I really really wish we got more Douglas Adams books, in particular Dirk Gently. I am one of the few people who actually likes the way he ended the Hitchhiker's Guide trilogy, but I wanted more Dirk and his very weird adventures.

This probably hasn't aged all that well, for a start there's a whole thing about how it's impossible to get a pizza delivered in London. I can only assume that was the case at the time of publication but what kind of hellhole was 1980s England that you couldn't get a pizza?

Also Dirk smokes cigarettes as per all private detectives before 2003. It makes sense for the character but I've become so used to a smoke free media outside of period pieces that I actually found it surprising.

There's also the way this uses a concept of forgotten Gods walking around in our world in a way that we've seen a few times now since then, so that element might not seem as fresh.

It's still a quick, enjoyable read and is easier to follow than the first book.

As much as I enjoyed ‘Dirk Gently’s Holistic Detective Agency’, I have to say that ‘The Long Dark Tea-Time of the Soul’ is the better book. The reason for that is simple – you get more Dirk for your pound! Whereas it was halfway through before this most intriguing of detectives put in an appearance in the first novel, here he arrives in Chapter Three – waging a war with his cleaner as to which of them is actually going to open the fridge door (something which hasn’t been done in over three months) and clean out whatever he or she finds within. It’s a highly amusing vignette, and one which Adams has the genius to turn into a major plot point.

Having now re-read the whole canon, I think I’m qualified to examine Dirk Gently as a detective – and I find he actually has a great deal in common with Sherlock Holmes. (A man with whom he has fundamental differences on the subject of eliminating the impossible). Like Holmes he seems to be asexual, with a love of clutter and a great deal of esoteric information at his fingertips. Indeed he is possibly even more observant than Sherlock, as there are things that Dirk would spot which Sherlock would never give a moment’s credence to. Unfortunately though, there isn’t a John Watson equivalent on the scene to recount episode after episode of this great man’s adventures, but then Gently may be an even more infuriating person to hang around with than his Baker Street colleague.

Indeed this tale opens with Gently’s secretary, having finally abandoned him, working at the check-in at Heathrow Terminal Two. When a passenger can’t board a plane the check-in desk shoots suddenly, and inexplicably, hundreds of feet into the air. From there we encounter angry eagles, mysterious Coke machines, one of the most truly bizarre murders in fiction (which is then, truly bizarrely, labelled a suicide by the police) and the entrance to Valhalla through London’s St Pancras station. Once again Adams’ plotting is not as strong as it could be, and the final quarter does drag somewhat, but it’s brilliantly written and the jokes do keep coming.

It is a real shame that Adams died and we don’t have half a dozen more Gently tales (though given his productivity, that probably would have been unlikely anyway). But at least we have the two, and I promise it won’t be another twenty years before I re-read them again.

Sai quanti sassi ci sono nel Galles?

Leggere Douglas Adams per me è un po' come tornare a casa: è caotico e confortante, come una stanza disordinata ma familiare.
I personaggi sono assurdi e caricaturali, impossibile immedesimarsi davvero. Gli avvenimenti surreali e paradossali: aquile che svolazzano nel cielo di Londra, Dei nordici fissati con le lenzuola di lino, pizze che proprio non ne vogliono sapere di farsi consegnare a domicilio.
Proprio quello che mi serviva, questa rilettura, per ritrovare il giusto ritmo del respiro e un po' di leggerezza.

This book makes up for being less bizarre than the first by being much more comprehensible. That being said, it is still crazy and fun.

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.

I love Douglas Adams but this book missed the mark a wee bit for me. Although the stuff with the gods was fun I'm not sure how much help Dirk was and the ending was a little abrupt. But otherwise, there were some funny parts.

1 Jan 1988
The travails of trying to order a pizza, Valhalla in London, and unexpected encounters with Thor. I loved it.

16 September, 2012
Tash talked me into watching Thor, which I enjoyed enormously. And it reminded me of Adams' Thor, committing an Act of (a) God, when he can't catch a flight to Oslo. More than thirty years later air travel has only become more annoying.It's still fantastically funny, but I'm aware of a sadness to it that I didn't notice on previous readings. The heroine is a widow, the gods are bewildered, homeless and aimless, the yuppies are as annoying as ever. Adams has trouble with plot, so even after reading this at least three times, I'm not exactly clear on what happened at the climax. But with age I seem to have acquired some acceptance: it doesn't bother me that I don't know the details, since the crux is apparent.I wonder what I'll think of it in another thirty years?

27 November, 2016
I'm kind of astounded at what I remembered and what I didn't (the bath, but not the eagle). This time I'm amazed by all the threads connecting it to newer works and authors I enjoy. I don't suppose I'll ever stop imaging what else he might have done if he'd lived longer.

The Dirk Gently books don't get the same amount of love as Adams' Hitchhiker series, but I'm not quite sure why. Upon a re-read, I actually enjoyed this more than the first Gently book, both of which are very funny and should be manna from heaven to fans of Adams' more popular novels. If the Hitchhiker books made you laugh, you will probably like this. 4 stars, recommended!

