Leave it to PSmith - P.G. Wodehouse

PSmith is at it again. As usual he is doing his good deeds for his friends, searching for adventure, and taking a slight deviation from the normal scheme of things, is falling in love.

And pursuing all these things, he finds himself in the idyllic locale of Blandings Castle. So you also have the delightful Lord Emsworth in the plot. Though the screen presence, or should I say, page presence, of Lord Emsworth is fairly constrained, he doesn’t fail to put a smile onto your visage.

Leave it to PSmith is an extremely entangled plot with past friends, burglars, imposters, secretaries, hen-pecked husbands, poets, and what not thrown in. There is no way I can get into that in much detail. It should suffice to say at this point that PSmith ends up in Blandings with the task of stealing Lady Constanance’s twenty thousand pound necklace. Before you start doubting his noble intentions and pass a judgement on his flawless character let me bring upon you the fact the benefactor of this little scheme would be his childhood friend Mike Jackson and his wife, and the wife’s genial step-father and Lady Constanance’s husband and the bumbling Freddie Threepwood. And if your righteous side still denounces the act of crime, I will let it be known that the original perpetrator of the idea was the victim’s husband who is kept on a tight financial leash by his wife. Now, if you ever did, I hope you do not sympathise with Lady Constanance. And it is a cause of great convenience and joy for PSmith that his heart keeper, his love of life, Eve Halliday should be camping at Blandings in the same period. Of course this is just the beginning. The plot gets infinitely complicated after that. The only thing that I can assure you off is that all of the threads are very satisfactorily tied together. The story is as gripping and hilarious as a Wodehouse novel can be.

A prominent change in the novel is PSmith’s name… which changes from Rupert to Ronald Eustace! I have no clue why that happened. I tried googling it with no satisfactory result. Well, as Shakespeare said, a PSmith with any other first name is just as engaging.

The Physics of Superheroes – James Kakalios

Have you ever been so fascinated by a superhero that you try to get yourself bitten by a spider so as to be able to swing from one high rise building to another, regardless of the fact that those spiders were neither genetically mutated through exposure to radiation nor are there that many high rise buildings in the city that you live in?

Well I have been. That probably explains why I liked this particular book so much. This book will be enjoyed by the following grades of people, in the descending order:

1. People who love superhero comic books and love physics

2. Superhero Comic Book Lovers

3. Physics lovers

I belong to the first kind. And so does James Kakalios. The difference being that he is actually a physicist.

The author goes about exploring one physics aspect after another, in more or less increasing amount of complexity of the concept and uses superheroes as and when required to show how comic books got their physics surprisingly right or ridiculously wrong. So there are lessons on mechanics, thermodynamics, electricity, magnetism and lastly quantum physics with the superheroes that use the fundamentals respectively thrown in. If I am making it sound as if the book focuses more on physics than on superheroes, I wouldn’t be entirely wrong. Because the book does explain some concepts quite at length. That said it is not in a boring, class notes kind of a way and loaded with mathematical equations. The sense of humour is retained through the book. Even while explaining Schrodinger's equation. (A picture of a smiling scientist, coupled with the fact that he was somewhat of a Casanova will cheer you up even in your grumpiest mood)

Another very pleasing aspect of the book is that it dwells into quite a bit of history of comic books as it explores the physics side of things. That gives a lot of interesting trivia which any comic book lover would love to be abreast with. Did you know the earlier Superman could not fly and was only able to jump great heights and his source of powers was not the Sun but because he hailed from Krypton which had a supposedly stronger gravitational field. (After calculations, Kakalios determines the gravitational force of Krypton to be 15 times stronger than that of Earth’s) That and many more interesting tit-bits from the Comic Books hall of history are showcased in the book.

Overall, Kakalios keeps a nice balance between science, history and most importantly superheroes. Even Quantum Physics is explained in an absolutely layman’s language and how superheroes like Flash and Kitty Pryde use such complex principles. The book keeps getting better and better as you turn the pages over and ends with a brilliant closing chapter on Superhero bloopers.

So read it for superheroes, or read it for physics, you should have fun. You probably wouldn’t enjoy it if you are not into either of them. But then, if you are neither of them, this book is not meant for you. And as far as I am concerned, I am the target market for who the book was written.

Ukridge - P.G. Wodehouse

Stanley Featherstonehaugh (it’s supposed to be pronounced as Fanshawe. I don’t know why though) Ukridge is one of the most delightful scums you will ever run into. He is a wily opportunist, whom fate never seems to favor. But he is undeterred nonetheless, and never loses his optimism in the face of stormy weather. That is, in a nutshell, Ukridge for you.

Ukridge has a friend who always holds him in good stead; a Mr. Corcoran, or as Ukridge calls him, Corky. All the stories in the book are narrated in first person by Corcoran. Corky has witnessed the blossoming of Ukridge from a little child to a shrewd man. And there are but a few changes in the character of his childhood friend over the years. And Ukridge demonstrates his flair to earn a quick buck, or get screwed trying to, in the stories in this book.

The grand plans include training pet dogs amusing tricks, being a manager of a sentimental and a moody boxer, swindling insurance companies and so on. But lest you lable him as a money hungry, corrupt, immoral swine, let me also point that there are a handful of anecdotes which highlight the nobility of this fellow. He is the kind who helps out his friends in need and damsels in distress. He therefore comes up with an ingenious plan to finance a girl 100 pounds when she needs them and goes all the long way to help his friend win an election. Now wouldn’t you call that angelic?

Accompanying Ukridge are several other characters which make this book a delight to read. Amongst them my favourite were the two other stars, Corky, and his land-lord, an ex-butler who looks upon Ukridge like the son he never had. Corky has a dry, sarcastic sense of humour that I could really relate to. And even though he is not that well off, he always has a few coins or even socks to lend to Ukridge. That is the material good friends are made of. There are other characters of course who contribute to your laughter in their own way. Tying them all up is Ukridge, whose adventures, will blow away the dark clouds wandering over your heads and lighten up your day.