So Long, and Thanks for All the Fish

another series i need to reread

I've been reading this series over the course of the past year and then some. I thoroughly enjoyed the first book, but the more I read, the more it dissolved into a fever dream. I treaded on because of the comedic absurdity, but I could not have explained the plot to you (if there even was a plot). I also found it kind of sad that for a book dealing with literal aliens, somehow earthly stereotypes and sexist jokes continued to make an appearance. oh well.

This one actually has a plot, of sorts.

``It was dark. He lay on his left side for a good hour.

``After that he moved restlessly in his sleep for a moment and then turned over to sleep on his right side. Another hour after this his eyes flickered briefly and he slightly scratched his nose, though there was still a good twenty minutes to go before he turned back on to his left side. And so he whiled the night away, sleeping.

``At four he got up and went to the lavatory again. He opened the door to the lavatory ...'' and so on.

It's guff. It doesn't advance the action. It makes for nice fat books such as the American market thrives on, but it doesn't actually get you anywhere. You don't, in short, want to know.

This is the perfect description of American Literary Fiction. I have been trying to read The Goldfinch, and have managed to read 500 pages of it, and there's still a book left. (That is, over 200 pages... yes, it's almost 800 pages long, and 1/3 at least could have been left out. :-( Because it's mostly him wandering and wondering about something he's been wondering about all the previous pages and probably the rest of the book.) Any way...

The love story between Arthur and Fenchurch is wonderful. So soft and warm and lovely and delightful and sweet and sigh

3.5 stars. Disappointing that this one mostly takes place on earth and ending falls a bit flat.

As usual, hilariously absurd. :D

This originally appeared at The Irresponsible Reader.
—

Arthur had a swordfish steak and said it made him angry. He grabbed a passing waitress by the arm and berated her.

“Why's this fish so bloody good?” he demanded, angrily.

“Please excuse my friend,” said Fenchurch to the startled waitress. “I think he's having a nice day at last.”

The Hitchhiker's Guide

Dirk Gently

Life, the Universe, and Everything

Here was something that Ford felt he could speak about with authority.

“Life,” he said, “is like a grapefruit.”

“Er, how so?”

Well, it's sort of orangy-yellow and dimpled on the outside, wet and squidgy the middle. It's got pips inside, too. Oh, and some people have half a one for breakfast.”

“Is there anyone else out there I can talk to?”

Of course, one never has the slightest notion what size or shape different species are going to turn out to be, but if you were to take the findings of the latest Mid-Galactic Census report as any kind of accurate guide to statistical averages you would probably guess that the craft would hold about six people, and you would be right.

You'd probably guessed that anyway. The Census report, like most such surveys, had cost an awful lot of money and told nobody anything they didn't already know – except that every single person in the Galaxy had 2.4 legs and owned a hyena. Since this was clearly not true the whole thing eventually had to be scrapped.

There's a few things I'd love to go on and on about, but no one wants to read me gushing and gushing and gushing, so here are the assorted highlights:

• The zig at the end of the Prologue.


• Arthur's biscuit/train station story. Seriously, I just love this.


• Rob Mckenna


• Wonko the Sane naming the world The Asylum and his house Outside the Asylum.


• Wonko the Sane's name.


• All the California jokes. Clearly, he'd been vacationing there too much.


• The whole thing about the lizard government and democracy is both funny and relevant.


• Chapter 25 is just dandy.

This is another short book, marketed as a novel, that's really the size of a modern novella. I think it's the first time that Douglas Adams tried to write a novel/novella not based on radio scripts, so he was feeling his way rather uncertainly, but this is distinctly different from the preceding books in the Hitchhiker's Guide series.

It's set mostly on contemporary Earth, a setting that the preceding books mostly avoided; and it's a love story (with digressions), which the others weren't. It's a slower and gentler story whose adventures are less explosive.

As a novel/novella, it's not entirely successful, and I still don't feel like promoting it to four stars. But it's quite a nice little tale, and I reread it, not frequently, but more often than any of the other books in this series.

It might be that some of the novelty has worn off, but it's still a great book, very entertaining. Just not quite as much of a page-turner as the first.