The BBC audiobook dramatization was awesome! So glad I found it.

Your daily horoscope
from The Great Zaganza

Aries
Keep your chin up today, and take anything unexpected or unpleasant with good humour. Remember: taking everything seriously is a recipe for immediate -- and future -- suffering. Lighten up!

Taurus
Saturn moves into a happy phase today. Good for Saturn! Here's hoping that's also good for you. Cross your fingers and toes... if that doesn't improve the chances, I don't know what will!

Gemini
Just stick with the good half of your personality and ditch that @#$& other half of your personality, girlfriend!

Cancer
You or one of your other Cancer friends will probably mention just how much you're annoyed about trumpets at the moment. Random, but Cancers be cwazy.

Leo
Keep wearing that grin and be nice to people. They may even occasionally be nice back. Yes, miracles happen. Anyone who says otherwise is a lying bastard, and almost certainly a Gemini.

Virgo
You'll inform your Cancer friend that you must have misheard, since you're pretty darn sure that they were talking about Trump.

Libra
Inform your Cancer and Virgo friends that, seriously, you've heard enough about Trumps, trumpets and miscellaneous T words to last you four years. Otherwise, enjoy the sunshine and celebrate with Persons of Taurus Origin about how happy Saturn is looking these days.

Scorpio
Bright day ahead. Let your hair down in whatever physical or metaphorical fashion that you see fit. And yes, smashed avocado for breakfast would be a, ahem, smashing idea. Lucky numbers are 12 and 746,534. Oh, another thing to be pleased about is that you're the only star sign with lucky numbers today. Feel free to say "Neeeenerrrrneeeenerrrr" (or some friendly variant) to any other zodiacs.

Sagittarius
Your Save The Avocado charity idea is, frankly, absolutely and incontrovertibly terrible, and you should just join the hipsters and eat the darn thing. Highly recommended.

Capricorn
Don't let the fact that your star sign has easily the lamest name get you down. Fight back and show those others what you're made of! I mean that figuratively. You know, just to be clear, no flaunting of innards or anything unpleasant.

Aquarius
Enjoy life. That's exactly what it's for. Oh and for helping others, doing the right thing, etc etc.

Pisces
IF YOU'RE READING THIS, DIRK GENTLY, I'M AFRAID VIRTUALLY EVERYTHING YOU DECIDE TODAY WILL BE WRONG. YOU, MY FRIEND, ARE IN SERIOUS HOT WATER. YOU'LL HAVE TO USE YOUR HOLISTIC PRIVATE DETECTIVE SKILLS. THERE'S AN ODD DISAPPEARANCE AT THE AIRPORT IN STORE FOR YOU, AND A FEW NORSE GODS WILL PROBABLY SHOW UP BEARING AT LEAST ONE VERY LARGE HAMMER AND FAIRLY DISMAL PERSONALITIES. THERE'LL BE A BRUTAL DISCOVERY OF A FRIEND WHO LOST HIS MIND AND THEN THOUGHT, HANG IT, I'LL LOSE MY HEAD AS WELL. THAT ISN'T THE HALF OF IT, DIRK. YOU'VE BEEN WARNED.

It's come time to revise my review of this book, because I re-read it recently, and yes, i had a pretty good time with it, but still, I have to report one of those sad moments that sometimes happen in life, when you try something you thought was great in childhood and find yourself kind of crushed to discover it's not really as fine as you remembered.

Essentially, my perspective on the two Gently novels has completely reversed since I first read them as a twelve-year-old (or whatever it was). I now see that all those people who said that the first book was better, smarter, etc, were right all along. Don't get me wrong, this is still a fun book with some amusing insights about "life, the universe, and everything", but now I see that there's a good reason that every time I tried to re-read this book, i ended up stopping about half-way through.

You know Neil Gaiman? His books Neverwhere and American Gods were really popular and maybe you've heard of them. I always thought there had to be a Douglas Adams influence on him somehow. But imagine if both of those popular books of his largely consisted of people wandering around commenting on the absurdity of everyday situations, and then in the last twenty pages he threw in some weird stuff about gods or aliens or something. I said in my review of the first novel that this technique of not-getting-to-the-point actually worked rather well, but after reading them back to back in 2017, now I have to say I'm not so sure it's good here. Almost everything I thought was funny and memorable about The Long Dark Teatime of the Soul: the kid and the TV, the visit to the hospital and the Dustin Hoffman Repeater, the trick with the Jaguar and the mechanic's truck, was just a digression.

The big thing I came away with this time is that this is a deeply cynical book. Our main point of view character in the first novel was the musicologist/programmer Richard Macduff. He was a likable guy who was passionate about something. now, here we have an American woman named Kate, who is the sort of person who calls up pizza places that don't deliver just so she can get outraged about them not delivering when she asks them to. yeah, I admit that when I was twelve I thought this was really funny, because it was like something I would have done. But she doesn't really seem passionate about much, and in the end, it's suggested that she's going to use Odin in much the same way as the sleazy lawyer and his wife did. At least I think that's suggested. I'm not entirely clear on it, and Adams might not have really wanted me to be. Despite there being a chapter dedicated to Kate undressing and taking a bath, I wasn't all that won over by her this time.

