This is one of my favorite books of all time. I will re-read or re-listen to it at least once a year and even though I know the story backwards and forwards, it never fails to entertain me.

Adams addiction to mocking the every day mundane and inane just really tickles me. Like, every single time, I'm laughing at simple irreverence. I feel like Adams was the type of man that you really wanted to avoid slightly annoying because you would end up in one of his books, in a section about bistro math, or how no culture has the term "pretty as an airport."

LDTTS is a quick read, its hilarious, its probably the light-hearted thing that you are looking for that you dont even know you want.

Also, Britain, do you seriously not get pizza delivered? I mean, really? What century is this even?

"'You are an extremely inquisitive and presumptuous young lady,' exclaimed Dirk.

'And you,' said Sally Mills, 'are very strange.'

'Only,' said Dirk, 'as strange as I need to be.'" (86)

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"'Immortals are what you wanted, said Thor in a low, quiet voice. 'Immortals are what you got. It is a little hard on us. You wanted us to be for ever, so we are for ever. Then you forget about us. But still we are for ever. Now at last, many are dead, many dying,' he then added in quiet voice, 'but it takes a special effort.'" (176)

~_~_~_~_~_~_~_~_~_~_~_~_~_~_~_~_~

I first read this book many years ago and - due to the one bonus of advancing age - remembered nothing about it. This is supposed to be Douglas' "worst" book but I beg to differ. I really enjoyed it, and it's sad that Dirk Gently never got more adventures.

Predating Neil Gaiman's American Gods, it nevertheless shares a similar idea: of the old gods still lingering in the modern world, fading for lack of belief.

Dirk Gently, a private detective with a rumpled, buffoonish exterior that disguises a sharp mind, is a "holistic" detective who believes in the "interconnectednesss of all things". Things tend to happen around him, and he bumbles around from strand to strand until he gets himself caught firmly and can finally see the whole sticky web, being in danger (and a danger to himself) the whole while.

Dirk is hired to protect a client from an unlikely supernatural threat but he (in typical fashion) oversleeps and the client ends up dead, with a contract stating he sold something - presumably his soul - in an unknown language.

Meanwhile, practical no-nonsense Kate Schechter experiences an actual "Act of God" - she's behind Thor at the airport check-in desk when he gets frustrated and loses his temper. Curious but skeptical, she can't leave it alone and knows she's not crazy.

Eventually, Dirk's meandering rambling path crosses with Kate's determined one, and that of Odin-the-All-Father, who just wants to stay in the comfortable nursing home of his choice.

Delightfully entertaining and clever, this stands up well despite its age! Dirk is definitely a love him or loathe him kind of guy, but I know which side I'm on :)

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

A hot potato, a new fridge - hand delivered from the black market - and a severed head on a record player.
Dirk Gently is on a new assignment, or so it seems.
Is it really possible that a blast in Heathrow T2 is an "Act of God" or is it just a neat and come-in-handy clause in the insurance policy?
Is it true that you can´t get a pack of cigarettes after sunset anywhere in London and St Pancras Station resembles Valhalla?
Have the old Norse Gods sold out, or been caught in a hostile takeover?
And as if these questions are not properly holistic, what about the infamous man with the scythe and all the eagles?
The truth is out there with the Coca Cola vending machine and loads of fresh crispy white bedlinen of the absolutely best quality.
Please have your ticket and passport ready, or you will not be allowed on the plane.

This is for you who want to believe - to everyone else its 300 pages of psychobabble.

How do you describe Adams' Dirk Gently books? I have a hard time not because they can't be genre-classified but because they don't fit any novel form out there. Stream-of-consciousness on the part of the author? Is Gently the main character? Who is the main character? What is going on? There's one thing going on, though--Adams does a lot of describing. It's a wealth of description. Plot? Pish-tosh! We don't need no stinking plot! That's not why you read an Adams novel anyway. So just let Adams mess with your mind. But if you aren't acquainted with his work, read the first two novels in the Hitchhiker's Guide series first, then come in for a landing on the first Dirk Gently novel. You'll thank me.

