Pratchett vs. Adams vs. Fforde
Pick a comedy with either fantasy football, lost hitchhikers in space, or literary mystery crimes
As I recall, I did promise you something lighter and funny after the intense horror story, so let’s welcome spring with a book battle between satirical comedies!
Before you jump straight down to the end to vote in the poll below, have a look at 3 pages from each book to see if any of the other excerpts surprise you. I’ve got sneak peeks into the beginnings, middles, and endings of each:
Unseen Academicals by Terry Pratchett
The blurb on the back describes this book as wizards learning football (and being forced to play it without magic). Note when I say “football,” I mean the sport where only feet kick around a ball all over a field. I do not mean the sport involving a ball that isn’t round (so technically isn’t much of a “ball” to begin with) that is carried and thrown across a field (so why is it even called football in the USA, the only country that uses the name of an international sport to describe a totally different and unrelated sport? 😂)
Page 1:
This part is a snapshot from the middle of the book:
And the ending concludes with:
Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy by Douglas Adams (Book 2)
This particular volume actually contains all 5 of the first books in the HHGTTG series. For the purposes of having a fair vote though, I’m putting only Book 2 into this book battle vote. Why? Because I’ve already read the first one several times. Then due to my erratic reading habits, I jumped onto Douglas Adams’ “Dirk Gently” series and always meant to return to HHGTTG but hadn’t done so until now.
Thus, welcome to book 2:
Page 1 spread: (suggesting that this story might continue from an alternate/ parallel universe than the previous book)
A random page from the middle of the book reads:
At last, the book ends on:
The Well of Lost Plots by Jasper Fforde
The opening page is:
A sample of the middle is:
Then the book ends on this note:
📣Announcement!
After I wrote this post, I launched a Humorous Series called “The Intergalactizen’s Guide to Taming Earthlings” specifically inspired by Douglas Adams and Terry Pratchett in July 2024.
Read the first episode of my Cozy Sci-Fi Comedy here:
Episode 1: Wrong House, Wrong Time
Want to read this on your Kindle or iBooks? I’ve added a new option through a handy Ko-Fi store integration, so click on this button ⬇️
P.S. If this is the first time you’ve been to this Substack, then you can find out why I do these book battles and check out my other book reviews organized by genre over here:
"Restaurant" was the first book I read in the series, but I've since read them all at least twice. Restaurant may just be the best. Where else can you learn about spending a few years dead for tax purposes?
And Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy wins this round! Starting my read through it soon!