A weird mystery mixed with paranormal and crazy events.

I came to the book from the brilliant and crazy TV show so it was a strange read. It was very different from the TV show, Dirk wasn't a really likable guy (the other characters were new) and the story had nothing in commun with the show. Nevertheless, Adams' style was easy to spot, with some humor and several descriptions that could be shared with Pratchett, giving the read an easy going and pleasant tone. I found the characters interesting, even if we never had the chance to know them well, but most of all, the story kept me engaged with all the strange events. I enjoyed the mix between weird mystery and paranormal, and some moments were pretty funny. Overall, a nice read, especially for its weird side.

When I tried to get my fix of Douglas Adams last year, I reached for Mostly Harmless -- and was a little underwhelmed. This should have been my first pick; I have my fix now.

A bit underwhelming. As I was reading, I realized I was liking it less and less. I don't think it amounted to much in the end, unless I missed something critical? I was going back and forth between audiobook and the kindle version, so there is a possibility of oversight on my part. Much like Galaxy Hitchhiking, I thought it was too goofy for my liking. I'd also put it in the same category as Strugatsky's "Monday Starts on Saturday".

I think this is the second time I have read this book but maybe the third time. Either way, it has been over 20 years since I last read it (I think). I always marvel how much I remember and how much I “remember” after I read it. I remembered things like “Reg answers three questions but only asks two” and “Reg pulled off that magic trick using a SPOILER” and the couch is trapped because of the SPOILER visiting Richard’s flat a few weeks ago”.
Okay – overall impression is I love this book. It has that great Douglas Adams turn of phrase but he doesn’t overdo it too much. It has a plot brimming with amazing ideas. 20 years later it has aged remarkably well despite the fact a huge plot point hinges on answering machine tapes (something we don’t have) and there is some talk about computers. The characters are all interesting and well fleshed out, for the most part (I guess Susan gets short shrift and so does the dead boss). The laugh out loud humour wasn’t exactly there but it was still more funny/enjoyable than 99% of the humour novels I have ever read. I have to give it up to Douglas Adams he is one of the few people who managed to write a humour novel that was funny and he did it on several occasions (yes he wrote huge clunkers Mostly Harmless was the biggest piece of shite ever, but most other ONLY write shite).
Even though I love the book and am amazed by some of the ideas and the way they slowly unfold there are fundamental problems with the book that keep it from being perfect. The ending is too confusing by half...and requires you to have a full knowledge of Coleridge, his dream inspired poem "Kubla Khan", the fact that a man Porlock interrupted Coleridge writing the poem so (in OUR reality) the second half never got written. and since only a handful of people would read Dirk Gently AND know this Adams fails his readers. Hard to recommend a book to your friends "great book but I can't understand the ending". As well, a few great ideas seem to peter out in the end and a few prominent story lines seem to be over emphasized at the start or trail off at the end. I mean I LOVE the idea of the Electric Monk but...did he really need to be a part of this story? And Dirk is a wonderful character but for someone so smart why is he doing nothing with his life until Richard's case falls into his lap?
Even with the problems, it is so original and enjoyable I have to still give it five stars.

I still don't really understand how the ending of this book worked, and trying to describe the plot would be like trying to build a submarine out of cheese. Instead, I'll just share some quotes from this book that I especially loved, because Douglas Adams is the only author in the history of the world who is capable of creating them.

"'A horse?' he said again.
'Yes, it is,' said the Professor. 'Wait - ' he motioned to Richard, who was about to go out again and investigate - 'Let it be. It won't be long.'
Richard stared in disbelief. 'You say there's a horse in your bathroom, and all you can do is stand there naming Beatles songs?'"

"Richard stood transfixed for moment or two, wiped his forehead again, and gently replaced the phone as if it were an injured hamster. His brain began to buzz gently and suck its thumb. Lots of little synapses deep inside his cerebral cortex all joined hands and started dancing around and singing nursery rhymes."

"On the wall was a Duran Duran poster on which someone had scrawled in fat red felt tip, 'Take this down please.'
Beneath that another hand had scrawled, 'No.'
Beneath that again the first hand had written, 'I insist that you take it down.'
Beneath that the second hand had written, 'Won't!'
Beneath that - 'You're fired!'
Beneath that - 'Good!'
And there the matter appeared to have rested."

