Douglas Adams

Guess who’s back! Back again!

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Why yes, I do have some Eminem stuck in my head. Why do you ask?

So, yet again, it’s been a while since I’ve posted. Life gets in the way. At any rate, I’m making a pre-New Years resolution to start up the ol’ book blog again because while I have lagged on the posting, I have definitely not lagged in the reading. Thank goodness I have an ereader, or I’d be drowning in books.

Instead of reviewing a book this time, I thought I’d chat about some of my favorite authors and maybe toss out a favorite book from their bibliography. We’ll go alphabetically because I don’t have an all time favorite author. These are my favorite, favorites. I have read a lot more than just the below. And keep in mind that some of these people may be problematic right now, but when I first read them, they were not. And I still love what they wrote, even if I don’t like the person they turned out to be. If we couldn’t separate art from artist, then no one could enjoy a Picasso or a Diego Rivera, a Hemingway or any number of musicians’ works.

Old library or bookstore. This is what my house would be without an ereader.

Douglas Adams – The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy. I mean, it speaks for itself, doesn’t it?

Ilona Andrews – I legit don’t think I could pick between any of her books, I enjoy them all so much but if I had to choose one series…Probably the Innkeeper series. It’s a mix of magic and sci-fi, found family and mystery. It has it all.

Jim Butcher – The Dresden Files. All of them, but in particular, I’d probably choose Changes. And oof did that one just kill me at the end the first time I read it. By the way, his son has started writing too! Check out Dead Man’s Hand by James Butcher.

Gail Carriger – Anything. Legit anything of hers. I have read all her books. I subscribe to her newsletter. I got to meet her in person once! She’s lovely and her writing is amazing. The book that started it all for me is Soulless. It’s steampunk and got me addicted to steampunk. It also makes me realize that I like steampunk (and other stories) that are a little lighter, a little more fun than some other steampunk works (Whitechapel Gods comes to mind).

Agatha Christie – The godmother of mystery. I love Death on the Nile or the Mysterious Affair at Styles.

James S.A. Corey – The Expanse! What an absolutely amazing sci-fi series! I love it so much. It made me thirsty for more sci-fi, but I haven’t quite found anything I love as much as this series.

Blake Crouch – Wayward Pines trilogy. Man, that series definitely kept me guessing, which can be hard to do. Not to toot my own horn, but I’m actually pretty good at figuring out the end game in books, shows and movies (I figured out the Sixth Sense about halfway through), so I love something that can keep me guessing. I would love a fourth or a spin off, Mr. Crouch!

Clive Cussler – The leader in maritime adventure novels! Dirk Pitt, Numa Files, Oregon Files – I like them all. My favs are Raise the Titanic and Inca Gold.

Charlotte English – Weird & Wayward. Victorian Addams family anyone?

Jennifer Estep – The Elemental Assassin series is amazing. Not sure I could pick just one of them. I also like her Mythos Academy books and Galactic Bonds series.

Neil Gaiman & Terry Pratchett – Good Omens. Nuff said.

Simon R. Green – Deathstalker, Dealthstalker Coda, Nightside, Hawk & Fisher, Secret Histories, Shadow’s Fall. I haven’t gotten into his very latest series, but I plan to. Again, hard to pick just one, so maybe Just Another Judgment Day from the Nightside series?

Charlaine Harris – Sookie Stackhouse series. I think I might have to go with Dead to the World, where vampire sheriff Erik loses his memories and Sookie has to figure it out.

Kim Harrison – The Hollows series. Still on-going, even though I thought it had ended. Not up to date on the last couple of books, but I like that Rachel and Trent have gotten their shit together. That was the longest will they/won’t they ever.

Jordan L Hawk – Widdershins series. This is Victorian and kind of Lovecraftian and also the main characters are homosexual at a time where that was punishable by law (or worse).

Faith Hunter – Jane Yellowrock. Can’t go wrong with the first novel, Skinwalker.

Richard Kadrey – Sandman Slim series. I think my fav might be teh first book Sandman Slim.

Annette Marie – Guild Codex, Demonized, Warped and Unveiled. They’re all interconnected, they’re all fun. I just reread all of Demonized and Warped recently. Soooooo good.