A quirky, random, humorous, zany, fun, enjoyable read that started out with a bang and ended abruptly. An airport check-in desk explodes. Around the same time in a basement there is a bloody severed head revolving around a record turntable. The immortal gods, Thor and Odin are in conflict. Holistic detective Dirk Gently investigates.

If you enjoyed Dirk Gently’s Holistic Detective Agency then you should find this an entertaining read.

Here are some examples of the author’s quirkily clever writing style:

‘The impossible often has a kind of integrity to it which the merely improbable lacks.’
‘Words used carelessly, as if they did not matter in any serious way, often allowed otherwise well-guarded truths to seep through.’
‘The idea was fantastically, wildly improbable. But like most fantastically, wildly improbably ideas it was at least as worthy of consideration as a more mundane one to which the facts had been strenuously bent to fit.’

Sarò subito sincero: se avessi letto questo libro in solitaria, molto probabilmente il voto sarebbe stato un 2 (e quindi grazie Chiara).

Ma la verve e l'assurdo umorismo di Adams ben si prestano a una lettura in compagnia: ci vuole una spalla all'altezza, per apprezzare appieno le tante insensatezze che costellano questo strampalatissimo romanzo.
Sono inoltre ragionevolmente certo che l'incomprensibilità di quasi tutto ciò che è scritto qua dentro può condurre a voli pindarici più o meno costruttivi. Affrontare in due tali cervellotiche elucubrazioni, con buona probabilità concorrerà a limitare l'emicrania derivante dalla lettura. Siete avvisati.

Il talento di Adams nel piazzare scene completamente slegate tra loro senza soluzione di continuità, per poi ricollegare tutti i fili, è sicuramente unico. Purtroppo ho trovato che in questo caso l'autore si sia fatto prendere troppo la mano, lasciando il lettore totalmente spaesato fino alle ultimissime pagine (anzi, anche oltre...). Per riuscire a cogliere tutti i rimandi e le scene apparentemente senza senso, questo libro necessiterebbe probabilmente di ben più di una lettura. Ma questo ha reso la prima un po' troppo ostica, per essere considerata totalmente piacevole.

Io adoro l'umorismo e l'inventiva scatenata di questo scrittore (la Guida Galattica è probabilmente uno dei miei libri preferiti), ma in questo caso (come nei capitoli meno ispirati della saga principale) ho notato notevoli alti e bassi, con capitoli riuscitissimi ed estremamente gradevoli, alternati ad altri decisamente sottotono e forzati, sia come comicità che come lunghezza.

Un punto a favore è segnato grazie ai personaggi: Dirk Gently e compagnia (fino ai personaggi più marginali e secondari) sono caratterizzati in maniera originale e godibile. Dal protagonista fino all'ultima delle "comparse", ognuno è a suo modo memorabile e inserito in scene e dialoghi davvero surreali e spassosi.

In definitiva ho trovato La lunga oscura pausa caffè dell'anima eccessivamente disorganico (per quanto questa mancanza di ordine sia assolutamente voluta e costruita sapientemente) e disomogeneo in quanto a qualità e a divertimento generato. Ciò non toglie che sia stata sicuramente un'esperienza interessante, nella sua completa e totalizzante follia.

Il mio consiglio è questo: se non conoscete Douglas Adams, provate prima di tutto  tGuida galattica per gli autostoppisti (Guida galattica per gli autostoppisti, #1)  o  Dirk Gently, agenzia investigativa olistica (Dirk Gently #1) . Se apprezzate quelli, potrete trovare qualcosa di positivo anche in questo libro. Altrimenti rivolgetevi altrove: ne va della vostra salute psicofisica!

I don't exactly know how to rate this because on the one hand it was entertaining... I read it quite quickly on a holiday since it was the perfect sized book to fit in my pocket. I also really like Douglas Adams books. I love his brand of chaotic sci-fi adventure about wacky characters.

... But on the other hand, this one just didn't quite click with me. I hadn't read the first Dirk Gently book (only watched the TV series), so perhaps it's just that I'm less familiar with it? Or perhaps it's just that it was a little too chaotic. A little too random. A little too quirky for quirky's sake? The story felt like it was going places then ended fairly abruptly within the last 6 chapters, and the 'big resolution' left me with more questions than answers.

