I wish I could feel as enthusiastic about _The Booming of Bunkie_ (JENKINS) as _Mr. Peter McMunn_, who, falling off a motor-cycle, landed in that quiet Scots village and proceeded to turn it, by a series of stunts, into a well-known watering-place. He undertook the job, I gather, partly for a joke and partly for the bright eyes of _Evelyn Kirbet_, whose father put up the money for the purposes of publicity and propaganda. The transformation of a hamlet into a seaside resort has been treated as a sort of psychological romance by Mr. OLIVER ONIONS in _Mushroom Town_, where the human beings are a background as it were for the bricks and mortar; Mr. A.S. NEILL, having chosen to make a farce of it, has provided a hero who believes in humorous advertisements, and has evidently persuaded the author to take him at his own valuation. This is hardly to be wondered at, since _Mr. McMunn_ seems always keener on popping his puns than on selling his goods. Specimens are given of speeches, press articles, posters and cinema productions, but the fun rages with the most furious intensity round the golf links, where eighteen holes have been compressed into the usual space of one and the winner stands to lose drinks. There are also some parodies of ROBERT BURNS, some jokes about bathing-machines and some digs at the Kirk. One has been, of course, before to seaside places that were a bit too bracing, and I am afraid that the air of Bunkie leaves me cold. * * * * * I really think that _The World of Wonderful Reality_ (HODDER AND STOUGHTON) may come to be something of a test for your true follower of Mr. E. TEMPLE THURSTON. You recall the ingredients that went towards the first, or _Beautiful Nonsense_, book? Sentiment in the slums, Venice with a very big V and poverty _passim_ might be regarded as its composition. Well, here you have _John_ and _Jill_ home again; no more Venice, a palpably decreasing sentiment and only poverty to fill up with. I am bound to confess that I found _John's_ protracted preparation for his nuptials rather less than enough as subject-matter for a whole book. Of course all this time there remained _Amber_ (you recollect her; she "also ran" for the _John_ stakes), and at the back of your mind a comfortable conviction that two strings are still better than one. Having censured the book for insufficient plot, I had better not proceed to give away what there is. I will content myself with a personal doubt as to whether _John_ and _Jill_ will quite reduplicate their former triumph--and that for various reasons, not least because (for purposes of sequel, I suppose) even _Jill_ herself has been permitted so grave a lapse from the attitude of stand-anything-so-long-as- it's-slummy-enough that so endeared her to her former public. Touch that and the bloom is indeed gone. * * * * *