Review: Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy - Douglas Adams

Book Title/Author:
Publisher/Year Published: 2005 by RH Audio
Where I got it: The library
Rating: 4/5 stars
Challenges:A to Z Male Name: Z, A to Z Female Name: T, A to Z Book Title: H, A to Z Authors: D, 2011 TBR Challenge

Summary:via Goodreads
Don't leave Earth without this hilarious international bestseller about the end of the world and the happy-go-lucky days that follow. Join the gruesome twsome of Arthur Dent and his friend, Ford Perfect, in their now-famous intergalactic journey through time and space.

Thoughts:
I can't believe it took me this long to read this, well listen to it anyway. Back in 2004 I took a novels class where we were allowed to chose our own books. My one friend read this trilogy and told me I would love it. Well 6ish years later and I finally got around to it!

I think I really liked this book hearing it read to me by the lovely Stephen Fry. Would I have liked it just reading it myself? Sure. But I really think that his voices and twists on some of the dialogue really brought it to life for me during the snow-filled trecks home from work.

The most interesting part for me was stumbling across a word or phrase that I'd heard thrown around before and realizing that it originated in this book! And it was so nice to finally hear the story behind the answer to the life, universe and everything!

It's hard for me to describe this book in review form. I read a review on Goodreads that mentioned that however you feel about Monty Python is how you will feel about this book, and I think that is true. It's out there comedy; sometimes it's extremely random. But overall, it's super entertaining! So if you like fantastical fantasy and random insanity, I think that you would enjoy reading or listening to this book!

I plan to continue my listening journey with the other 4 audiobooks and also the radio plays!

A Grimm Challenge: Loyalty

I am at work right now and I left my nook and home, so I can’t remember the specific ones that I read but I’ll give you a review of what I can remember. I remember reading one about Faithful John, who gave his everything to protect his king and was rewarded with being turned to stone from a curse. The King realized he screwed up and agreed to sacrifice his kids to bring John back. It worked and the kids ended up not dying either.

As I read these, I try and figure out what lesson they were trying to teach kids. What is the message? I’m guessing that this one was a story of loyalty. Loyalty will be rewarded no matter how long you have to wait. A decent message.

Another loyalty was one where a girl accidentally turned her 9 brothers into crows. If she didn’t talk or laugh for 7 years, they would be restored. She got married and her evil mother in law painted her out to be some sort of freak to her husband and convinced him to kill her. Just when she was about to die, the 7 years were up and a happily ever after was achieved. Alright, family (*cough* loyalty) is important.

The Man Who Could Not Shiver (or something to that extent) was kind of creepy. He spent his whole life trying to learn how to shiver. He kept offering people money to teach him how and all these creepy things kept happening to him. But he just didn’t understand and thus was not scared. As for me, the idea of a burning corpse hanging from a rope on a tree is burning into my brain.

I can’t remember for sure how it ended, but I think it was love that made him learn how to shiver, which, if true, provokes a rolled-eyed reaction.

There is one more that I can vaguely remember. It was about old animals leaving their lives where they were about to be killed or replaced. They wanted to start a band, and ended up in a house living out their life in happy peace. What I get upon great reflection is be kind to your elders. Or that singing animals are awesome. Not sure which.

So far I’ve been disappointed in the creepiness of Grimm’s tales. I've heard that they are the creepy to define all creepy tales. They are similar to any Greek myths (like the one where the live children are in the wolves belly alive and whole and they cut it open and replace it with rocks), but where are the kids who dance until their feet bleed? Maybe coming up… I still have 500 more pages to go.

B&N Classics

For this task you need to read a book off the Barnes and Noble classic list. Classics

Pygmalion by George Bernard Shaw
first published 1914
Notes: I received this ebook free from Barnes and Noble classic summer downloads
Rating: 4/5

Just a warning before we begin. I go a little into detail about the relationship between Eliza and Henry which includes commentary about what happens after. If you have not seen the play and want to be surprised, be warned.

