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3.85 AVERAGE
3.85 AVERAGE
This was very weird and also 100% not the plot the show used?
I should really reread this to see if still makes no sense whatsoever...
This book is a mess. A fragmented story with a really unbelievable Sherlock Holmes type character mixed in with weird, out of nowhere Dr. Who plots. A lot of this is written like Adams finished a story and then realized he still had pages to fill, so awkwardly picked it up again.
My main issue is Derk. It's one thing when the (annoying) detective you're following can say "well from the marks on your shoe I deduced...." and quite another for him to just keep repeating "I know" and "you must believe me," without ever giving a good reason why.
I probably would have stopped after the first 3rd if I wasn't doing a reading challenge.
My main issue is Derk. It's one thing when the (annoying) detective you're following can say "well from the marks on your shoe I deduced...." and quite another for him to just keep repeating "I know" and "you must believe me," without ever giving a good reason why.
I probably would have stopped after the first 3rd if I wasn't doing a reading challenge.
Richard MacDuff is a programmer for Gordon Way's software company, who made a spreadsheet that could turn company accounts into music. He's currently preoccupied with trying to figure out how to move the sofa stuck on his stairs which his models say is quite impossible. Gordon Way himself is dead, thanks to a misunderstanding with an Electric Monk and what all this has to do with anything and especially professor Reg Chronotis is something that's up to the eponymous holistic detective to figure out.
This is an enjoyable if somewhat odd book. The titular character doesn't actually appear until almost half way through, and all the way through the book, Adams' love of all things technological, and especially Apple, shines. The humour is more subtle than, say, [b:The Hitch-Hiker's Guide to the Galaxy|223732|Satire Gulliver's Travels, Animal Farm, Catch 22, The Hitch Hiker's Guide To The Galaxy, Frontline|Lloyd Cameron|http://www.goodreads.com/assets/nocover/60x80.png|216678]; more of the wry smile variety than the laugh out loud variety. The book takes major plot points from the Doctor Who stories City of Death and the (untransmitted) Shada. Although I have read it before, I had no real memories of it from then, and I've now seen both the above Who stories (the latter in the form of a BBC animated webcast) and the similarities were obvious, meaning I could more or less work out the plot from fairly early on.
This is mostly a four-star book, but it loses a star for, what I found to be, a needlessly obscure resolution to the final act. I thought I had more or less figured out what happened, but had to look up the Wikipedia article to confirm it. I appreciate that an author doesn't necessarily want to deconstruct everything, but a few more clues would have been nice.
This is an enjoyable if somewhat odd book. The titular character doesn't actually appear until almost half way through, and all the way through the book, Adams' love of all things technological, and especially Apple, shines. The humour is more subtle than, say, [b:The Hitch-Hiker's Guide to the Galaxy|223732|Satire Gulliver's Travels, Animal Farm, Catch 22, The Hitch Hiker's Guide To The Galaxy, Frontline|Lloyd Cameron|http://www.goodreads.com/assets/nocover/60x80.png|216678]; more of the wry smile variety than the laugh out loud variety. The book takes major plot points from the Doctor Who stories City of Death and the (untransmitted) Shada. Although I have read it before, I had no real memories of it from then, and I've now seen both the above Who stories (the latter in the form of a BBC animated webcast) and the similarities were obvious, meaning I could more or less work out the plot from fairly early on.
This is mostly a four-star book, but it loses a star for, what I found to be, a needlessly obscure resolution to the final act. I thought I had more or less figured out what happened, but had to look up the Wikipedia article to confirm it. I appreciate that an author doesn't necessarily want to deconstruct everything, but a few more clues would have been nice.
I thought I had read this before, but clearly I hadn't. If I had, I would have read it ten times by now, because it is that good. The plot is as clear as a pointillist painting, so the reader's understanding of the ending really depends on where said reader is standing in relation, and how much processing power that reader is willing to give it. Adams doesn't focus so much on the humor and inventive side notes as he did with my beloved Hitchhiker's Guide, though it is both funny and creative. The first third to half of the book might feel like vastly unrelated bits of plot being strung together, so I imagine it would be easy to assume, say, that the (redacted) is just a strange aside that won't come much into play... and you would be shocked and perhaps confused later, because everything comes into play.
To sum up, I loved this perhaps more than the Hitchhiker's Guide, and look forward to reading it again at some point so I can spot the clues even earlier.
(Oddly enough, I recently read [b:Claire DeWitt and the City of the Dead|9231999|Claire DeWitt and the City of the Dead|Sara Gran|http://d.gr-assets.com/books/1312909281s/9231999.jpg|14112168] and think that Claire DeWitt and Dirk Gently are at least literary cousins, being odd, holistic, and excellent detectives, though in very different worlds.)
To sum up, I loved this perhaps more than the Hitchhiker's Guide, and look forward to reading it again at some point so I can spot the clues even earlier.
(Oddly enough, I recently read [b:Claire DeWitt and the City of the Dead|9231999|Claire DeWitt and the City of the Dead|Sara Gran|http://d.gr-assets.com/books/1312909281s/9231999.jpg|14112168] and think that Claire DeWitt and Dirk Gently are at least literary cousins, being odd, holistic, and excellent detectives, though in very different worlds.)
This is one of those books that's just so blindingly perfect that not loving it is impossible. Douglas Adams has such a clear, oddly original style of prose that's a joy to read (not to mention hilarious) and the story itself was full of fascinating twists and turns.
The story begins with a boring college dinner and an easily forgotten magic trick. this is followed by a markedly odd and unexpected death of Gordon Way; and the book grows steadily odder from there as Gordon's ghost attempts to solve his own murder (unintentionally implicating one of his employees, Richard, in the process), an electric monk from a distant galaxy searches for the meaning of life, and Dirk Gently tries to clear Richard's good name.
There was honestly nothing in this book that I didn't love. The unexpected realism and compassion of how Douglas Adams writes human interaction stands in epic contrast to the cold, overblown ridiculousness of the plot, and it's glorious. everything about this book is glorious.
And now, I'm going to have to dig up a copy of the sequel somewhere...
The story begins with a boring college dinner and an easily forgotten magic trick. this is followed by a markedly odd and unexpected death of Gordon Way; and the book grows steadily odder from there as Gordon's ghost attempts to solve his own murder (unintentionally implicating one of his employees, Richard, in the process), an electric monk from a distant galaxy searches for the meaning of life, and Dirk Gently tries to clear Richard's good name.
There was honestly nothing in this book that I didn't love. The unexpected realism and compassion of how Douglas Adams writes human interaction stands in epic contrast to the cold, overblown ridiculousness of the plot, and it's glorious. everything about this book is glorious.
And now, I'm going to have to dig up a copy of the sequel somewhere...
If you claimed I just didn't get it you'd be completely right. And in addition to that I was very annoyed by the portrayal of women in this.