"'Welcome, by the way, to my offices.'
He waved a vague hand around the tatty surroundings. 'The light works,' he said, indicating the window, 'the gravity works,' he said, dropping a pencil on the floor. 'Anything else we have to take our chances with.'"

"'Don't you listen to anything you say? The whole thing was obvious!' he exclaimed, thumping the table. 'So obvious that the only thing which prevented me from seeing the solution was the trifling fact that it was completely impossible. Sherlock Holmes observed that once you have eliminated the impossible, then whatever remains, however improbable, must be the answer. I, however, do not like to eliminate the impossible.'"

Another romp of wackiness mixed with quantum mechanistic hyperbole and time travel played out by nut-job characters bent on saving the world. Gotta love it!

Having listened to this book a second time, I now (I think) understand it.
But I'm not sure if that's a good thing. When I was more hazy on the plot and conclusion, this book seemed a whole lot more impressive to me.
I enjoyed it. Of course I did. It's Douglas Adams, but now that I understand the story (mostly), it feels like it falls a little flat.
It feels like it's missing that little something that propels it into 3d, multidimensional wonder.
The story feels too simple- which is hilarious to me because when I first listened to it, it seemed super complicated!
The issues I had were in the storyline, but the characters in this book were amazing.

Douglas Adams is great at writing these hilariously quirky characters that you fall in love with.
There is the Arthur- esque Richard Mcduff who gets caught up in all of the mayhem, the wacky professor Reg, who may or may not be older than he looks (a little inside joke for you if you've read the books), and, of course, Dirk Gently (or Svlad Gelli, depends who you ask) in all his glory as a private investigator, running his holistic detective agency and being wonderfully absurd.
There are also great supporting characters, such as Dirk’s secretary, Janice Pearce, who doesn't work for him anymore due to not being paid, but sticks around to make sure he realises that fact, by answering the detective agency's phone like this, n  ”Good afternoon she said, Wayne Wright's brute emporium, Mr Wayne Wright is not able to take calls at this time, since he is not right in the head, and thinks he's a cucumber, thank you for calling.”n


Dirk as a character is brilliant. n  ”There is no point in using the word 'impossible' to describe something that has clearly happened.”n

I liked Reg and Richard too, though.
What was really interesting about this book for me was when we are introduced to Dirk's viewpoint of the n  ”interconnectedness of all things”n, it's a classic Adams viewpoint, something that sounds wildly silly, yet can be interpreted to crop up a lot in real life, which gives it a bit of an edge.

n  n    "Sherlock Holmes observed that once you have eliminated the impossible, then whatever remains, however improbable, must be the answer. I, however, do not like to eliminate the impossible."n  n

The narrator of this audiobook is very good and did all the characters very well.

Definitely give this a listen/read if you want something crazy, imaginative, and full of humour, even if it doesn't quite wrap up well enough at the end.




Some of my favourite moments:

When Reg finds a horse in his bathroom at the college with Richard.

n  n    ”A horse?’
’Yes it is,' said the Professor. 'Wait—' he motioned to Richard, who was about to go out again and investigate— 'let it be. It won't be long.'
Richard stared in disbelief. 'You say there's a horse in your bathroom, and all you can do is stand there naming Beatles songs?'
The professor looked blankly at him."n  n

I now know that Isaac Newton invented the cat flap!

n  n    "Sir Isaac Newton, renowned inventor of the milled-edge coin and the catflap!"

"The what?" said Richard.

"The catflap! A device of the utmost cunning, perspicuity, and invention. It is a door within a door, you see, a ..."

"Yes," said Richard, "there was also the small matter of gravity."

"Gravity," said Dirk with a slightly dismissed shrug, "yes, there was that as well, I suppose. Though that, of course, was merely a discovery. It was there to be discovered." ... "You see?" he said, dropping his cigarette butt, "They even keep it on at weekends. Someone was bound to notice sooner or later. But the catflap ... ah, there is a very different matter. Invention, pure creative invention. It is a door within a door, you see."n  n

First read

⭐️ 4.2
this book is so crazy I don't even know where to start with a review...
There are so many good ideas in this book. It's all so wonderfully crazy and silly.
I really enjoyed this book, but at the same time, it was pretty confusing.


my review of:
The long dark teatime of the soul


⭐3.5
14+
cws: spookyness, ghosts, guns

I don't really know what this book is. I sifted through 50 pages or so of gibberish and decided that I just didn't have the patience or interest to go on. Maybe in 20 years or so I'll build up enough patience to try to read this again, but for now I'll move on to something else.

