Dave Gorman's Googlewhack Adventure

I’ll start with a confession: I suspect that I am exactly the kind of person to whom this sort of book would appeal.

While I don’t believe I’d ever do anything quite so extreme to avoid the commitment of writing a novel, I am, nonetheless, a procrastinator at heart. And there is something about books of this genre that makes that little voice in my head pop up and exclaim, “What a cool idea!!” Trying to meet fifty-three other people with the same name as you? Count me in. Travelling around a small country with a large fridge appliance? I’m there. Playing tennis against every member of an obscure Eastern European nation’s football team? Why not? Saying ‘yes’ to everything for a year? What an interesting sociological show more experiment! These are all ridiculous adventures that have led to equally ridiculous but highly entertaining books.

So when I picked up Dave Gorman’s Googlewhack! Adventure, I knew from the start that it was likely to be something I’d enjoy. I wasn’t wrong. Yes, Dave seems to have taken procrastination to new heights, and if he hadn’t got a publishing deal out of it all then I would be seriously worried about the likely fragile nature of both his mental health and his bank account. But what stops this from being a cringe-worthy and pity-inducing book is his ability to take us inside his head at each encounter with another Googlewhack, and to help us understand the occasionally bizarre thought processes which drive this obsessive quest.

Travelling all over the world, including numerous flights back and forth across the North Atlantic, Dave meets his Googlewhacks and has a brief insight into the different lives of ordinary (and in some cases not so ordinary) people. I could feel the fun and excitement when he played Yankee Grab at a family’s Christmas party in Boston. I could feel his squirming sense of discomfort as he sat opposite an 81-year-old Creationist in San Diego. And I could feel his utmost despair in Austin, Texas when within minutes his chain of Googlewhacks disintegrates, prompting him to go out on the town and drink himself into a stupor – one which also involves waking up to discover a tattoo of a fake Texan drivers’ license permanently imprinted on his left arm.

Dave might be a chronic procrastinator, but fortunately for us he is also a masterful storyteller. If you’re looking for a fun, light-hearted read, enjoy vicarious travel, and aren’t averse to a dose of silliness every now and then, give this book a go: it might be the most fun you can have without leaving your chair. show less

Googlewhack: a single result when you search for a combination of two words on the search engine Google.

Stand up comedian Dave Gorman has turned 31, and decides it's time to grow up. He's going to grow a beard, write a novel, and put his youthful folly behind him. But a random email from a stranger distracts him from the novel, and he soon finds himself on a trail to find 10 googlewhacks in a row, and meet the owners/authors of the sites where the googlewhacks were found. The rules of the game are: he cannot find anymore googlewhacks himself, but every googlewhack he meets must find him two more, and so on. And he has to find his chain of 10 before he turns 32.

Dave's quest takes him from different parts of America, to China, to show more Australia, and Wales - amongst other places. He meets a man who collects pictures of women and dogs (more innocent than it sounds) a group of Mini enthusiasts, an American who takes him into Mexico to buy Coke (the legal kind) and pharmacueticals, a professor in Creationism, and many more interesting and varied people.

The book is genuinely hilarious in parts - I constantly found myself either bursting into laughter or at least having a quiet giggle to myself. Dave experienced various highs and lows along the way (some of his googlewhack chains came to a dead end), and the reader experiences them all with him. At times it seemed so unbelieveable that if it had been written as a novel, I might have found the plotline too far-fetched.

And speaking of a novel...the whole time that Dave is on his googlewhacking quest, he is also avoiding calls from his agent and the publisher with whom he struck his literary deal. But he knows that whatever the outcome he's going to face the music at some point...

This is a light hearted, hugely enjoyable read, which I would definitely recommend. (And incidentally, it sounds as though it should be fairly easy to find a googlewhack - but looking at some of the googlewhacks which were found in this story, it's clear that some imagination needs to be used!) show less

Dave Gorman had just turned 31 and made the rash decision that he wanted to be taken more seriously. He decides the best way of accomplishing this is to grow a beard and write a novel and so makes a call to his agent who, in turn and wholly unexpectedly, sets up a meeting with a publisher. The publisher likes the idea and a contract is signed and an advance is paid. Now that he's committed though Dave can't seem to get past the distractions, CD collection alphabetised, fridge defrosted etc. But by far the worst was the computer he was sat at trying to write. It just so happened that this computer was connected to a thing called the internet and the internet contains everything in the whole wide world ever. One of the things you can do show more on the internet is check your e-mails and on one particular day that Dave was procrastinating an e-mail arrived asking him if he knew that he was a googlewhack. Not knowing if that was a good or bad thing he enquired further into the subject and found out the answer. If you put two words into the Google search engine and it only returns one result then that is a googlewhack. There are a couple of supplementary rules to go along with it but that's the general upshot. Having been told he was one (Francophile Namesakes) he now had to find one himself and become a proper googlewhacker. This he does and even arranges to meet the person on the end of the one he found. He in turn finds another and this turns out to be someone that Dave recognises. A certain Mr. David Gorman! No, it's not him it's someone with the same name who Dave met while on another adventure (see Are You Dave Gorman?). And as he could do with a few days away in the South of France he arranged to meet back up with him and tell him what a googlewhack was. David then challenged Dave to see if he could find 10 googlewhacks in a row before his 32nd birthday. As with every good challenge there were rules to abide by. Every googlewhack was to supply another two googlewhacks and the time limit was set for Dave's next birthday.

