Book Nerd: Library Chicken Weekly Scoreboard (6.27.17)

Welcome to the weekly round-up of what the BookNerd is reading and how many points I scored (or lost) in Library Chicken. To recap, you get a point for returning a library book that you’ve read, you lose a point for returning a book unread, and while returning a book past the due date is technically legal, you do lose half a point. If you want to play along, leave your score in the comments!

So have you ever had one of those weeks where Everything Is Awful and there’s really No Point in Even Trying Anymore so you might as well give up and binge-watch an entire season of Real Housewives after which you feel vaguely nauseated for the next day or so rendering you completely unable to focus on any of the four or five perfectly nice books you’ve started reading or cope in any way with anything that requires functioning brain cells? Anyone? Or is it just me?

Thank You, Jeeves by P.G. Wodehouse

Right Ho, Jeeves by P.G. Wodehouse

The Code of the Woosters by P.G. Wodehouse

Nothing better than the first three Jeeves and Wooster novels for a reading slump. As usual, Bertie is busy trying to help his old school friends get engaged (or to get out of one of his own frequent accidental engagements) and nothing seems to work out until Jeeves comes in to save the day. The only bad thing I can say about any of the Wodehouse books is that they do occasionally betray their age. Thank You, Jeeves, published in 1934, uses the n-word (without any malice, apparently, but it’s still jarring) to describe a traveling troupe of "minstrels," and a major plot point revolves around Bertie disguising himself in blackface. So that’s fun. Fortunately, my favorite of the three (and perhaps my all-time favorite Wodehouse novel), The Code of the Woosters, is free from random racial slurs, so that I can thoroughly enjoy its delights: Bertie sneering at a cow-creamer! Roderick Spode and his Black Shorts! Gussie Fink-Nottle and a bathtub of newts! Farce involving a policeman’s helmet! Now I need to go re-watch the Fry-Laurie adaptation, which I’m sure is better for my spirit than Real Housewives.
(LC Score: 0, from my own shelves)

N or M? by Agatha Christie

I mean no disrespect to Poirot or Miss Marple, but the best sleuths ever created by Agatha Christie were clearly Tommy and Tuppence Beresford. Christie must have loved them too, because after first appearing as 20-somethings just after World War I in The Secret Adversary, Christie’s second novel, she returns to them over and over again during her career, so that we see them age along with her until their final appearance as 70-somethings (in Christie’s last-written, though not last-published novel) in Postern of Fate. I picked up N or M?, from the middle of their career, at a library booksale a while back and was glad to have it in hand so as not to completely overdose on Wodehouse. During World War II, Tommy and Tuppence (now middle-aged) are undercover at a boarding house trying to sniff out Fifth Columnists. Frankly, they do a fairly terrible job of it, suspecting the obvious choices while the real culprits go undetected, but I don’t even care because I enjoy hanging out with the Beresfords. Sadly, there are only five Tommy and Tuppence books. I’m not always excited about professional fan-fiction, where a current author contracts with the estate of a deceased author to carry on one of their series, but I NEED more Tommy and Tuppence, so someone should get on that IMMEDIATELY. (NOTE: I would also accept a stand-alone series starring Ariadne Oliver.)
(LC Score: 0, from my own shelves)

Georgia Women: Their Lives and Times Vols. 1 & 2 edited by Ann Short Chirhart and Betty Wood

Leftovers from my stack of Georgia history. RETURNED UNREAD.
(LC Score: -2)

Trail of Tears: The Rise and Fall of the Cherokee Nation by John Ehle

Nope. In no way do I have the emotional stamina to be reading this one right now. RETURNED UNREAD.
(LC Score: -1)

Library Chicken Score for 6/27/17: -3
Running Score: 54

Umm, did I mention that I may be in a bit of a reading slump? Recovering from a slump requires lots of comfort books so there may be some Georgette Heyer or Dorothy Sayers or Elinor Lipman in my future. Also I’ve got these lined up on the nightstand:

On the to-read/still-reading stack for next week:

The Secret Adversary and Partners in Crime by Agatha Christie (Tommy and Tuppence #1 and 2)

Jeeves in the Morning and The Mating Season by P.G. Wodehouse (Jeeves and Wooster #4 and 5) 

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