a dose of Jerome K. Jerome

This book is absolutely hysterical. I'm excited to have finally discovered Jerome K. Jerome, and am looking forward to reading whatever other of his writings I can find! In some ways, he strikes me funnier than P.G. Wodehouse -- or at least the humor is a little different. Jerome draws on ridiculous situations and emotions, but (unlike Wodehouse, who writes of far-fetched characters in even more far-fetched situations) his are situations and emotions we can relate to in some form.

So. I couldn't resist posting a few of my favorite J.K.J. quotes.

My tooth-brush is a thing that haunts me when I'm traveling, and makes my life a misery. I dream that I haven't packed it, and wake up in a cold perspiration, and get out of bed and hunt for it. And, in the morning, I pack it before I have used it, and have to unpack again to get it, and it is always the last thing I turn out of the bag; and then I repack and forget it, and have to rush upstairs for it at the last moment and carry it to the railway station wrapped up in my pocket-handkerchief.

I [knew] a man once who used to make me mad that way. He would loll on the sofa and watch me doing things by the hour together, following me round the room with his eyes, wherever I went. He said it did him real good to look on at me messing about. He said it made him feel that life was not an idle dream to be gaped and yawned through, but a noble task, full of duty and stern work. He said he often wondered now how he could have gone on before he met me, never having anybody to look at while they worked.

Now, I'm not like that. I can't sit still and see another man slaving and working. I want to get up and superintend, and walk round with my hands in my pockets, and tell him what to do. It is my energetic nature. I can't help it.

And this one is so appropriate for me at the moment, haha.

I don't understand German myself. I learned it at school, but forgot every word of it two years after I had left, and have felt much better ever since.