I'm not sure whether this is the effect of not being jammed into half a train seat by someone twice the size of me, but The Long Dark Tea-time of the Soul seemed less funny but more absorbing than the first book. It helped that it included Norse gods, I think. I had no idea that Douglas Adams had tangled with them.

On the other hand, I don't really think that as much seemed to happen, somehow. Less plates seemed to be spinning. I think that was a good thing for the narrative, but it seemed to make the second book different in tone from the first... (And then I wonder if that was just because at no point did I have to stuff my Kindle back into a bag and run to get off a train because I was about to miss getting off at the correct station. I suspect I'm more influenced by the circumstances in which I read books than I realise.)

So... on some levels, I enjoyed this more than the first book, and on some levels, less. Quite an odd feeling.

I do like the nine tenths of the subconscious being given over to penguins.

I am not going to write a full review of this book.

20,000 ratings, 500 reviews? Why bother to add another one to the masses? You don't need me to tell you to read this book, if you've gotten this far you're either already a fan of Adams or like me you picked it up because of the moody title and should have now found out that it's a sequel to the original Dirk Gently's Holistic Detective Agency. Fear not, you don't really need to have read the other one to enjoy this additional piece of absurdity from Douglas Adams. Instead I'll make five points about the second Dirk Gently if I may.

1. I've read this book more than any other Douglas Adams book.

2. This is my good friend Emily's favourite ever book; she loves it so much that she judges people by whether they have it on their bookshelf or not, whether they've even read it and most importantly how much they enjoyed it. Happily I still enjoyed this book, my friendship with Emily is safe.

3. The BBC TV series recently aired and was totally and completely brilliant, the performance of Stephen Mangan as Dirk Gently is as close to perfection as you get in a TV adaptation. So good was his performance that I read through this book today and could only imagine him as Dirk, as if Adams wrote it with him in mind (impossible but Dirk doesn't have any problems with impossible, as long as he can find out how it's done.)

4. Written in 1987 apparently pizza was not delivered in the UK at this time. The horror! I cannot imagine a world where you can't get pizza delivered. No wonder Pizza Hut was such a big thing when it opened in my town as a child.

5. Combining the content of this novel and the fact that he wrote Don't Panic: The Official Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy Companion, Neil Gaiman was clearly influenced by Adams when writing American Gods AND for the first time I realised that some of the parts of Good Omens I'd attributed to Terry Pratchett in my mind were obviously examples of early Gaiman.

And there you have it, another collection of words written about this book on GR. Well worth reading.

Immer noch sehr lustig, aber ganz ehrlich: ich habs nicht so richtig verstanden.

The more expansive world and cast of characters in this follow up to the first Dirk Gently novel does wonders to show how many seemingly random events can inevitably come together; thanks to the interconnectedness of all things!

Fun, but I now understand what others meant about Douglas Adams being an amazing writer who hated writing. While it was hard to get a picture of Dirk and Kate in my head, as they seemed to more description of what they didn't look like, it took until their literal smashing into each other near the end of the book to understand what the book was about. Really enjoyed their breakdown of Sherlock Holmes famous axiom about eliminating the impossible, and Dirk's comment on the resilience of the impossible.

Once again, rather than attempt to describe the latest of holistic detective Dirk Gently's adventures, I will instead present a selection of completely random quotes from the book. They really have nothing to do with each other, but I like them.

"It can hardly be a coincidence that no language on earth has ever produced the expression 'As pretty as an airport.'
Airports are ugly. Some are very ugly. Some attain a degree of ugliness that can only be the result of a special effort. This ugliness arises because airports are full of people who are tired, cross, and have just discovered that their luggage has landed in Murmansk (Murmansk airport is the only known exception to this otherwise infallible rule), and architects have on the whole tried to reflect this in their designs."

"Perhaps it would save time if he went back to get his car, but then again it was only a short distance, and he had a tremendous propensity for getting lost when driving. This was largely because of his 'Zen' method of navigation, which was simply to find any car that looked as if it knew where it was going and follow it. The results were more often surprising than successful, but he felt it was worth it for the sake of the few occasions when it was both."

"Confuse your enemy, he thought. It was a little like phoning somebody up, and saying 'Yes? Hello?' in a testy voice when they answered, which was one of Dirk's favorite methods of whiling away long, hot summer afternoons."

Oh, Douglas Adams. Shine on, you crazy diamond.

This is the second book about Dirk Gently, the holistic private investigator. A seriously underestimated series (or what was to become a series, I'm sure).

In this second volume, Dirk is not really at his best. Something is wrong and he can't put his finger to it. To make matters worse, a very well off client, who promised to voluntarily pay for all sorts of quirks, is not just crazy as Dirk had thought, but ends up dead (money sure does seem to have a way of getting away from Dirk). Dirk's horoscope is even worse than usual but instead of taking the holistic approach, he chalks it up to an acquaintance of his being even more annoying than usual (that acquaintance is writing that particular horoscope). Add to that a weird incident at Heathrow airport (it had it coming if you ask me, I hate that place) and several encounters with fridges and a Coca-Cola vending machine and you get the usual silliness for which Douglas Adams was so famous for.

