#CBR6 Review #156-7: Doughnut and When It's a Jar by Tom Holt
I was so sure I'd reviewed Doughnut at least, if not its sequel as well, that I didn't stop at searching my blog for "Tom Holt" and "Doughnut." I did the same on Cannonball Read, then went through all of my posts from this year expecting to see it show up in one of them somewhere. But it didn't. How peculiar. I couldn't find any mention of Holt over on the Cannonball Read blog, for that matter, when I also could've sworn I'd first caught wind of him and this series from one of my fellow Cannonballers. This is what happens when you're so far behind on reviews that you've officially given up on reviewing them all before the deadline. You think you reviewed books you didn't, you forget where you heard of certain books and authors, or you go to review one volume of The Complete Peanuts but, because you didn't sort the pictures you took to use as samples and conversation pieces, incidentally discuss another volume entirely, making you just decide you won't even bother reviewing the rest of the volumes because first you'd have to fix that last review, and then you'd have the nearly impossible task of figuring out which pictures go to which volume (curse you Schulz for only marking the month and day!). Oh, and you also forget so many details about a lot of the books you read that even the 250 word minimum seems out of grasp.
These are pretty much all the (main) reasons why, despite closing in on 200 books read this year (199) and a possible quadruple Cannonball, you won't actually see me secure said quadruple Cannonball. Maybe next year I'll do a better job of keeping up with reviews. But I couldn't do it my first time around last year, so the chances aren't great, I'll admit. The only reason I ever got caught back up last year was my desire to be atop the leaderboard at the end of the year and set the overall record. This year, I started out setting a record for the fastest Cannonball, and even then I think I was behind on reviews already, and no one else was even close... so there was nothing left to motivate me besides the occasional guilt trips I'd give myself for being so lazy about reviews. And checking in on everyone else. I feel selfish because I'm sure I've missed plenty of accomplishment by my fellow Cannonballers, as well as reviews of note, due to just avoiding the blog in general because it only made me feel like more of a waste for not being able to just sit down and write reviews like the rest of you. Despite me crushing it again where the leaderboard is concerned, you guys and gals posting reviews regularly, rather than in random chunks at random intervals, are the real winners.
But enough of my own self-doubt. We have a review to get to! In Doughnut and When It's a Jar, and the third book I have yet to read (The Outsorcerer's Apprentice), Tom Holt hits on such a fun concept that I don't even mind him being a little lacking in the humor department compared to the authors these books remind me ofe, namely Douglas Adams (think Dirk Gently's Holistic Detective Agency) and Christopher Moore. Wouldn't you love if you could travel to your own personal parallel universe which you have complete authority over? Well, of course it isn't at all that simple, because then there'd be no story. No, in Doughnut our main character gets thrown unknowingly into one of these parallel universes and has to learn as he goes, without dying in the process, which is easier said than done when he can't even access the built-in help feature at first and each trip he makes seems to want to end in his death.
It really is the perfect mix for me of science, science-fiction, humor, and just general craziness. Except in When It's a Jar Holt tips the scales a little too far in favor of "craziness," as I couldn't even follow what was going on for much of the book, and still wasn't 100% on most of it even after reaching the end. It became coherent enough, though, for me to still find joy in seeing the concept played out again, yet in a much less sensible, linear fashion. I guess I'll just say that if you like Adams and Moore, and seeing authors take real science to unreal places with a heavy dose of humor, these books are for you.
