I won’t lie – I’ve been avoiding Jules Verne’s classic tale of a giant beast under the sea. I’ve started it a few times and just haven’t been able to get into it. But I’m doing some traveling for work this week, so I’ll be sitting in airports and hotel rooms, giving me a little downtime to get some reading done. So I thought I’d tackle 20,000 Leagues again. Maybe I just need to be isolated with few other entertainment options available to break through the wall and get to the meat of the story. Never underestimate the power of boredom…

As I said in my previous S-5 post, there’s no way I’m going to add anything new or original to the discussion of this high school/college English class staple.

So let me just say, if you haven’t read any Vonnegut, this is a really great place to start. It has everything – the rapid-fire delivery, the unusual narrative structure, the minimal dialog, wonderful observations of the world around us, and even a funny drawing at the end of the book. It doesn’t hurt that the message of life, death, and everything else is very moving, funny, and humbling.

I’m back to Moby-Dick right now (via Stanza on my iPod no less), so look for some updates on that soon. One of these days I’m going to read a book that hasn’t been written about extensively, I promise.

I’m about halfway through my next 100 Novels Project book, Kurt Vonnegut’s classic, Slaughterhouse-Five.

I’ve read this one before; the last time about 4 years ago. It’s not an easy book for some people because of the structure. I mean, you have a guy who is “unstuck in time”, so the narrative jumps all over the place – in World War II for one page, 1960s America the next, and some imaginary planet (presumably) called Tralfamadore on the following page. There are also quite a few heady concepts like the notion that time is not a series of cascading events, but actually occurs all at once, making the ideas of birth and death meaningless.

I have to admit this is probably another of those books that I’m not going to write about much. I mean, let’s face it, I’m not going to say anything that so many college students before me have not already regurgitated so they can muster a B- in English 101. So I will update again when I’m finished, but there won’t be any huge, in-depth research or analysis going on here. If you would like a more thorough examination, I suggest you check out the Wikipedia entry or SparkNotes.

Look for an update when I’m done.

I just finished The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy. The copy I have is a version that was sold to promote the 2005 film adaptation starring Mos Def, Martin Freeman, and Zooey Deschanel. With that in mind, the book is 309 pages long, but 93 pages deals with the production of the film. I didn’t know this until I was on page 216 of the book and the story suddenly stopped.

Now I’m all for cliffhangers. I’m all for a series of books or movies that continues the story. But, man, talk about leaving you hanging – there was zero resolution to this book. Even the Lord of the Rings saga, which was not originally intended to be broken into a trilogy, but was meant to be read as one, long story, had more natural breaks between books than HHG left us with. Maybe it plays differently on the radio, where this story was first produced, but on the page I was left feeling very disappointed with our heroes’ escape from…something.

Then again, maybe this is intentional. Maybe Adams was playing with the storytelling status quo, wherein a story has three specific acts and closes with a satisfying dénouement. Maybe he wanted to mess with us; to throw us off our balance. The rest of the book is so haphazard and random that perhaps this shouldn’t surprise us when he stops before we know why anything is happening.

I guess what I’m saying is, for me, HHG was more a jumble of really funny pieces, but the overall story left me very disappointed. What’s most frustrating is that I appreciate a movie that’s structured like this. In fact, I love Will Ferrell’s Anchorman, primarily because it’s little more than sketch comedy scenes strung together with a threadbare plot. But for whatever reason, this absurdist storytelling doesn’t work for me in a book. And what’s most frustrating about that is I really thought some of it was hilarious.

I loved the concept of what mice on planet Earth really were. I loved Marvin, “the Paranoid Android.” The inner monologue of a missile that was suddenly turned into a whale cracked me up! But put it all together and you don’t really have much coherence. It’s almost like someone turned the improbability drive on at around the midway point of the book.

I know I’m going to get crucified for this in the geek community. To some people, not liking HHG is akin to not liking air. But aside from a few laughs, there was nothing here that helped me understand why this book has become such the cult phenomenon that it is. Maybe I have to read the rest of the 5-part trilogy to see how it all fits together, but, honestly, based upon the first book, I’m not sure I really care.

I’m about 100 pages into The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy and, really, not a whole lot has happened. Well, except for the Earth has been destroyed to make way for an interstellar freeway. But other than that, it’s pretty uneventful.

If I had a dollar for every time I’ve started reading “HGG”, I’d have enough to buy a Happy Meal. I always seem to get about 100 pages in and then get distracted by something else. I always swear I’m going to pick it back up, but I don’t, and so there it sits on my bookshelf, mocking me. This history of false starts is precisely why I put it on the 100 Novels Project list – I’m gonna finally get this thing out of my hair.

Why has this book been so hard for me to stick to? Because it reads like your seven year old nephew with ADHD has been drinking espresso all morning. Each sentence seems to be total nonsense, strangely constructed, and impossible to relate to. Did I mention that I’m 100 pages in and not much has happened? In short, this is not an easy book to read. It takes dedication, patience to re-read, and a capacity to say, “I have no clue what’s going on, but I’ll just keep trudging ahead.” That’s not an easy thing to do for everyone, myself included.

There’s another problem with this book that has kept me from reading it until now – its reputation. Much like the similar BBC TV series, Red Dwarf, the genre of spoof sci-fi has been so flooded with entries since Star Wars became part of the cultural zeitgeist in 1977. Granted, HGG is one of the early adopters, being published in 1979, but the funny lines, the nonsensical references, and the general sarcastic tone of the book has been a staple of my life since I got on in the internet in 1993. I almost feel like I don’t need to read it, I know it so well.

Nonetheless, I’m going to soldier on and finish it this time. Hopefully it will eventually click with me and I’ll become one of those rabid fans who quotes it everywhere he goes. Ok, I’ll never be like that, but here’s hoping I at least wind up liking it.