Light

The prompt for November’s Love Blippin’ Books challenge, #LBB11, was “Let your boat of life be light,” a quote from Three Men in a Boat. Or as @squatbetty helpfully interpreted, “something funny, humorous, or just generally lighthearted and uplifting.” I ended up devoting most of my month’s reading to the task, rounding up a varied assortment of tomes.

I could have stayed in safe, familiar territory with Douglas Adams, Terry Pratchett and Spike Milligan, but after doing my usual research I thought I’d tackle a couple of the classic comic novels that often feature on the same lists as Three Men in a Boat.

Evelyn Waugh’s Decline and Fall (1928)  had the surprising bonus of being partly set in North Wales. A satire on class, it did make me laugh but I couldn’t quite deal with one jarring chapter full of racist language, which was probably there to highlight racism, but which completely pulled me out of any light and uplifting space.

Stella Gibbons’ Cold Comfort Farm (1932) is another satire, but I am glad that I’d read that beforehand otherwise I may not have initially got the joke. Even then, it is a satire that depends on a knowledge of a certain genre of purple-prosed rural literature that I haven’t read. But it was fun and a bit of a farce.

Margery Allingham’s More Work for the Undertaker (1949) is one of her Campion series. It merits inclusion as although it’s crime fiction, there is a lot of humour, a general sense of lightness and a great comic creation in the form of Lugg.

The Lucky Luke book, Seven Stories (1986), had been a recent purchase, as although I’m a bande dessinée enthusiast - look it up :-) - I had never read one from that series, and it was looking solitary and neglected on the shelves of Waterstones next to all the Asterix books.  Goscinny wrote both series. Notably Luke has had his ever present cigarette changed to a twig on the cover, but not in all the panels inside. It was a bit of fun. I also broke the habit of a lifetime by starting at number 50 in the series - it being the only one available. I will now resist the urge to start completing “the set” :-)

I have the Peanuts books on rotation as they can be relied on to make me laugh out loud, so are generally a good tonic. And mid-month, Ilkley Oxfam book shop were offering a bundle of eight for £5, so really it would have been rude not to. 

The Mark Thomas book (2020) was one I had picked up when I saw his show a year ago, and as he was kind enough to sign it, “To Peter, love and peace…” I will be kind. It targets much the same territory as Waugh, which given a century has passed is quite telling. It is the sort of book that really only exists to be sold at the end of gigs, but it is funny and informative, although as Hamas got mentioned inside the first 20 pages it was perhaps not the best choice for this challenge.

Thank you as always to @squatbetty for coming up with LBB and for this month’s challenge.

PS - first snow of the winter (extra).