I have never seen the show, and knew close to nothing about this book before beginning. I’ll also mention that English is not my first language, and I’m a beginner reader.
I began this book with high hopes, and I’m absolutely not trying to say that this book is bad. It’s just that I understand absolutely nothing. I might as well be reading German or Spanish (I don’t know either of those languages)
There are paragraphs that I’ve read multiple times, but I still have zero clue what it’s trying to say. I’m like a monkey with a Quantum physics textbook.
I had this exact same problem with Hitchhiker’s guide to the galaxy. I started that with really huge expectations too, because I love sci-fi, but I was so lost the entire time.
I struggled with Jane Austen a lot but I literally became familiar with that very quickly, and ended up enjoying all of her books very much, but I finished ALL of Hitchhiker’s guide but I can’t remember a single thing. It’s not the randomness that’s hard to understand. It’s the language itself.
For example, this from Good Omens:
“Sometimes this sort of leaflet had a little historical bit, because the kind of companies that hired places like this for a weekend of Interactive Personnel Analysis or A Conference on the Strategic Marketing Dynamic liked to feel that they were strategically interacting in the very building – give or take a couple of complete rebuildings, a civil war, and two major fires that some Elizabethan financier had endowed as a plague hospital.”
I have ZERO clue what this paragraph means. Am I just dumb? All I understood from the chapter it is from is that the characters go into this building to meet some nun and some guys start shooting at them for some reason??? I have no clue what it all means/why it’s supposed to be funny. Then, they leave.
Does anyone know if this is like a different style of writing or something? So, I can avoid it in the future? All I know is that both Hitchhiker and good omens feel the same. It’s not the randomness that confuses me. There are dialogues and paragraphs and entire pages where I feel like I’m reading a different language.
by Lenore8264