When I was in high school, I tried out for Pygmalion. I didn't get any part and in my anguish did not go see the show. I had heard that My Fair Lady was based on this play, but I've never seen that. I've read the myth about Pygmalion, but honestly didn't make the connection until I was reading the footnotes. So suffice it to say all I knew about Pygmalion's Eliza and Henry I learned from Family Guy.

So with practically a clean slate I dove in and I must say I rather enjoyed myself. I've always liked the quotes I've seen by Shaw floating around the internet, but never made the connection to the playwright.

It was interesting, surprisingly funny and quite entertaining. I could see in my head some of the cues onstage and how well they would work. I enjoyed Eliza and Henry's interactions the most, and was honestly quite confused by the ending. I clicked next page and there was no more play, but a nice essay by Shaw about what happened after. Toward the end there is quite a conversation between Higgins and Eliza which to me it dripped with sexual tension, but that was just my romance novel reader brain apparently. Because that is not how it ended. It was really interesting reading Shaw talking about why he chose to end the play the way he did going against what the mainstream public would want. Apparently, he added this afterword because everyone kept asking, but why can't they be together?

There have been times, wikipedia told me, that certain directors have changed the ending to suit the happiness of the audience, but I understand where Shaw is coming from. The play he wrote is a jab and society. Its a comedic satire, not a love story. There is no need for a happily ever after, because this is supposed to be real life. It's interesting also because the myth of Pygmalion has the sculptor living happily ever after with his creation, so he even deviated from the source material.

I don't know how I feel about changing the ending to suit the coffers. Part of me says "If you don't like it, write your own play!" but the other part of me says "Gotta do what's best for business." I am not really curious to see how My Fair Lady ends but I would tend to be more lenient about this seeing as it is an adaptation of the play.

So in conclusion, this really is a great play. I really enjoyed it and would love to see it onstage at some point.

A Grimm Challenge: The Frog Prince

I have decided to start reading my way though the Brothers Grimm fairy tales. Since there are quite a few, according to my nook 607 pages worth, I decided to do a small write up of each, or every couple, as I go through them.

The first one on the list is the story of The Frog Prince. I’ve heard of this tale. Girl goes to a fountain, meets a talking frog, kisses him, he turns into a handsome prince and they live happily ever after the end.

Well not quite.

In the original, we have a beautiful youngest daughter of the king playing with her golden ball. It falls in the fountain and she promises the talking frog that if he gets it for her, she will be his friend and let him live/be with her in the castle. Agreement occurs, but after she’s got her golden ball back she completely reneges and runs away.

The frog hobbles his way up to the castle and demands his fee. The daughter is like, “Ew gross! Frog cooties!”. The king intercedes and is all like “Dude, you made a promise. Stop being a brat.” She begrudgingly keeps her promise until she gets so pissed off at how ugly the thing is that she throws him against the wall.

She throws him against the wall! And this causes him to turn into a prince!

What kind of promotion of violence is this? What I get from the heroine in this story is make false promises and violence will lead to awesome rewards.

According to the footnote, the story is supposed to represent the scared virgin afraid of a man’s beastly desires, and then after the fear is gone it is replaced with happiness, because sex is not that bad. I guess I could see this, but taken at face value and not reading into it so much, the lesson I get is being a bitch will result in great rewards.

Maybe next time someone is annoying me I’ll throw them into the wall and get a prince in return.

For Those We Love To Hate

Read a book written from a villain's point of view.

For this I read the infamous Lolita by Vladimir Nabokov. Don't be fooled; despite Nakokov being Russian, this book is not a translation. And yet it has the most brilliant prose.

The review is featured today over at The Broke and the Bookish. Check it out!

Here is a teaser:

It is beautifully written. You would never think that you could get caught up in the mind of such a sick person, but you do. You're not really rooting for him, per say, but I definitely understood him most of the time. The author sums this up in the foreward, "But how magically his singing violin can conjure up a tendresse, a compassion for Lolita that makes us entranced with the book while abhorring its author!"

Happy Birthday to Me! Book A

In honor of my (Nicole's) July 10th birthday:

A. Read a book by a writer who is a Cancer (June 21-July 22)
AND
B. Read a book that has a NOUN in the title. This noun MUST appear on page 31 of your Part A book (I am turning 31 this summer).

