Book 107: So Long, and Thanks For All the Fish

This book was good. I wasn't say great, especially compared to the last one, but good nonetheless.

There were three things that struck me when I was reading this book, the first of which was the introduction. Only an author would think to give his audience a spoilers warning, and I'm glad he did. The next two are mostly plot based so spoilers ahead with the usual spacing.

****SPOILERS****

Okay, so I really enjoyed the plot of the book, especially the flying sex. I thought it was particularly fun. I also really enjoyed Arthur's cool use of astronomy. I'm taking astronomy right now so I found it particularly relevant because we talked about the movement of stars over time last week. Finally, the escape plan was brilliant. This is all I have to say. I thought it might come out better, but there you have it.

****SPOILERS****

So, as I said earlier, So Long, and Thanks For All the Fish was not as good as Life, The Universe and Everything but I would say that it`s just about on par with The Restuarnt at the End of the Universe. All in all, it would hard to say that a book by Douglas Adams is bad. Furthermore, it would be hard to find something to compare it to that wasn't written by him (this fact is up for dispute, I haven't personally read anything that I feel compares).

I give this book 8.5 diodes out of 10. It is really good and if you've liked the other installments of this trilogy of five I wouldn't say that you will definitely like it, but there is a high probability that you will.

Also, sorry for the quality of the picture, I didn't feel like spending a lot of time searching for it so we got what we got.

Book 106: Life, the Universe and Everything

This is a fantastic book. It might be my favourite. Many consider Life, the Universe and Everything to be the best book in Douglas Adam's The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy Trilogy of Five, and I would tend to agree with them. I have learned quite a few things about this book.

First, messing around with time travel almost always ends badly. What I mean by almost always is that it most definitely will be an interesting trip and a good story, but the mess that you leave behind will be disastrous.

Secondly, if you do happen to live in a place where time travel is possible and you're fighting evil robots and you think that you've won, in all likelihood you haven't. Turns out that they have the ability to time travel too. It brings to mind the ending of Bill and Ted's Bogus Journey when Bill and Ted have a time war with the main villain where they all go back and forth through time trying to out do each other. The robots will do this and there is a possibility that they might win.

Thirdly, just because you don't understand something doesn't mean you should destroy it. It will only make other people mad and make a huge mess that you'll all be really upset over for years to come.

Fourthly, if someone offers you super advanced technology and says it will do whatever it is that you want to accomplish, don't accept it. They have an ulterior motive and it's probably not a good one.

Fifthly, finally, and most importantly; Sometimes the question and the answer can't be understood together, but make sense separately.

 This review is almost done, I think. I highly suggest reading the epilogue. It was very important and I know that sometimes people skip it.

I give this book 10 Cricket wickets out of 10. It was a fantastic book.

Book 105: The Restaurant at the End of the Universe

To be truthful to you, my most loyal readers, I haven't fully digested this book yet. Douglas Adams has this wonderful writing style were everything seems carefree and funny but is really questioning everything we know. It's absolutely brilliant but it always takes me a while to think about what I've just read.

I'm going to inturpt this review with some spoilers so I can properly discuss this.









starting








now

****SPOILERS****

I didn't really like the whole finding the man who runs the universe bit. I found it ultimately disappointing. However, Arthur and Ford's journey back to prehistoric earth is another story altogether. I found that the aliens that settled earth said a lot about our consumerism culture. Similar to the way The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy was a wonderful commentary on bureaucracy, and this one started out on the same path, The Restaurant at the End of the Universe, continuing on Douglas Adams trend to dissect the way we live in his writing, has written a wonderful commentary on what it is to be a consumerism culture with too many people researching what everyone likes best, and what colour suits what product best to actually think. 

Take, for instance, the hyper intelligent beings on the planet who were forced to have very loud conversations to stop them from thinking because it made the other less intelligent planets around them to feel stupid, the fact that they built a restaurant at the end of the universe, and the fact that flying spaceships into suns during concerts was deemed normal. This use of things in excess and submission of our intelligence is proven only to injure our society, as much as that space ship may have made the planet a more delightful place to live.