Seanan McGuire – The October Daye series. Easily my favorite of the bunch is One Salt Sea. Also check out her Indexing series.

Jessie Mihalik – Starlight’s Shadow, Consortium Rebellion and Books & Broadswords series.

Devon Monk – Ordinary Magic series.

Anne Rice – A toss up between The Mummy or Ramses the Damned and Queen of the Damned.

John Scalzi – Easily Kaiju Preservation Society, though redshirts was amazing for this old Star Trek fan.

Rob Thurman – Cal Leandros and Trixa series. I’m sad that she quite writing before finishing them.

Next month, I’m hoping to review Gail Carriger’s next book, The Dratsie Dilemma.

Don’t Panic

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Courtesy of goodreads.comWell, it’s been a while. Switching jobs will do that to you. Now I’m back and I thought how better to celebrate Towel Day than to review The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy by the Douglas Adams?

Hitchhiker’s Guide starts out with the relatively unassuming Arthur Dent (whom I now mentally picture as Martin Freeman. The movie sucked compared to the book but Freeman was a great Arthur Dent) going about his morning one day before suddenly realizing that his house is about to be torn town. So he lays in front of the bulldozers and refused to move…until his friend Ford Prefect (you mean this isn’t an unassuming earth name?) came to drag him to the pub. At something like 10am.

Ford, as you may have guessed, is not from Guildford as previously claimed. No, he’s from a small planet near Betelgeuse and of all the people on earth he could save from the coming Vogon construction fleet, he chooses Arthur. I think that says a lot about what Ford really thinks of him. I mean, Ford really could have just left him to die with the rest of humanity, but he didn’t.

Ford takes Arthur to the pub and tries to get him to drink several pints of beer in order to prepare himself for what happens next. Arthur is too miserable about his house to really pay attention. He does, however, notice when the giant space cubes come floating through the atmosphere. Ford manages to get him a towel while Arthur is gibbering and the pair are picked up by the cooks on board just before destruction, simply because it will annoy the Vogons. And really, who doesn’t want to annoy Vogons?

This is where we find out that the name of the book is actually the name of a book within. The Hitchhiker’s Guide is the best selling book in the universe, allowing people to hitchhike across the galaxy on less than 30 Altarian dollars a day. And it has the words Don’t Panic in big comforting letters across the front. It’s kinda funny reading this in the age of smartphones, because the description of the guide sounds like it’s a smartphone or small tablet. 🙂

We’re also introduced to a little creature called the Babel Fish. Those of you familiar with the the website…this is where the name comes from. It’s a little yellow fish like creature that goes in your ear (an image which always gives me the willies thanks to Star Trek II) and translates for you. It lives off the brainwaves put out by other people and excretes (ew) a translation matrix into your brain. Organic universal translator.

Meanwhile, all the way across space (which is mind-bogglingly huge), the galactic President Zaphod Beeblebrox is planning the most amazing thing. Not the unveiling of the infinite improbability drive, but the theft of said device – a ship called the Heart of Gold. He and companion Trillian make off with the device after he shows off a bit for the billions of viewers at home.

How are these two events related? Well, in normal reality…they don’t. But thanks to the infinite improbability drive of the Heart of Gold, Zaphod and Trillian pick up two recently spaced hitchhiker’s. Too bad they couldn’t have saved them from the Vogon poetry. In an even more improbable twist, Trillian, Arthur and Zaphod all know each other.

This starts a series of truly wild adventures in which we learn the earth was actually a giant computer, dolphins are the second most intelligent animals on earth (beat out only by mice) and that the answer to the ultimate question is 42. Now, I loved this book and the follow up books. I have a soft spot for dry British humor and Douglas Adams is a great mix of witty and weird. But I will admit that these books aren’t for everyone.

However, if you (for some reason), haven’t ever read Hitchhiker’s Guide, give it a try. I don’t think you’ll be disappointed. And whatever you do, do not watch the movie before or immediately after reading the book. Martin Freeman was excellent but the rest of the cast sucked balls. Rating: A+