First off. It's not my birthday. Mine is a good 5 months away (also so is Christmas. fyi get your shopping done early!) It was the designer of this challenge's birthday. And thus our Cancer challenge.

(Side note about Cancers. My roommate in college is a Cancer and she was always so mad she couldn't get the panties that had your astrological sign on them. She thought it would just be asking for trouble.)

Anyway book A was The Outsiders by S.E. Hinton. The Outsider's is a classic coming of age tale. I read this as a 7th grader and was enthralled. I loved everyone from Ponyboy to Dally. I wanted Sodapop to be my brother or maybe my boyfriend... I was a seventh grade girl.

I remember loving this book so much that a few months later I got the book out from the library and read the entire thing out loud to my younger sister, who also really enjoyed it.

Now, I reread it, hoping to feel that magic again. But it didn't happen for me. I found myself reading it more as a look back into a time where they used words like "tuff" and "heaters." In a side note though, when I read that in 7th grade I thought they were literally talking about heaters. You know, the small portable kind. Taking heaters to a rumble always seemed kind of strange to me.

Why was I not captivated again? Did I love it the first go round because I was in love with the '50s decade? Did I relate to it more as a preteen? Probably a little of both. I enjoyed it this time, but i enjoy the memory of it more. The next time I read this, if ever, it will be to someone who can show me it again through the eyes of a 12 year old.

I still give it four stars though, if only for the memory of what once was 5.

I also remember seeing the movie of this with all those young stars (like Tom Cruise) and being utterly disappointed. "Way to ruin a good book", I thought. I henceforth ignored its existence.

Has that ever happened to you? The movie ruin the book? Which ones? I am sure I have more that this applies to, but it's just when I think of this book that memory of my dislike for the movie is there as well.

Six Degrees of Separation: Book A

In honor of Six Degrees of Separation (play premiered on May 16, 1990) and Six Degrees of Kevin Bacon (headlined on April 7, 1994, do the following:

A. Read any book off your TBR
AND
B. Read a book that the author is at a maximum of six degrees of separation from the author in Part A. In your post for this task you must explain the connection in order to get credit.

At first, this was a bit daunting. How am I going to pick a book that can be connected to another book? Well what happened was I really wanted to read Fahrenheit 451 so I spent at least 2 hours finding a connection to a book I had just randomly picked up off the shelf (I'll review that one next).

Book Title/Author: Fahrenheit 451 by Ray Bradbury
Year Published: 1953
Where I got it: The Campus Library
Rating: 4/5 stars

I'm not going to lie. I had no idea what this book would be about when I first picked it up. So when I read the opening section about how he is a book burner and books burn at 451 degrees (I see what you did there, Mr. Bradbury), I was intrigued. Why did it come to this? What happened to America?

The book goes on to mostly answer these questions and leads you along through this world through the main character who is a fireman (now this means book burner). He gets into some trouble and dystopian shenanigans ensue.

During the reading, I would have given this book a three, but since I stopped reading, I ruminated over the concept for at least an hour. Thus I had to give it a four. The concept of a world without books is truly a nightmare world for me. As with all good dystopian literature, Bradbury presents it to us in a way that makes it seem this society is not far off from our own.

My new favorite question to ask readers of this book is "If you could save only one book for humanity, which would it be?"

I cannot come up with an answer. I can barely do the what books would you take to a desert island game.


Here is how I completed the 6 degree challenge:

Book A: Fahrenheit 451 by Ray Bradbury
Book B: In the Electric Eden: Stories by Nick Arvin

Ray Bradbury wrote Fahrenheit 451 which is being (re)made into a movie directed by Frank Darabont.
Frank Darabont also directed The Shawshank Redemption, The Green Mile, and The Mist, all written by Steven King.
Steven King was on Late Night with Conan O'Brien in Feb 1999
Conan O'Brien also interviewed Fred Savage in Feb 1999
Fred Savage graduated from Stanford where Nick Arvin is also a grad.