I read the Hitchhiker's Guide, and being the first book of his that I experienced I did I enjoyed it, but the more I read from Adams, the more I get the impression that he's not really that impressive. He just spouts the first nonsense that comes to mind, some of which can cause a smile, but most of which just makes me cringe, or wish the book would move on to actual story rather than trying to make himself seem witty at all cost. If there was any story going on in the first 5 chapters, I probably would have continued. However, there was not. Maybe the rest of the book makes up for it, but after spending days to get through just a few pages because of pure boredom, I simply don't care anymore.

"Mrs. Pearce!" schrie er. "Würden Sie bitte freundlicherweise unserer lieben Mrs Sauskind eine korrigierte Rechnung schicken. Die neuen Rechnung lautet: 'Für die Rettung der Menschheit vor völligem Untergang - kein Honorar.'"
Douglas Adams Humor ist, daran besteht kein Zweifel, speziell. Mitunter beschränkt sich eine wichtige Aussage, für die andere dicke Bücher voll schreiben, bei ihm auf eine einzige Zahl. Wie schon bei "Per Anhalter durch die Galaxis" ist auch hier sein Schreibstil anstrengend unterhaltsam, konfus erhellend, verwirrend einleuchtend.
Leider kam Douglas Adams nicht mehr dazu, die Reihe um Dirk Gentlys holistische Detektei weiter auszubauen. Band zwei heißt "Der lange dunkle Fünfuhrtee der Seele" und Band drei "Lachs im Zweifel. Zum letzten Mal per Anhalter durch die Galaxis" Dieser Band ist unvollendet. Er beinhaltet lediglich eine Sammlung von Zeitungsartikeln, Vorträgen, Notizen und Interviews.
(Holistic bedeutet übrigens ganzheitlich.)
Ich lese Douglas Adams Bücher immer wieder, da stets noch was zu entdecken oder verstehen bleibt.

Мене зачаровують світи Адамса, я можу "проковтнути" його книжку за день-два, бо мене настільки вона захопила, що я не можу відірватися. Я б хотіла розуміти одразу всі жарти і увесь контекст без приміток перекладача і ґуґлу. В цій книжці цього звісно не сталося, але це ніяк не завадило мені насолоджуватися кожною сторінкою.

From the title you would think this is possibly about a detective agency. Well there is an agency but they don’t detect things in the normal matter. You should probably guess that since it is a Douglas Adams book and when has he written anything really normal (I mean that in the best way).

Nope for this book n  “Let's think the unthinkable, let's do the undoable. Let us prepare to grapple with the ineffable itself, and see if we may not eff it after all.”n

There is craziness, absurdity, the interconnectedness of all things and Dirk is smack dab in the middle of it all. He will somehow figure out how a horse in a bathroom, a ghost making telephone calls, a undoable magic trick, the cat in Schrodinger’s Box and an alien electronic monk who can believe anything all have to do with one another.

It is a crazy and fantastic ride that if you just hang back and not think about it too much everything will just all into place. Most of the time Dirk Gently seems to make no sense until he makes hysterical sense. There were times I flat out belly laughed at some of the general obscurity of it.

I will never think of Sir Isaac Newton the same again – or Bach but that is a different matter.
“Sir Isaac Newton, renowned inventor of the milled-edge coin and the catflap!"
"The what?" said Richard.
"The catflap! A device of the utmost cunning, perspicuity and invention. It is a door within a door, you see, a ..."
"Yes," said Richard, "there was also the small matter of gravity."
"Gravity," said Dirk with a slightly dismissed shrug, "yes, there was that as well, I suppose. Though that, of course, was merely a discovery. It was there to be discovered." ... "You see?" he said dropping his cigarette butt, "They even keep it on at weekends. Someone was bound to notice sooner or later. But the catflap ... ah, there is a very different matter. Invention, pure creative invention. It is a door within a door, you see.”

I read both the Dirk Gently books years ago and they are some of the few books that I come back to years later and love for different reasons all over again. If you were a fan of the Hitchhikers series or Monty Python then this kind of humor might be exactly what you need for a good laugh.

I truly love this and Tea time - more so than the HH 'trilogy'.

Such wonderful characters and story-telling. DNA was truly a master craftsman.

You are missed!

Edit and update: listened to the audiobook. Magical. 10 stars. At least.