Like for example Kotzwinkle wrote Swimmer in the Secret Sea.
alas ...
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You may have no idea how terribly difficult it is to read Adams' works with only so-lala school English as a base; if you did not already read them in your native language.
The HHGttG is - it is mostly "vocabularily" difficult.
I try to avoid looking words up in a disctionary when reading books - on the one hand, once looking up 1 word leads to looking up the next word and the next and it always ends in never getting into the book.
On the other hand, a word/ expression is either important enough to appear several times so it sooner or later may explain itself by its context, or it isn't so important and not worth interrupting the reading-flow.
But with the HHGttG in the end I often wasn't sure if a word / expression "really" existed or if Adams made them up (from top of head example : mindboggingly - exists).
And when reading (or listening) foreign language, I pick things up - the result can be awkward.
(when I started reading English books it was Raymond Chandler's longs - me adopting lots of his version of 1940's talk, and "Chandler-style" metaphors.
)Particularly Dirk Gently's Holistic Detective Agency (pre-ordered import in pre-internet times
) - I was into chapter 8 or so and nothing really made sense, still no coherence nowhere - sigh. Very frustrating, the chapter with this entity ? awakening ?, unfolding ? , ... was hardly comprehensible at all to me. And the German edition was still in the works, so no escape. Arrgh.
When later in the book things started to finally fall into place, it felt like headache disappearing.
book on tape ? I have a tape copy of the fanclub (4-?) LP edition of the radio show somewhere (do I still ? *crosses fingers*), can recommend it.I have it on tape andlisten to it from time to time.
I have always found it very odd that the Peter Jones who was the voice of the book is the same Peter Jones who was the old man on Just A Minute, who died 12 years ago
