William Shakespeare’s Star Wars – Ian Doescher

I have never been a fan of Shakespeare. If someone even mentions it or suggest watching one i groan in agony. People get all pious and suggest he is the greatest playwright, that’s but their opinion. I’m not a fan of plays so i have done my best to avoid it and am quite proud to have not touched any of his works since leaving high school. Then came a moment of reflection when i saw these books. I thought if my hatred of Shakespeare and contemplated its route cause and I have come to think this might stem from the fact in high school our English Teacher force fed us Shakespeare  for 3 years and then they do what all all English teachers do and over analyse  a work to take the fun out of it.

So i thought maybe my attitude towards Shakespeare was coloured not by its strength as an artistic work but by my dislike of the teacher and her forcing us to do it. (Other classes studied star wars. Man i would of nailed that one but then also ran the risk of them over analyzing it and taking the fun out if it for me) anyway when i saw these books I’m like why not give it a go if i can tolerate the language they use then perhaps it wouldn’t be too difficult to transition to Shakespeare.

Boy was i wrong, Straight away my eyes drifted over the harsh use of Early Modern English. Memories came flooding back of my dislike for this style and how painful i find to read it. Yet i pushed forward, the books were quite small and easy to demolish and yet the pain never subsided.

After finishing all 6 books i can still affirm my dislike of Shakespeare and yet i fully understand now its because of the awful language style used.  Yes i know that’s how people spoke. Yes i know people class it as the greatest work in fiction. But don’t forget the populace used to think the world was flat. So its not a stretch to think they too can be wrong about Shakespeare

Perhaps if someone translated his works into proper modern English i’d give him another crack but at this point i’m going to keep Shakespeare in the same  category as romance novels,  that of  rubbish with no use other than to be fuel for when a zombie apocalypse strikes and we run out of wood to fuel our cooking and keep warm

The Hitchhikers Guide to the Galaxy parts 2-5 – Douglas Adams

Sad to say i am one of those people who never read the books till after i had seen the movie. I just never had an overwhelming desire to read them. The movie itself was ok but then that put me in a weird situation. As is always the case the movie is different from the books (granted at that time i didn’t know this) So awhile back i actually finally got around to reading the first book and as i mentioned in an early post the book finishes its story part way through the movie. This confused and intrigued me. Google showed me the error of my ways and that there were 4 more books in the series. Found them at quite a good bargain as well.

The Restaurant at the end of the universe pretty much starts off right where the first one ended, it is pretty much close in tone with the original book but the later books go off on such a tangent it is hard to recognize what is going on. Sometimes i’m finding myself having to flick back pages to rediscover what the heck just happened. The books involve time travel, splitting our adventures off into different groups and stories. parallel universes, multiple earths my mind almost implodes trying to keep track of it all but sadly somewhere along the way it stopped being fun to read the books and just became a chore, as in i must finish this book, not i want to finish this book.

The later books bizarre and changing story lines is what lost me, If not for the humour throughout the books i may well of just stopped reading them altogether. I really think the books lost something along the way. I cant quite put my finger on it but that flair and pizzazz is gone.

The books do fall short of their predecessor to the point i feel the series was better on its own with one book than with these subsequent ones.

i just simply didn’t enjoy them