However, as is also signature DA, no matter how silly his characters or observations, they are also spot on. Like how airports are the worst places on Earth and how everyone is aggravated there. Or how the simplest things we're used to can seem paramount when living somewhere this simple thing isn't normal and certainly not simple (yes, I'm talking about the pizza deliveries - Paul, is it true that London doesn't have (or didn't have, in the 80s?) pizza delivering services, but that you have (had?) to pick the pizza up yourself instead?).

Throughout the book there are hilarious moments, classics of the comedy genre. Like when Kate is at Heathrow in the very beginning. Or when the eagle is in Dirk's office/apartment, he locks it in the kitchen, it repeatedly flies against the kitchen door in order to get out, then Dirk opens the door, the eagle doesn't notice in time and instead slams into the wall of the next room. Or how Kate often gets revenge for not having a pizza delivery service in London. In fact, her interaction with Thor in general. Or how Dirk gets his Jaguar from the mechanic (see below). Or how a certain couple got what they had coming at the very end of the book.
I was once again involuntarily attracting a lot of attention on my commute home when I burst out laughing on several occasions.

Here, for those who already know the book or want to laugh but not read the book (*gasps* shame on you all!):

He did at last understand that the mechanic was also claiming that a family of starlings had at some point in the past made their nest in a sensitive part of the engine's workings and had subsequently perished horribly, taking sensitive parts of the engine with them, and at this point Dirk began to cast about himself desperately for what to do.
He noticed that the mechanic's pick-up truck was standing nearby with its engine still running, and elected to make off with this instead. Being a slightly less slow and cumbersome runner than the mechanic he was able to put this plan into operation with a minimum of difficulty.
He swung out into the lane, drove off into the night and parked three miles down the road. He left the van's lights on, let down its tyres, and hid himself behind a tree. After about ten minutes his Jaguar came hurtling round the corner, passed the van, hauled itself to an abrupt halt and reversed wildly back towards it. The mechanic threw open the door, leapt out and hurried over to reclaim his property, leaving Dirk with the opportunity he needed to leap from behind the tree and reclaim his own.
He spun his wheels pointedly and drove off in a kind of grim triumph, ...

Or this little gem:
An "Act of God". Merely a chance, careless phrase by which people were able to dispose conveniently of awkward phenomena that would admit of no more rational explanation. But it was the chance carelessness of it which particularly appealed to Dirk because words used carelessly, as if they did not matter in any serious way, often allowed otherwise well-guarded truths to seep through.

One thing was scary: the lawyer? The whole time I read the speech he gave Dirk I kept hearing Donald Trump (you know, the pronunciation, the repetition, "the greatest", ...)!

Nevertheless, despite such golden moments of comedy and the fact that Norse gods (my second favourite canon) were in this, I didn't love this as much as the first book. Maybe it was because Dirk wasn't on top of his game and I kept screaming at him internally that he had already noticed the significant bits, just subconsciously. Or because although there were sharp observations in this as well, they weren't as sharp or as numerous as in the first book. I don't know. However, those are also very strong emotions the book invoked and the writing style was once again top notch and very engaging, the characters all quirky and realistic though (or especially because) extremely whacky.

Before writing this review, I intended to "only" give this 4 stars to mark the difference between this and the previous volume. However, now that I've gathered my thoughts for this review, I think that would be an injustice - the first one was perfection from start to finish, this one was "only" but still excellent after all. Thus, I'm giving it 5 stars yet again, because I'm a solid Douglas Adams fangirl now and it is clear that I love Dirk Gently and am thoroughly saddened by how soon the series has had to come to an end.
I'll definitely finish this up by also reading the "3rd" (actually just a collection of what Douglas Adams had prepared for a third novel plus some other bits and pieces he might have turned into books had he not died much too soon).

Funny book. Much like all his others.

This is very hard for me, you know? I love Douglas Adams; I adore his phrasing, his word structure, and how he manages to make things seem funny,ridiculous, menacing or heartbreaking. I've loved the Hitchhiker books, and he continues to be one of the writers I care for quite immensely.

This is why rating this book as 3/5 is so sad for me, this book started off great, with plenty of intrigue and mystery, and a bunch of characters that seemed interesting and off their rockers (in other words, regular Adams fare). So, I thought I was going to love it, and I did!

But then I came to the last few chapters, and it seems like someone was on Adams's case, asking him to finish the damn book. The whole thing seems hurried, with characters jumping around and events taking place so fast that you couldn't even tell what had happened until you've read it again. His randomness, which is endearing when used carefully, is tossed about everywhere, as he ties up every single loose end in a matter of a few paragraphs.

I won't lie; I felt cheated by the end of this book, and I don't like to be cheated.

I think Douglas might have a problem with endings.

Read this book when it first came out. Great storyline - truly holistic and connected. Dialogue is excellent, and even the minor characters are a blast to read. Only the refrigerator and boy were insufficiently explored, but this is a minor point.

Looking forward to rereading the third book, which I hardly remember. Also planning to check out the BBC television show based on this book soon - it was highly rated. As for the book, the proper rating is 'a suffusion of yellow' - which covers any number larger than 4.