although, many would think this would lead to confusion with tea makers P.G. Tips it doesn't, Mr Wodehouse was never pyramid shaped nor advertised by chimpanzees. At least, not to my knowledge.

"The Aberdeen terrier gave me an unpleasant look and said something under his breath in Gaelic"

Wodehouse is perhaps best known for his series of books featuring errant foppish fool Bertie Wooster and his personal gentleman's gentleman, Jeeves. It was reading these that first put me on to Wodehouse's writing. To me, old Pelham, is one of the finest and funniest comic writers of the 20th Century. Many comedy types, including the wonderful Stephen Fry (more on him at a later date) and his equally good friend Hugh Laurie (both of whom have appeared in an adaptation of the man's work) have cited the works as being lifesaving and as containing some of the greatest examples of comic literature.

One of these is the brilliant sequence at the Market Snodsbury Prize giving with an inebriated Gussie Fink-Nottle giving prizes to schoolboys and throwing various accusations of cheating around. Something that really has to be read to be fully appreciated. I strongly urge anyone who hasn't done so already to do read it. Failing that you should also see the brilliant Fry & Laurie (told you they would reappear) staring adaptation of the Jeeves & Wooster books.

However P.G. didn't just do Jeeves & Wooster he had a whole variety of other characters, which would occasionally crop up or be at the very least be mentioned in each others books. These are no less funny than the Jeeves series and are also good for a laugh.

I have recently started reading the Jerome K Jerome book "Three Men In A Boat" a book that many claim to be a precursor to the Wodehouse style. Personally I find this to be a lot less accessible than Wodehouse, for a full review go here.

Wodehouse critics often claim that he can't be that great a writer due to the lack of different plots across the 70+ he wrote. To a certain extent that is a largely true statement. However it is all irrelevant because what he does is write these plots and build incredible layers of intricacies and details around the plots. This creates such high levels of farce to make the book so enjoyable that you don't notice. They are simply blissfull, light reading. Which is sometimes all one can really ask for in this world.

Before this goes on much longer I shall finish and advise you to take some time to read Wodehouse. If you want to have a book of pure enjoyment, read some Wodehouse.

Author! Author! #1 Alan Bennett

Firstly, let's get all the shameless stuff out of the way first. OMPADC is updated. Please check

Now the plug is out of the way. On with the blog. I may have mentioned I want to be a published author. A consequence of this is I read a lot. Can't help it, always have, probably always will. Therefore I have come across a number of writers whose work I always enjoy and often seek out. So, let me introduce you to ANOTHER acronym! That's right, I can't get enough of the little bleeders ( like brackets). This acronym is MFWE. Short for My Favourite Writers Ever. This will be a semi-regular feature where I discuss my favourite writers ever (odd considering the title). This will be a non-chronological run-down of the authors I like enough to place on my list.

"How do I define history? It's just one fuckin' thing after another"

First up, I thought I would go for quintessential northern and all rounder, nice person. Alan Bennett. Now I came to Alan's work quite recently. I was aware of him, his voice being familiar to me through some form of innate cultural awareness. I saw the film version of Alan's play, The History Boys and fell in love with his writing style straight away. It was funny, interesting, the characters all developed, it raised some good points and it was all very entertaining. Now some say that it isn't his best work, calling it tired, dated, cliched and a variety of other phrases. It didn't seem to be any of these things to me. I could quote reams of it here, but that wouldn't be doing the whole thing justice. I have however quoted one line from it at the top of this paragraph.

I went from watching the History Boys, to catching, rather fortunately, the recent BBC Bennett season. This exposed me to more of Bennett's wonderful observations of simple human life. For me, this is what really made me appreciate just how good a writer he is. I always appreciate a writer who makes the minutiae of human life so interesting because I'm rather poor at the whole people thing. I have also recently got a copy of Bennett's play "Lady In the Van" (a play based on the man who lived in a van in his garden for 15 years), from my local library. I have only got a few pages in and really enjoy it. The characters are simple and the use of 2 versions of Bennett on stage to represent aspects of his character is a good touch. It features typical examples of Bennett's wry criticisms of life, his little one liner observations.

Another thing I really love about Bennett is his voice, it is brilliant for audiobooks. I recently got him reading The House At Pooh Corner from iTunes. It's brilliant, his characterisations of the members of the Pooh group are brilliant.