On the deck of the Good Ship Lollipop, Captain Pigheart and No Hands Mick take some air.
‘Gaargh, tis a morn’ o’ uncanny brightness Mick’
‘Have ye taken ye daily measurin’s yet cap’n?’
‘I’ve me scan o’ the horizon and the pairin’ o’ compasses afore me yet’
‘Just strappin’ on me measuratin mitts’
‘Knit ’em to ye wrists in that clockwards method’
‘Let’s take readin’s!’
‘Mick, I admires ye enthusiasm’
‘Never more enchanted by nature than when takin’ her bearings cap’n’
‘Oh ye are a child o’ science and Madame Mer indeed’
‘Place ye instrument upon the breeze’
‘Quotidian matters such as these keep a man sane at sea’
‘Right you are sir, now shalls we extend together our vanes?’
‘Slight tilt to ye weather-cock I’d not noted previously there Mick’
‘Tis a sensitive matter’
‘Unusually sensitive judgin’ from the rise in its bulb’
‘Verily, for ye salty breeze does pluck at me arrow’
‘Whence comes that wind?’
‘X – tis from the region in which we’ve buried our trove’
‘Ye speakin’s’re true, I’ll note it so’
‘Zephr’s be most welcome, see how they do titillate our barometric globes’
‘Aye’
‘Beasts on ye horizon sir!’
‘Come Mick, let us stow our tools and make ready with cannon’
‘Delicate now, for our tackle’s delicate’
‘Eschew ye care for the sake of our lives’
‘Fear not cap’n, on closer peeking tis but a rock’
0 thoughts on “We Have A Problem With Books”
I’m with you on all counts.
This is an amazing post and one that I feel I could have written, minus the humor, readability, and references to A levels. Interestingly, we also have very similar reading tastes and opinions. While I haven’t read everything that you have, I agree with all you said about those I did read. The only place we diverge is that I live in an apartment and had I not decided long ago to get rid of some books when the sheer volume of them reached a critical mass I would surely be dead, crushed under a huge pile of heavy tomes. Although I do miss certain editions I once had, overall it has worked out pretty well for me.
A couple of notes. The Doctor Who book was likely Planet of the Spiders (a less inspired title I can not imagine) and while you’re right about the later Hitchhiker books, the sequence at Milliways in the 2nd book is my favorite part of the “trilogy.”
And lastly, I also still have my copy of the Hardy Boys Survival manual and once tried to make a survival kit like they describe in the book. However, I much prefer an earlier Hardy Boys spinoff, The Hardy Boys Detective Manual, in hardcover, which came out a few years earlier, and had so many great detecting tips. all sadly useless now in the internet era.
We clearly are the finest of people! I have recently declined the opportunity to take all the books I left at my Dad’s house when I left home. It was difficult, but partly from not having seen them for years I managed to get it down from 400 or so to a mere hundredish. I don’t know where I’m going to put them…
Ah yes, that sounds exactly as terrifying a title as I recall. I seem to remember that the cover of Planet of The Spiders was too horrible for me to even want to touch. You make a good point about Milliways. It’s possible I’m conflating several of the THGGTTG books into one.
Ah! I had no idea they did more manuals. I don’t know where I got the Survival Manual, but I suspect it was a marvellous second hand bookshop in Burton on Trent that had a charming Dachshund named Carl who would bark until stroked.