Carry on Jeeves is a collection of early Jeeves and Wooster short stories, although not really the best of them. (Partly because several of these are reworked versions of the very early stories, published in a collection titled My Man Jeeves.)

They're entertaining little gems, although I think Jeeves works best in novel format. I recommend the omnibus The World of Jeeves (also available in Arrow) which collects all the stories in an especially savvy narrative order. ( )

(Because the books in this series have been republished so many times and I'm reading mismatched editions, I'm adding my own generic but matching fan art covers to my reviews. Yay!)

After hearing Wodehouse's name in the wind for probably decades, I read this author of classic humor for the first time with My Man Jeeves, featuring Bertie Wooster and his iconic valet Jeeves, along with stories about an early Wooster prototype, Reggie Pepper. Not at all a bad intro to the author for me.

Then I heard tell that revised versions of those Jeeves stories are in this later collection, Carry On, Jeeves.

Well. Maybe it's because I'm still getting started with this author, but aside from a bit of story retitling and one Pepper episode rewritten as a Wooster one, I didn't notice any other revisions of the few tales I'd already read.

Enjoyed the reading anyway, though. And I liked that a joke that was particularly not to my taste in the formerly Pepper story is left out of the Wooster rewrite.

The author's way with language is upbeat and quirkily clever, like sketches of word caricatures. Jeeves and Wooster's tiffs are so delightfully quaint and comic, and I catch on to most of the old-fashioned English slang through context. Now, the few newer stories here I hadn't read before add a little more mild "language" (nothing that would get bleeped off of regular network television), and one of the tales has a reference to deaf people that I wouldn't have used.

But in general, as I passed the time with the hijinks in these pages, it occurred to me how rarely I've had chances as an adult to indulge in comedy reading purely for entertainment. Comedy that's comfortable for me—"PG" but not juvenile.

I often recharge my battery with classic sitcoms. I guess my reading life could use more of that type of relaxration and recharging too. Don't mind if I do partake of some more of the Wooster and Jeeves series. ( )

After getting past the stories in this collection that I'd already listened to (though with a different main character), I think I enjoyed this collection a little more than the other two so far. Though I have to admit that, while at first I thought it was great that one of the stories was written from Jeeves's perspective, I found that I didn't like that story as much. It was still interesting to get his perspective on the schemes he gets up to for Wooster and his friends.

I now wish I'd read this article sooner, as it recommended newer readers to skip My Man Jeeves, since the stories in that collection featuring Reggie Pepper as the narrator were re-written with Wooster and Jeeves in this collection. Because I didn't want to listen to the same basic story again, I skipped them this time, but I do think I would have appreciated them more if I'd read them here for the first time. That's just a little PSA to anyone else new to the series. If I do re-read any of these someday, I'll definitely skip My Man Jeeves, or at least the Reggie Pepper stories. I will, however, probably stick with the Kevin Theis narration, because I've really been enjoying it! ( )

Wodehouse's stories seem sort of slight when I read them, even though I've enjoyed seeing them fleshed out on television. ( )

Utterly forgettable and tremendously enjoyable. I think this one contains the origin story. ( )