Or maybe I'm the one that has changed since reading The Hitch Hiker's Guide to the Galaxy: A Trilogy in Five Parts as a kid. What was excellent to me as a young reader now feels mildly annoying. So maybe it's just a me problem?

A friend asked what the book had to do with teacups, since there's a large tea set on the front cover, and having read the whole thing I have to say I have no idea. As far as I remember, nobody drinks tea (there's some coffee in one scene), and none of it takes place at tea time.

Overall, 2/5. I wouldn't necessarily recommend this one but I absolutely would recommend just about anything else Douglas Adams has written. I will go back and seek out the first Dirk Gently book just for closure's sake, and perhaps it'll prompt me to update this review when I have more *gestures vaguely* context. Perhaps.

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!

Originally posted at my blog The Otaku Librarian.

It all began at Heathrow, with a large, blonde man trying to get a ticket to Oslo without a credit card or any proof of identification. Add one exploding passenger check-in desk, a decapitated head on a record player (playing Hot Potato - Don't pick it up / pick it up / pick it up / pick it), and the famed Dirk Gently, and you don't know what you'll end up with.

I certainly didn't, have any idea of what'd happen, that is. This was an odd romp into the world of Dirk Gently and Douglas Adams, whose Hitchhiker's book I had previously read and was not enormously enamored with. I did find it amusing, don't get me wrong, but I didn't love it, say, as much as Pratchett's Discworld novels. But, anyway, rambling aside, one of my friends said that I had to read it and that she had the audiobook and that I could borrow it. So I did.

I love Douglas Adams' reading voice! The variation in voices, depending on the characters that he was currently narrating for, was great and entertaining. He went from Toerag's slimy obsequious tone (reminiscent of Black Adder in his butler-phase) to his "normal" narrative voice which kept reminding me of Hugh Laurie. Not in his American / House voice, of course. Maybe that's just a sign I want to rewatch Black Adder (again). The only downside of the loaned discs was the lack of divided chapters as well as any mention of chapters, so sometimes I got confused in regard to scene changes / time skips, etc. But it wasn't a big deal.

The humor, I did enjoy and it ranged from the simply ridiculous (the great punishment of being varnished to a wooden floor) to the snorting-with-laughter in regard to a certain scene including an eagle that I won't spoil. The plot, due to the lack of chapter headings, I got a bit confused at first about what was really happening, but I went along happily with the ride because I was enjoying it. And, of course, in the end it all ties together so I was pleased.

And oops, I had forgotten to review this since I finished it a while back. But it was a fun and entertaining read that you don't take too seriously, but you'll leave with a smile and a song that you can get stuck in your friends' heads. Wee!

Lots of hilarious moments, though the pacing's not quite up to the level set in the first Dirk Gently book. The ending especially feels rushed - he spends a long time building up this fantastic web of complexity, and then rips it down with a climax and ending that together are barely longer than "But it all worked out okay in the end."

But, as a math student working through too many proofs right now, I really love Dirk's way of thinking! ...especially his reversal of Sherlock-Holmes-style logic:

"What was the Sherlock Holmes principle? 'Once you have discounted the impossible, then whatever remains, however improbable, must be the truth.' "
"I reject that entirely," said Dirk sharply. "The impossible often has a kind of integrity to it which the merely improbable lacks. How often have you been presented with an apparently rational explanation of something that works in all respects other than one, which is just that it is hopelessly improbable? Your instinct is to say, 'Yes, but he or she simply wouldn't do that.' "
"Well, it happened to me today, in fact," replied Kate.
"Ah, yes," said Dirk, slapping the table and making the glasses jump, "your girl in the wheelchair--a perfect example. The idea that she is somehow receiving yesterday's stock market prices apparently out of thin air is merely impossible, and therefore must be the case, because the idea that she is maintaining an immensely complex and laborious hoax of no benefit to herself is hopelessly improbable. The first idea merely supposes that there is something we don't know about, and God knows there are enough of those. The second, however, runs contrary to something fundamental and human which we do know about. We should therefore be very suspicious of it and all its specious rationality."

Words to live by. Stay open-minded, because there's a lot we don't know about.