Agency is your ability to enact your free will. I’d love to drop everything and go visit Europe, but I have to hold down a job to pay bills and feed myself. A billionaire could go visit Europe on a whim because they don’t have the concerns I do. In theory me and the billionaire have the same free will, but when you account for how realistically we can act on it, they have more agency than I do. Same with my example regarding women riding the subway in an earlier comment. So in a lot of mythology, maybe Pandora wasn’t a good example I thought she was told not to open it like Eve being told not to eat the apple, there’s a MacGuffin of sorts where they are free to enjoy paradise or a superhuman ability or whatever so long as they don’t do X. In Omelas they are told they can’t intercede on behalf off the child otherwise it all falls apart. So they have the free will to do it but not the agency. So agency could also be thought of as revealing the extent to which our free will is an illusion. If the people in Omelas were truly free they’d be able to save the child, but the world is structured in a way that ensures that they don’t. Almost akin to structural injustices in our own world which limit the agency of certain people despite them technically having free will.

More like Love in the Time of Don’t Bother-a

So glad you liked. She's a real gem.

Thank you for Last Chance to See. I started my love for books about animals with Willard Price children's books about collecting for zoos. I have followed this interest my entire life.

The first two discworld books in order are sub par. If you want to give it another shot, try something later like Going Postal or Small Gods. But Pratchett has a strong voice and it is not for everyone. The first two books are parody of very specific classic fantasy tropes and they don't hit the same way today.

I have decided to not reread them, basically due to the fact they would not appeal to me now. I'd rather have the fond memory than a recent experience!

If you still feel like giving Adams a chance, I'd recommend "Good Omens" (written together with Neil Gaiman) and "Last chance to see" (written together with Mark Carwadine). Both have a less zany tone (well, differently zany, at least) than the Hitchhiker books.

Skip HG2TG. It was good for a chuckle at the time, I suppose. But it hasn't aged well at all. Even whatever goodwill/nostalgia it seemed like there was for it, way back in 2005 when that awful film adaptation came out, has long since evaporated by all accounts.

• For an enjoyable time with Douglas Adams, I recommend reading his book Last Chance To See; his non-fiction masterpiece about travelling the globe and seeing endangered species of wildlife.

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Read the essay.... yup... she's got it. Sent off to three friends as so thought provoking

I kind of enjoy the discursive riffing writing Adams does...but I don't think the Hitchhikers books are the best example of that. Especially since, as you say, a lot of the jokes have become a little stale over the years (in that Monty Python-esque way, perhaps).

I think Adams is wonderful at pointing out the sheer absurdity of life, and how actually utterly amazing the things we take for granted really are. But that's something that's easier to do when he's riffing off stuff that are more directly connected to everyday life or the world as we know it, rather than the equally absurd and amazing but unreal universe of H2G2.

That's perhaps better seen in the Dirk Gently books - but Adams is way better in his non-fiction, as can be seen in And Another Thing, which collects a random assortment of essays on computers, and evolution, and money, and you know, just life, the universe and everything, right? There's plenty of fun to be had when we're making fun of

And Last Chance to see, the biodiversity conservation travelogue he did with Mark Carwardine, is one of my top 10 favourites of all time in both environmental and travel writing. Edutainment at its finest.

The radio series is better than the books

I read the 5 books of the series

1st book : great

2nd : good

3rd : so-so

4th : bad

5th: very bad

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The first one is worth a read if only for the fun of noticing its influence on pop culture. I read it twice and could definitely see myself reading it again eventually. It's short and easy to read. A classic.

The 2nd one has a cool unique concept which drags a little but I'm happy I read it. The fun stopped there.

I’ve recently read the 3 first Discworld books amd feel the opposite way. They feel like an inferior version of the Adam’s books.

Fantastic. Will start there. I have to trust you ... my brother in law is also a Darko

Totally agree with the non-sequitur thing. I felt like I could open any one of his books and read pages at random and get the exact same experience as having read through the book in order. It did not keep me very engaged. I had him recommended to me due to my undying love of Terry Pratchett and it was just so... meh in comparison.

I decided to read this book because the series is one of my dad’s favourites. I purchased it at Waterstones and when I went to pay the girl at the till couldn’t stop gushing about it. Then I read it and was like… ‘is that it?’ I’ve come to the conclusion that it’s an acquired test. My dad also loves Terry Pratchett (who I feel had the same sort of humour) and I could never get into his work.

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Sometimes you read a book when at a certain time of your life and it doesn’t appeal to you. Then you read it later, when you’ve experienced different things and are in a different mindset, and you get it

Catcher in the Rye is another one of those books. Some people hate it, but if you read it at a certain point you’ll understand it all

It's an exquisitely written book.

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I'm pretty much the same, I've had people who know me say I'll love it. I loved the movie although it's been a while since I've watched it. I read HG2TG last year and it wasn't good enough for me to consider the next in the series.

I'm with you.

I don't agree that he's "trying to be random". Imo he always (next to the non-sequiturs) had these build ups that then amount to something incredibly pointless and stupid and that's what's so funny to me.

i feel like those books were great when i was in middle school, but i can't do it anymore. yes, i think you were too late to that particular party

interesting you liked the movie, i thought is was kind of horrible

another point about Adams is that he was an old BBC radio/TV writer. he wrote for dr. who in the 70s and was invovled with the most popular run of that era. so it's really that he's part of a larger group of creatives that were coming from a particular place that doesn't exist anymore. it's no wonder that people of more recent generations aren't immediately drawn to it when you are divorced from the context

this of course can start a whole conversation about art's context and it's ability to communicate something outside of their original context and so on, but i think there's good points to be made on either side of that argument. HHGTG just kind of is-what-it-is and it's really hard to view it in a vacuum

Loved the radio series and the BBC 2 series at the time and of course the books, thought the movie was rotten though. Picked it up to read again during the COVID lockdown and just couldn't get into it, I was about 13/14 when it originally came out so maybe it's just an age thing, but I was disappointed that I couldn't feel the same reading it now.