The Meaning of Liff - Douglas Adams > Reviews > Firmly uninformative!

Author's product rating:   

Would you listen to it again?	Absolutely
Story	Satisfactory
Characters	Satisfactory
Listenability	Once you start it, you won't be able to switch it off!
How does it compare to audio works by the same author?	Excellent

Advantages:	Fantastically funny, very original .
Disadvantages:	There's a 90 : 10 ratio of words that are really funny, and then really not .  .  .

Recommend to potential buyers:

yes

Full review

I remember when I first found this book; it belongs to my Dad, a present from his Mum, and he didn't want me reading it because I think I was only 5 and it had the word 'fuck' in it. But i found it on a shelf one day, and opened the front cover, and saw a note to my dad - "Dear Paul, may you never be bothered by Scrabsters!". From that point on I decided I liked this book!
I've never read it all the way through, but I've probably seen all of it by looking at random pages, and it's not the sort of book you read all the way through.

For anyone who has never heard of this book, it is basically a dictionary of words the Oxford English Dictionary forgot to mention...
Douglas Adams (Who you'll probably know as the creator of The Hitch-Hikers Guide To The Galaxy) has taken hundreds of funny-sounding place names across the United Kingdom, and attached them to a meaning of something that doesn't yet have a word attached to it!

The writers, Douglas Adams and John Lloyd, start off the book by saying;

"In Life, there are many hundreds of common experiences, feelings, situations and even objects which we all know and recognize, but for which no words exist.
On the other hand, the world is litterered with thousands of spare words which spend their time doing nothing but loafing about on signposts pointing at places.
Our job, as wee see it, is to get these words dow off the signposts and into the mouths of babes and sucklings and so on, where they can start earning their keep in everyday conversation and make a more positive contribution to society."

A few examples of the words 'acquired' by Adams and Lloyd are;

Aalst (n.)- One who changes his name to be further to the front.
Aboyne (vb.)- To beat an expert at a game of skill by playing so appallingly that none of his clever tactics or strategies are of any use to him.
Clixby (adj.)- Politely rude. Briskly vague. Firmly uninformative.
Fairymount (vb. n.)- Polite word for buggery.
Woking (vb.)- To enter the kitchen with the precise determination to perform something, only to forget what it is just before you do it.

I think this book must definately be classed as a classic. I know a lot of people who've said it's their Dad's favourite book, and they love it them selves, and it's that aspect of timeless comedy that makes Adams a brilliant comedian.
It's a fantastic idea for a book, and I think Douglas Adams is one of the few people who could really create a masterpiece of it.
One of the things I love about this book, is the fact that there is so much clean humour in it. A lot of modern comedy is badly written, and is only funny because it is outrageous or makes you squeam. Douglas Adams has that rare gift that is creating something intensely funny without being disgusting or using loads of swearing. (Ok, so the word 'fuck' is used once, but that's merely to describe a taxi driver's imagination)

In conclusion:
Amazing book. Well written, great idea, clean humour which is incredibly funny... it'll be a good few hours of your life worth spending!

(As there isn't really a story or characters, the categories for these are really N/A, but as that's not an option I'll put them as satisfactory, so it doesn't look like I've given the book a bad mark!)