****SPOILERS****

I give this book 9.5 leaves out of 10. It seems to be a popular rating today. I'd like to say that everyone should read this book, but in my heart I know this is not true. There are people who, unfortunately, think that Mr. Adams isn't funny and that his books are terrible. This is mostly due to the fact that they spend too much of their time talking and if you read this book you would know what I meant by that. The point is that these books are very very smart and if you don't get what they're talking about you wont enjoy them nearly as much as you should. I would suggest you tried but you probably wouldn't like it (har har Marvin). Needless to say, I've enjoyed it quite a lot and I would hope that you would too.

Book 104: Westmark

I must say that I really enjoyed this novel. Although Mr. Alexander's books are vastly unknown and underrated he will always be one of my favourite authors. I fell in love with his Chronicles of Pydian series 7 years ago and never looked back. Since that time I've taken every opportunity to scoop up his books and read them. Unfortunately, most of his books are rarely printed because no one really know about him, in fact this year I had the great fortune to come across a newly printed box set of The Chronicles of Pydian at Cosco. Needless to say I bought it then and plan on reading in fairly shortly so you can expect reviews of his lovely work at some point in the near future. The opportunity I had to get Westmark came several years ago at a library book sale. I thought it looked interesting before I was that it was my Lloyd Alexander at which point I knew that I wouldn't be leaving without it. It was one of the best decisions I've made at a library in quite some time.

In the back of the book Mr. Alexander makes some remarks about his book that I find relevant so I'm going to share them with you now. (Feel free to skip over them if you think they will spoil anything for you, as always the last paragraph shall be perfectly safe to read)

"I had been writing happily for a good while, and discovered that stories of fantasy worlds were for me the best way to express my attitudes and feelings about people, problems, and relationships in our real world.
Still, questions stuck in my mind: the uses and abuses of power, not only the conflict between good and evil but-far more difficult-the conflict between good and good, noble ideas broken by violence even  in a good cause; and, in the midst of tragedies, events that were hysterically, incongruously funny"

He later continues on to say that he doesn't think that he has answered any of these questions but he has certainly approached them in this first volume of the Westmark series.

His characters are as easy to love as they are to hate and the ending was tricksy. All in all, this book was a pleasure to read. It's not too fantasy but at the same time it's not really real.

If you have recently read my review for A Storm of Swords you might think that it is odd that I'm continuing to put this book in the fantasy genre were I have stripped the Game of Thrones series of the title when it certainly has more fantastical elements than Westmark. Unfortunately, I don't have a satisfying answer as to why I've done this at all.

I give Westmark 9.5 wells out of 10. Certainly an excellent read if you can ever find it.

There are three other books in the series and I am going to try to hunt them down because I would like to read them for the obvious reasons. I'd also like to note that I give this review a 3 out of 10. Obviously my reviewing skills are not getting any better. If you have any handy tips for me please feel free to leave some helpful comments.

Book 103: Free Will

For all intensive purposed I've enjoyed this book. It was easy to read and the ideas weren't too hard to cope with.

Mr. Harris writing style was quite enjoyable. Everything flowed nicely, which is a wonderful change from most of the unapproachable philosophy that I've been digesting for the past year.  This being said, I found that his idea in this particular book is an old one, though all his analogies shined new light on them and made them far more accessible for the average person.

I give this book a 7 out of 10. I believe I would say that it is a good book to get you starting on a philosophical journey, but maybe not. I'd give it a chance anyways.

Book 102: A Storm of Swords

I liked and disliked this book. Some of the characters made me really frustrated, were others I miss.

As with most of the books I review I don't have a lot to say about this one that wont give away anything, so what I will say is this: out of all the books that I own in this series so far (all but A Dance with Dragons aka A Dance with Depression) this one was the longest and the most exciting. I really enjoyed the book most of the time even though there were a few twists in the plot that I could have done without.

I give this book an 8 out of 10. I twas good but not the greatest book I've ever read. I have a slight problem with this whole series. It's more of an adventure book than fantasy proper, but maybe that's just me. This series, like so many others, seems to demand to be read from beginning to end and because of this I would recommend this book to anyone who has read the other and has enjoyed them just a little bit. As a series so far I would recommend it to most who enjoy medieval based fantasy, though not to those faint of heart. I would also recommend anyone who watching the show should read the books. They're far better than the show and because you already know parts of the plot it will make them easier to read.