The good news is that Dirk is in this book a lot more, and he's pretty cool. Not exactly the same mysterious, bombastic and questionable character as in DGHDA, but you get to know him better and, despite doing some pretty outrageous things, I think he's ok and understand why Adams was working on a third book; why there were two TV series ostensibly about him, and so on. I'm sad that the book didn't actually include Dirk making a stand for and defending the old ways of the gods. That speec from the lawyer, a killer villain's speech if I've ever heard one, is sort of the climax of the book. Maybe if this were Doctor Who, Adams' old alumnus, the Doctor would have gone up there and made a strident declamation for justice and understanding. Hell, I could imagine Tom Baker or Peter Capaldi doing it! But this isn't Who and I guess Dirk is an entirely different sort of character. Still, the fact taht there was nothing good after this point, and that the entire excursion to Asgard just seemed empty and perfunctory, annoys me.

This book still has something to say about what it means to "sell out", and how tragic it is. It was probably important for me to read it when I did. It's still funny and sharp. It just feels a bit empty, now, and even possibly a little nasty in an unpleasing way.

For the sake of posterity, here's my original review, written at a different time and with a different impression: one with a nostalgic glow for what the book at one time meant to me.

I've got to admit that, while the Hitchhiker books were fantastic for me as a youngster, they didn't stand up so well and I didn't really have the urge to re-read them. Perhaps it's because I was nearly obsessed upon my initial discovery and immersed myself in the bizarre worlds and antics of the characters so much that I "burned out", or perhaps, and this seems more likely to me, science fiction comedy is ultimately not really my style. Yes, I'm a fairly big SF fan, but I've always felt that unless we're talking about something absolutely timeless, comedy works best when highlighting and satirising the absurdity of everyday, "realistic" people and concerns. This is exactly what Adams does in The Long Dark Tea Time of the Soul, which is undoubtably his most engaging and reletnelsssly funny book from my current perspective.

In the first book, Adams didn't focus on Dirk Gently a great deal, and he remained a sort of mysterious and slightly dodgy figure. This story's largely about him, and a great deal is told from his point of view. We learn that he's pretty much a loser, lazy and that the only reason he has clients at all is that all the lunatics seem to be attracted to his pitch. And yet, his "methods" often seem to bare fruit, and while it gives him business, it confounds his sense of reality and place in the world. The beginning of this book is almost a perfect parody of those old private investigator novels...except here Dirk's sleeping late in his dingy flat and missing all the action, showing up in the middle of a police investigation and hilariously having his nose broken by a TV-magnetised, pot-noodle-slurping kid. It just gets crazier from there, and while apart from a few disparate strands seemingly waving around in the breeze there doesn't appear to be a plot for the first two-thirds of the novel, it sure is entertaining to watch Dirk bumble and wander around antagonising people, trying to avoid the hot potato and sleazy lawyers, getting his car smashed up and then coming up with the perfect scheme to get a recalcitrant mechanic to fix it (this was so genius I really wanted to try it myself), and finally through a series of bizarre events meeting the expatriate New Yorker Kate shector, just in time to get the story moving, sort of.

Kate's an all right character, too. Adams has made her seem fairly real without plunging into farce, a difficult temptation for him to avoid, I'm sure. Her own exploits are about as entertaining as Dirk's, too. I particularly loved the visit to the psychiatric hospital and the Dustin Hoffman telepath (no, I won't say anymore about that, but hint: this is probably much funnier if you get the audiobook read by Douglas Adams himself). Also, she's lucky enough to have Thor as a houseguest!

Yes, Thor! The Norse gods come into this, and they're all bastards and sell-outs, except for Thor, who just wants to go home and to hell with this crappy modern world. I really liked Thor in this book; his bewilderment was endearing beyond belief and Adams did a great job of making him the same grandiose, boastful god of lore and yet imbuing him with a sense of tragedy and loss, while also allowing us to laugh at him.

SO yes, it's a light-hearted, glorious romp that still contains a core of intelligence and, of course, high wit. at twelve when i first read the book I really appreciated what Adams had to say about selling out, in particular, and guess what? I still do. Hail Thor!

I didn’t enjoy this nearly as much as Dirk Gently’s Holistic Detective Agency. It started off interesting, but for some reason I became progressively less interested as the story continued and I put the book down more and more frequently. I also didn’t find it as funny. It had humor, but it didn’t make me laugh as much. I think it intentionally took a more serious tone, which I might have appreciated better if I’d been more interested in the story.

The first book had a mixture of elements from both science fiction and fantasy, but I thought it leaned more toward science fiction. This book, on the other hand, was purely in the fantasy category with Norse gods playing a large role in the story. In many ways this reminded me of American Gods, at least in terms of the basic premise, except without the “American” part. This book was published first, so maybe I would feel differently if I had read it first, but I preferred American Gods.

I’m not really sure why this one didn’t work as well for me as Dirk Gently did but, by the end, I was happy to be done with it.