h2g2 The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy: Earth Edition

That's it! I am not going to read any of Dan Brown's books. Thanks all for saving me from wasting my valuable reading time

YOu're welcome. You know those books that you cant put down even though they are awful, because the author always leaves you hanging about somethign? (Lke whatszat book- some genius kid with fairies living underground- incredibly bad, but hard to put down, odd code at the bottom of the pages or something...) Well, the Da Vinci code is one of them. I think the author is probably fairly intelligent- he should do something more worthwhile with his life than write bad thrillers.

Well I finished Last Chance to See which was excellent. It was douglas adams account on all the endangered animals he visited with Mark Cowardine. I am currently reading Dirk Gently's Hollistic Detective Agency. I accidently read the long lost tea time of the soul before this one but oh well. After i read this i will have read every book he has ever written. WOO HOO (that includes the meaning of liff)

the liffs were great.

Anyone here ever read... Voss...? Its a Nobel prize lit novel. Patrick White. Author.

sho, are you a cryptologist

what's a voss?

While on holiday I read:

Conrad's Fate - Diana Wynne Jones. A new Chrestomanci novel. Entertaining as always, but the ending was a little flat, with the whole plot being explained by a character who turns up for that very purpose. But good up until then.

Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep - Philip K Dick. One of those books I've always meant to read, but never got around to. I enjoyed it, but he's a very mannered writer, and his characters are all rather odd, and rather unlikeable. But worth reading, especially if you've seen Blade Runner.

To Kill a Mockingbird - Harper Lee. Another on the list of books I feel I should read, but don't get around to. And I'm so glad I did. What a fantastic book, and totally different to what I was expecting. Beautifully written, powerful themes, but totally engrossing and perfectly plotted. Perhaps I'm glad I never 'had' to read it at school, so I could appreciate it on its own. And I haven't seen the movie either, so it'll be really interesting to see what they've done to it (although I have to admit I was seeing Gregory Peck as Atticus all the way through). This is the literary equivalent of Casablanca for me - one of the 'classics' which, for whatever reason, I've missed all this time, and when I finally read (or see) it, it's blindingly obvious why it's a classic (and so popular). I had to read the last few chapters again immediately afterwards, and I cried both times.

"Hey, Boo."

>>sho, are you a cryptologist <<

I used to work in something along those lines...

Jim, I was never obliged to read Mockingbird either, and have now read it four or five times. It makes me howl at the end, but it is just sooo powerful, the characters are so believeable and the writing is most excellent it is worth every minute.

Have you read Uncle Tom's Cabin? I felt that I had to try that after Mockingbird and was sooo depressed I wish I hadn't.

Uncle Tom's Cabin was a bit too christian for my taste. Everon tells me to read To Killa Mockingbird, and I still haven't gotten aorund to it.

another Diana Wynne JOnes fan? pleased to meet you!

Philip.K.Dick was a man who lived with demons, his was a life of which Van Gogh would have understood and felt akin too. A great blurb on the back of most of his books comes from a Lit critic who wrote; Philip.K.Dick makes most of the European Avante garde seem like navel gazers in a Cul-De-Sac! Marvellous!

He is an acquired taste if you dont come from a Sci-Fi background, it is a shame that he never lived long enough to see his books turned into Hollywood blockbusters, he was always struggling for money. His titles were absolutely straight out of left field(in american parlance), The Three Stigmata Of Palmer Eldritch, Now wait For Last Year, The Man Whose Teeth Were all Exactly The Same,the list goes on.

Writing a concise desription of one of P.K.Dick's books, sketching one of his plots, is like trying to carve a leafless tree in granite. Real and solid(and strange and far out) as his characters may be, they all exhibit complex traceries of personality quite impossible to predict and sometimes just the other side of the reader's ability to understand. The effect,od course, is the creation of a work that your head won't put down even if your hands do.'

I wish I had written that! But I didn't anyway I would never have called him mannered.

I hope more people read him......cheers

Perhaps mannered isn't fair. No more mannered, I suppose, than other SF writers of the same era. There's something about the way his characters talk, and the way their interior monologues go, which is distinctive and feels old-fashioned (not in a bad way, though).

I don't deny that PKD is an enormously important writer, but for some reason, the novels I've read (with the possible exception of Time out of Joint, which I read many years ago) seemed quite dry to me, while his short stories always impressed me more.

But I definitely need to read more.

Yep your right I think about the period(era) thing. I think in time he will probably become not much more than a memory(sadly). If you can find it, his Bio by Fred Pohl(from memory) is a ripper! He was wracked by demons was PKD.
Cheers

Now reading 'Rivers of Gold: The Rise of the Spanish Empire' by Hugh Thomas.

I've only read two Chrestomanci novels by Diana Wynne Jones - "Witch Week" and "The Lives of Christopher Chant". I found both vrey entertaining, even though they were an easy read.

Any recomendations for any of Jones' other books?


Taz

charmed life is the first one she wrote, the first one I read, and it hooked me on Chrestomanci. But my all time favorite is Howl's moving Castle, even though it get unusually confusing (even for DWJ) at the end. Archer's Goon is also excellent read.

I am now rereading the whole of the Rincewind books. I just like that incompetent wizard!

Btw. If you have read Dirk Gently's holistic detective agency, I have a question. How did he save the world? I just don't get it. I mean, he makes that guy forget about his poem, but so what? Surely the ghost knows what to do anyway?

*waves to everyone by way of greeting*

It's amazing how many interesting threads I'm discovering now all the junk has been cleared out of askh2g2...

I just finished 'Zazie in the Metro' by Raymond Queneau, and am currently in the middle of 'Eleanor Rigby' by Douglas Coupland. So far I'm not enjoying it as much as his previous books, maybe it'll grow on me, I'm about 100 pages in. Read 'All Families Are Psychotic' a couple of months ago, and that was a bit of a slow burner.

I had to check your PS there - I couldn't believe he'd come out with something as intelligent and concise as that post!

I'm glad that I'm not theo nly one who didn't understand the end of Dirk Gently. My freind claims its self explanatorily simple. I think she just doesn't get it either. My guess is that doesn't make any sense. A lot of D. Adam's books had no particular plot, and usually at the end you wonder what the point exactly was- but hey, it was a good ride anyway. Possibly he figured he'd figure something out by the end and didn't, so he hoped it was confusing enough that everybody would think it made sense, they just didn't get it. Whatever.

I forgot, on the topic of diana w. Jones, dont forget to read the DArk Lord of Derkholm, in conjuction with the something-or-another Guide to Fantasyland. She wrote the guide first, making fun of stock-fantasy. Its an encyclopedia of overused techniques. Then she wrote The Dark Lord, which is based in a world of magic where they create such stock-fantasy to cater to tourists from our world- under preassure from a slick-talking businessman and his lawyer. Not as confusing an ending either.