Cannonball Read 17

Sticking It to Cancer One Book at a Time

“A whale’s graveyard on the whole is not a good place to stomp around on”

The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy by Douglas Adams

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I know, I know. Where have I been and how did I not get around to this earlier! To answer that easy question: I have been here, on earth, and I did read this approximately one million years ago. My memory of this volume was corrupted greatly by the 2005 movie adaptation (another issue, I know), and I figured that a new decade was as good a time as any to try out this classic again. Also, I wanted to listen to more audio books […]

It had been too long since I read this

The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy by Douglas Adams

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I dug my first copy of The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy out of my Christmas stocking when I was probably twelve years old. My dad had been telling me the story (mostly his favorite part, Restaurant at the End of the Universe’s “Meet Your Meat”) for years but finally gifted me a copy. I was sold on the cover copy alone: “The first in the increasingly inaccurately named Hitchhiker’s trilogy”. I loved it then, I love it now, and I loved it when my high school put […]

Dirk Gently Is at It Again . . . Sort of

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This one started off much less confusingly (and weirdly) than the first book, Dirk Gently’s Holistic Detective Agency, though it didn’t necessarily end less confusingly. Part of the problem is that the ending seemed rushed, as though Adams were trying to get it done in a hurry, and he sacrificed quality and clarity to do so. Once again, the book doesn’t really seem to be about Dirk Gently, although he is a main character, and this time he doesn’t seem to do as much in terms of affecting […]

There Was a Horse in the Bathroom

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This was a weird one. It started off weird and although it made much more sense by the end, I still had to look up explanations for some of what happened. A few questions remain, some of which are too spoilery to describe. Speaking of, how does one describe this book? That’s more than just a rhetorical question – I’m really not sure. The first several chapter seem disjointed, but later you learn how they are all connected (although I still don’t understand the first […]

Not another thing, please

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I forget where I read it, only that it is not my own observation, but someone put my most frequent problem with fantasy and sci-fi best: the more made up words it contains, the less likely I am to enjoy the book. This is a fairly short book that is long on nonsense. My eyes just glazed over half the text for a lack of intelligible prose to grab on to. A continuation of The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy series written by Douglas Adams, […]

Mostly Charmless

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You can get the whole idea of “Dirk Gently” and his so-called detective agency from one line. Referring to Sherlock Holmes’ famous precept that “once you eliminate the impossible, whatever’s left, however improbable, must be the truth” Dirk replies, “I prefer not to eliminate the impossible.” That’s a clever line, but also rather exasperating. That’s Dirk Gently, and this book, in a nutshell. I laughed quite a few times at some inspired bit of absurdity or an ingenious turn of phrase, but mostly I found […]



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