Bookish Thoughts

I picked up The Long Dark Tea Time of the Soul expecting something light and silly that I wouldn't have to pay too much attention to. And while this book was light and pretty easy to read, it had far more of a plot that I was expecting. There was a mystery to be solved and connections to be made and everything. Apart from the surprise of the plot, I was most struck by how familiar this book felt. Which is to say that I could clearly see the influence Adams has had on some of my favorite authors. Gently reminded me more than a little of Witchfinder Sergeant Shadwell from Good Omens . And I have to wonder if the dying Norse Gods in this book had any influence on Gaiman's American Gods . It took me a little while to get into this book, mostly because I hadn't expected to pay as much attention to it as I ended up needing to. But by the time Kate was investigating the nursing home, I was on board. Things came together a little abruptly at the end, but it was sti...

Mostly Harmless is the fifth and final book in Douglas Adams' Hitchhiker's Guide trilogy. Which means I finally finished it! I enjoyed this book a lot, but I have to say that I think I would have enjoyed the entire series more if I hadn't spread it over nearly two years. I kept forgetting plot details and trying vainly to remember what had happened in the previous books. Was Arthur still stuck in the past? Did Trillian die in the other timeline or just vanish from the story? Is Zaphod even relevant anymore? So I think a complete re-read is in order at some point. The books are short enough that I can't imagine it taking too long. Maybe once the weather warms up and I can spend my afternoons lazing outside with a book, I'll revisit this series as a whole. Overall, the plot of this book seemed way more cohesive than any of the previous books. That may be due to lack of memory, or it may be because this book was headed, inevitable, for a very definit...

So Long and Thanks for All the Fish  is the fourth book in Douglas Adam's Hitchhiker's trilogy (which I think I will always get a kick out of). It's a bit of a departure from the other books. Although it is bookended by hitchhiking adventures and includes a strange sub plot with Ford Prefect, the bulk of the book is a love story on Earth. Arthur Dent meets Fenchurch who, like him, is not quite normal. They hit it off pretty quickly and, after some initial trouble, fall in love. It's about time Arthur Dent caught a break, and it's nice to see him actually enjoying life. They fly around and have a bunch of sex and are generally perfect for each other. They also spend some time trying to figure out what happened to the dolphins, though Fenchurch is more invested in this than Arthur. All in all, this is a very cute story. I had a lot of fun reading it. I'm glad Marvin finally found some peace. And I'm looking forward to the final book in the tr...

After plowing through Kvothe's adventure, Douglas Adams' Life, The Universe, and Everything was just the palate cleanser I needed before moving back into more dense literature. This book was a lot of fun. I liked it way more than The Restaurant at the End of the Universe . I think a big part of this was that this book actually had a plot. The universe is about to end. So Arthur Dent and friends must reconvene in order to save it. Okay, so Dent spends the majority of the book majorly confused and sort of passively going along with anything that happens to him. But since I was almost as confused, it was nice that people kept stopping to explain things to him. The convoluted history of one war-mongering species inadvertently leading to the extreme xenophobic tendencies of a second species many years later was lots of fun to read about. And the way this ancient war manifested itself as Cricket was the icing that made this a Hitchhiker's cake. I was a little di...

About fifty pages into The Restaurant at the End of the Universe , Douglas Adam's sequel to The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy , I began to have the feeling that I'd read it before. The scene of Zaphod climbing down the building which stuck in the ground at a 45 degree angle was eerily familiar. I already knew that the end of the universe was a temporal reference, not a spatial one, but I chalked that up to probably being a Futurama episode I'd half-forgotten. By the time Arthur and Ford arrived on Earth 20,000 years before it will have been blown up, I knew I'd already read this book. But it had taken me the entire book to reach that conclusion. Even though I just finished this book, those are still the only three details that are sticking in my mind. It's not that this book is bad. It was entertaining. But it was like a mediocre episode of Futurama. Something I'm bound to forget the details of because I'm simply not paying close enough...

This must be Thursday. I never could get the hang of Thursdays. So says Arthur Dent, moments before the Earth is destroyed to make way for a pan-galactic bypass. Normally that would happen at the end of a tragic drama, not the beginning of a comedy. Though I do remember one of my high school English teachers explaining that a tragedy starts with everyone happy and ends with everyone unhappy or dead. A comedy is the opposite story progression. So from that view, it makes sense to start a comedy with the destruction of the world. Things can only get better form here. At least they can't get any worse. Probably. The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy  is hilarious, but everyone says that. This is my second time reading it, though I've seen the movie a few times. This time through, I was surprised by just how quick of a read it is. I think it took roughly the same time to read this book as it would have to watch the movie. Which means that I'll probably be re...