Publisher's summary

If Stanley Featherstonehaugh Ukridge had a fiver for every dodgy scheme he had ever floated, he would be a very rich man indeed. In these ten stories he tries every way of making money, from writing political slogans to opening a college for dogs. In his own eyes, Ukridge is a Great Man and a visionary. In ours, he is English literature's most delightful chancer and one of Wodehouse's greatest comic creations: charming, ambitious, persuasive, optimistic and almost always disastrous.
©2011 Copyright © the Trustees of the Wodehouse Estate. All rights reserved. (P)2011 AudioGO
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The stories are highly entertaining and the narration only adds to their excellence. A delightful reminder of a bygone era👌

Still has the make one LOL a century later

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Love Among the Chickens is the first published novel featuring Stanley Featherstonehaugh Ukridge, an entrepreneur who dreams big and always believes he will strike gold with the next outrageous scheme he attempts.

I find the characters in Ukridge slightly less likable than Jeeves and Wooster, but the stories seem to have a bit more variety and depth. If you enjoyed the Jeeves and Wooster series, you will definitely find a similar level of enjoyment in this series.

LAtC (the title is too much to type out every time!) was the first published Ukridge book, but it happens chronologically after Ukridge (the second volume). I would recommend reading the second one first. Aside from the chronological reason, Ukridge is a series of short stories whereas this is one long story, so you get wider variety in Ukridge. But honestly, you can't lose either way.

In LAtC, Ukridge decides to start a chicken farm with some loaner chickens and drags a friend along with him to Dorset for the venture. His friend, Jeremy Garnet, is hoping for a bit of golf, but finds a particular and quite feminine bit of the Dorset scenery very much to his liking. Too bad Ukridge winds up this creature's father at first opportunity, causing a seemingly uncrossable gulf between the would-be lovers.

Typical Wodehouse. Witty, fun, and absorbing. Maybe not the best I have read, but I would definitely listen to it again.

If You Like Jeeves & Wooster...

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love amongst the chickens is book two. This is book one. If you're going to listen to this series, start here. This book is a collection of short stories, which makes a wonderful listen because you can finish each chapter in 45 minutes. And the next adventure is Loosely tied to the previous one

this is book 1.

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Wonderful collection of stories by the inimitable Wodehouse. Performance is marred only by the consistently mangled pronunciation of Ukridge's middle name.

Enjoyable with one major flaw

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I know I sound like an obsessive crank about this. But, as Wodehouse once wrote of Lord Tilbury after his first sight of the Empress of Blandings, once you’ve experienced a Wodehouse book read by the late, great Frederick Davidson, you wander forever after with a dull yearning, like men kissed by goddesses in dreams.

In other words, you can’t listen to the late, great Jonathan Cecil’s rendition of the same book without recalling how the late, great Davidson got just a little more comic juice out of that line. Or inflected that bit of description with just the right touch of sarcasm.

However, cats aren’t dogs, so it shouldn’t surprise us that Cecil isn’t Davidson. Like the above mentioned quadrupeds, each have their peculiar attractions, and this reading of Ukridge, being the only one available, is certainly attractive enough to be getting on with. After all, Wodehouse is still Wodehouse. And this particular effort ranks with his finest short story collections: Young Men in Spats, Eggs, Beans and Crumpets, The Clicking of Cuthbert and The Inimitable Jeeves. Like the latter title, these stories are linked together, making one continuous, unfailingly funny story.

Cats Aren’t Dogs. Cecil Isn’t Davidson.

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