Book #20

Swords and Deviltry

Fritz Leiber

I feel like I should be able to say...This is the first book of Fafhrd and the Grey Mouser, and that should be enough, but these books are no where near as popular as they should be.  I discovered them many years ago, while looking at a list of the books that inspired Gary Gygax to invent Dungeon and Dragons.

Now, having said that, obviously, these are fantasy books, but to my mind they are more than just fantasy books, for they are the collection of the stories of the two greatest heroes of fiction.  Now, understand that there may be greater heroes, but in my opinion, Fafhrd and the the Grey Mouser can match up against any PAIR of heroes anywhere.  Single heroes need not apply.  Heroes with sidekicks need not apply. 

Fafhrd is a giant barbarian, depending on the story, anywhere from 6'6" to 7" tall and wielding a heavy broadsword, which he calls Greywand, like a rapier.

Grey Mouser is a tiny urbanite, again, depending on the story, anywhere from 5' to 5'6" tall and wielding a rapier and dagger, which he calls Scalpel and Cat's Claw.

The first volume includes three stories, one about how Fafhrd came to leave his barbarian tribe from the Cold Waste, one about how a wizard's apprentice called Mouse proved that he was more Mouser than Mouse, and the third where the two meet, and have an adventure that causes them to lose their loves and avenge their deaths.

This is not High Fantasy.  These heroes do not save the world, nor fight immense powerful evils...okay, well they do fight some very powerful things, but not to save the world.  These stories are a more approachable fantasy.  The heroes are seeking their fortunes, but mostly they are seeking forgetfulness. 

This first volume may be the weakest of the lot.  The later volumes are just stories, places where the heroes run into strange things, seek great treasures, and generally have exciting adventures.  Ill Met in Lankhmar is the story where they meet and it is a good one, but both of the earlier stories seem a bit forced, as if the writer needed to explain how these two men came to the city of Lankhmar, and was not as worried about creating a great story.  The two stories are good, but not as good as some in the later volumes. 

It is still a great read, and all the books are available on Amazon.

Book #19

The Inimitable Jeeves

P.G. Wodehouse

This is in the form of a novel, but it is really a collection of short stories.  If you have seen the Jeeves and Wooster TV series, then the stories in this book will be familiar.  Most of the stories concern the many loves of Bingo Little, an old school friend of Bertie's.  Mr. Little falls in love rather easily, in only 253 pages, he falls in love no fewer than six times. And no fewer than five of the 23 episodes of the show are based in part or in total on this one book.  Now, I do not know if I think that makes it the best Jeeves and Wooster book, but it does have some of the most memorable stories.  After seeing the TV series, reading The Inimitable Jeeves is like coming home to an old friend.

Book #18

I am catching up on things.  I want to be up to date at the end of June, when I will have to admit that I am not going to make my goal.  So, there will be several more books appearing over the next week.

Arsene Lupin

Maurice LeBlanc

Now, during the Victorian era, everyone knows that Arthur Conan Doyle was writing the Sherlock Holmes stories, and though you may not know it yet, I am a huge Sherlock Holmes fan.  Now, some few out there who know the real me, will know that I speak French.  I spent two years in France, 35 years ago, and later took a minor in French.  So imagine my surprise when I found that while in English, Arthur Conan Doyle was writing about the great detective, Sherlock Holmes, there was, in France an author by the name of Maurice LeBlanc who was writing stories about Arsene Lupin, not a detective, but a great criminal, a gentleman burglar. 

I found that Amazon has a number of Arsene Lupin books, for free on Kindle.  Unfortunately, I cannot find anywhere that discusses the stories and novels and puts them into their proper order, either by publication, or story chronology, so I had to pick one at random, and this was it.

Now, I do not want to give away any spoilers, because the twists are what make this story fun, but Arsene's modus operandi is to send a letter to his victim saying exactly what he is going to steal and when, and then carry out the theft just as described.  In a theft that occurred three years before our story, the man who was robbed, after receiving the letter, actually hired guards, and when the guards arrived...they were men hired by Arsene. 

Also, in this story, Arsene plays a long game, the theft described above, is the same victim who is robbed in the story.  I found the whole thing a lot of fun.

Oh, and this time I read a translation.  The next book I read will be in the original language.

Book #17

The World of Mr. Mulliner
P.G. Wodehouse

Yes, that is right, back with more of the stories told by Mr. Mulliner, the man with a thousand cousins and anecdotes for every occasion.  Now, I have to admit to a bit of a cheat.  The World of Mr. Mulliner is an omnibus edition containing all of the Mr. Mulliner stories.  The World of Mr. Mulliner includes all the stories found in the three previous collection of Mr. Mulliner stories, Meet Mr. Mulliner, Mr. Mulliner Speaking and Mulliner Nights.  Now, if you have been following my attempt to read 100 books in one year (yes, I know I am not going to make it, but I carry on), then you will have seen two of those titles, Mr. Mulliner Speaking and Mulliner Nights, among those I have read.  Well, my cheat is that I do not own any of those books, I just have a copy of the omnibus, The World of Mr. Mulliner. At the start of the year, I noticed that I had read all the stories from Meet Mr. Mulliner and it made a perfect chance to start reading from where I had left off.  When I had read all the stories in Mr. Mulliner Speaking, I wrote my review, and did the same when I finished reading all the stories from Mulliner Nights.

Each of the first three volumes contained nine short stories.  After that, there were still 14 Mr. Mulliner stories that were never collected into a single volume.  I had already read a few in a volume called Blandings Castle, which includes a Blandings Castle (another P.G Wodehouse series of stories and novels) novella (or whatever) and several stories.  The fourteen remaining Mr. Mulliner stories are only collected together in The World of Mr. Mulliner.

Like the other volumes, the stories are silly in the extreme, and lots of fun.  Wodehouse is generally the very definition of light read, and these stories do nothing to change our opinion of his deft touch at comedy, even if a few of these are a bit over the top.

Book #16

I have fallen a bit behind in getting these posted, so you may see several more books over the next few days.  The one that follows was finished several weeks ago.

Cocktail Time
P. G. Wodehouse

How about a novel, that starts with an old man using a slingshot to knock the top hat off an acquaintance, which causes that acquaintance to write a novel.  When the novel becomes a hit, the acquaintance, an eminent barrister does not wish the publicity, so he lets his nephew claim to be the author.  Of course, as in any Wodehouse novel, the nephew is a nitwit and that is where things really get fun.

Cocktail Time is an Uncle Freddy novel.  Now, Uncle Freddy is another of Wodehouse's wonderful characters, and this is another example of why Wodehouse is the accepted master of the Comedy of Manners (look it up, I do not really have time here).

Things go from bad to worse for the barrister, when first his nephew and a con man try to get some extra money off the barrister.  There is a letter involved, and eventually Uncle Freddy ends up with it.  Now, he wants to extort something from the barrister, but what Uncle Freddy wants is for the barrister to treat his sister better (the barrister's sister, not Uncle Freddy's).

I cannot even talk about the plot without ending up in a twisted story, but it is that twisted story that is at the heart of Cocktail Time's and indeed Wodehouse's charm.  I won't go further in laying out the plot, both to avoid spoilers and to keep my brain from getting overloaded and overheating.  Just read the book, it is great fun and you won't regret a minute of it.