The other day, I mentioned this piece about the writing of a book called The Pirates! In an Adventure with Scientists.
Well, on Monday evening I paid a trip to Waterstones to try to find it. First stop was the large 3 for 2 tables that most people seemingly don’t get past. No luck. None either in the New Titles section.
Waterstones have recently made their computer terminals user friendly and you’re encouraged to use them. So, without having the full title of the book, I endeavoured to search. As it turns out, this wasn’t the easiest thing in the world, and it quickly became apparent that you need to use the “!” in the title to find the right book.
But I was in luck, they had it in both hardback and paperback. Obviously I wanted the cheaper version. (When the author, Gideon Defoe, becomes the next JK Rowling, and first editions of this book trade hands for hundreds of thousands of pounds, I may regret that decision)
Both were to be found on the first floor of the enormous Piccadilly Waterstones, in the fiction section. But I had no luck there, where I instead found copious volumes of work by the slightly more famous (and possibly related) Daniel.
Much stalking around Waterstones eventually turned up the book, out of alphabetical order, in humour. And I can see why. For the paperback, the book has been sized down to look like one of those books you see on bookshop sales counters when you invited to think “Brilliant, ‘101 Calming Meditations in Crap Towns’ would make a wonderful present for my nephew!”
But enough of a fairly pedestrian story about how I bought the book. What’s it like?
Well it’s quite funny really. Not laugh out loud funny. Nobody’s going to shift nervously in their seats while you chuckle on the tube. Not unless you chuckle on the tube anyway. But it’s pretty witty. And Defoe has a nice turn of phrase, and makes good use of footnotes.
This is not a demanding book. Let’s put that another way, the Guardian Guide on Saturdays is more demanding a read than this. It does however include a “Comprehension Test” at the end of the book, and you’ve got to give it marks for that.
Shall I talk about the plot? No – not really. Mark Gatiss’s Vesuvius Club is the closet thing I’ve read to it recently, but the plot of that just about held together. I wouldn’t want to examine plotholes in this too deeply. Still, it let one and half journeys into work and home again pass very pleasantly.