This set-up provides the backdrop for a humorous travel adventure where Dave follows the leads provided by the googlewhacks and sets off to meet a varied cast of people from all around the world. Reality often exceeds his expectations about these people and his own emotions are laid bare throughout his commentary of events. Can he succeed with his latest madcap adventure and what will happen with the unwritten novel? Read this (or watch the show) and find out. show less

'So, Dave, tell me more about these ...googlewhacks?'
I told him everything. Everything I've told you.
'So I'm number two in a chain?' said David.
'What do you mean?'
'Well, you didn't find my googlewhack, did you? You found Dork Turnspit and he found Unconstructive Superegos so I'm number two in a chain, said David, drawing a little diagram on the back of an envelope.
'I see what you mean.'
'Every link in the chain takes you one step further from your own imagination,' said David. 'Your imagination conjures up two words. Those two words lead you to someone and their imagination conjures up two new words ... it would be interesting to see how long a chain you could get, eh?'
'Yeah, I guess so, I said, guessing so.

Dave Gorman is meant to be show more writing a novel but is finding it hard to get started, so when he receives an email from a stranger in Australia telling him that he is a googlewhack, it comes as a welcome distractions. But he soon finds himself embroiled in a new challenge when a googlewhack takes him to someone he already knows, one of the 54 other Dave Gormen he met on a previous challenge.

This is a very amusing book, and it includes photos of a lot of the people he met along the way which is good, as I always like to be able to put a face to a name. I enjoy Dave Gorman's television programmes and have read the equally funny "Are You Dave Gorman?", so I grabbed this one straightaway when I saw it at a BookCrossing meeting. show less

Travel books generally fall in to two categories; someone has a great adventure and then signs a book deal, or someone signs a book deal about a travel idea and tries to make the trip sound interesting. Invariably the first category is better then the second. "Dave Gorman's Googlewhack Adventure" fits into the second category.

Gorman, who struck gold with "Are You Dave Gorman?", gets into the early 2000s hobby of googlewhacking, and decides he would travel the world visiting the people who run the websites he googlewhacks. You would think that normally, this wouldn't sound interesting but with the dab comedic hand of Gorman, it would all turn out interesting in the end. You would be partly right. Meeting some creationists and some Dutch show more lesbians prove the highpoints but too much of the humour is forced. show less

In the never-ending quest for methods to waste one’s time by, the Internet has fast become THE source of quick-fix, easy-access, mind-numbing pleasures. Online gaming, chat rooms, and much, much more (read: pornography) has ensured that work will always take second place to fun.

Dave Gorman understands the lure of time-wasters all too well. Given a surprisingly large advance to write a novel (based partially on his assurance that he will grow a beard), the English comedian finds himself caught up in googlewhacking, an online diversion that rapidly becomes more addictive than he could have possibly guessed.

A googlewhack, for those in the know, is found by entering two dissimilar words in the Google Internet search engine; say, show more “Hippocampi Wallpaper.” If the search (of well over three billion sites) discovers only one site containing both words (barring some qualifications), a googlewhack has been discovered.

Dave Gorman’s Googlewhack Adventure, as the title implies, testifies to Gorman’s increasing lunacy over the game, a lunacy that goes well beyond the realm of common sense. Caught up in a bet to meet ten googlewhacks in a row before his next birthday, Gorman traverses the globe, meets an assortment of eccentrics, and grows out his beard; all the while avoiding the novel he will never, ever, write.

Gorman is no stranger to unusual quests. His previous non-fiction effort, Are You Dave Gorman?, chronicled a humourously pointless trek around the world to meet 54 distinct individuals, all with one common element; they were all named Dave Gorman.

Googlewhack Adventure is equally pointless and equally humourous, a good-natured account of some interesting eccentrics and places. Gorman is a rather engaging host, a fish out of water remarking on the world around him, noting that the Lincoln Memorial “looked pretty much as he had done when he showed up in Star Trek. Only taller. And more marbly.”

But as charming as Gorman can be, Googlewhack Adventure is hardly that. There is no real sense of any of the people he meets, only his reactions to them. As he zips from person to person, quickly noting their quirks before moving on, his constant effusions become repetitive and tiresome. In the end, he’s simply not all that interesting a person.

Dave Gorman’s Googlewhack Adventure is too unfocused to be memorable, and too slight to be meaningful. There seems to be little point to the travelogue, other than to explain why he never wrote the book he was contractually obligated to write. Gorman has indeed written a book, an often witty one. show less

A mildly crazy follow-up to Are You Dave Gorman?, itself a mildy crazy book, it follows the adventures of comedian Dave Gorman in discovering as many googlewhacks and googlewhackers as he can worldwide. For those who haven't googlewhacked, it is the art of finding two words that produce just one result on Google, and is actually quite a lot of fun. This is Dave's amusing adventure involving this sport, and it's witty, readable and gripping.