Product Description

If someone called you a 'googlewhack' what would you do? Would you end up playing table tennis with a nine year-old boy in Boston? Would you find yourself in Los Angeles wrangling snakes, or would you go to China to be licked by a performance artist? If your name is Dave Gorman, then all of these things could be true. Fuelled by a lust for life and a desperate desire to do anything except what he's supposed to be doing (writing that novel and growing up), Dave falls under the spell of an obscure internet word game - Googlewhacking. Addicted to the game, and gripped by obsession, Dave travels three times round the world, visiting four continents and the unlikeliest cast of real life eccentrics you'll ever meet in what becomes an epic challenge, a life-changing, globe-trotting Googlewhack adventure.

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #29178 in Books
• Published on: 2005-01-06
• Original language: English
• Binding: Paperback
• 352 pages

Review
"'Very funny' Independent on Sunday; 'Following his hilarious search for his far flung namesakes, this gently but persistently funny book is another to savour' OK Magazine; 'A rollicking, funny, sometimes disturbing, high-stakes personal journey with the pace of a thriller... Brilliant' The Melbourne Age; 'This chronicle of his global search is the best kind of nonsense - totally stupid, incredibly pointless and absolutely hilarious' Scottish Daily Record"

Independent on Sunday
"very funny"

OK Magazine
"Following his hilarious search for his far-flung namesakes, this gently but persistently funny book is another to savour"

Customer Reviews

A grippingly funny story of an obsessive traveller
In a hotel room in Austin, Texas, Dave Gorman drops his razor into the sink. Despite his despair about what he has become he cannot bring himself to shave his beard off. This is the beard that was grown to prove he was a mature thirty one year old who had abandoned his foolish youth, the beard that was also a key element in securing him a commission for his first novel. However, after Dave's good intentions to sit down in front of his PC and become a novelist go astray, he considers shaving to reveal the young fool that he still is. He leaves Texas with facial hair and gets back on course to find ten Googlewhacks in a row.

In this book Dave tells the story of how an e-mail informing that he was a 'Googlewhack' led him to embark on a journey, zigzagging across the world, meeting authors of websites which confirmed the 'whack criteria. A journey that sees him: take an uncomfortable fast spin with a Welsh Mini enthusiast; meet a man who collects random photos of women and their dogs; and take a trip, with a cowboy, over the Mexican border in the search for Coca-Cola made to the original sugary recipe.

Gorman's lust for the mundane oddity that occupies the various characters he meets, together with the hilarious account of his own obsession driven behaviour, will draw you in to a comfortably insane world. This book shows everyone's need for purpose and the immense dread that the threat of failure brings.

Maybe one of the funniest tales of international travel ever told, the Adventure is a must read for anyone who finds it hard to let go and accept defeat. So brew up or pour a shot of tequila and get Googlewhacking.

Gorman Whacked my Google
As quite a big fan of Google and of Dave Gorman, this book was a must have and it didn't disappoint. The humorous feel good quest genre that has grown out of the likes of Tony Hawks' "Round Ireland with a fridge" and Dave Gorman's earlier book "Are you Dave Gorman?" is becoming big business. To know that some people are prepared to drop everything and follow a whim to its illogical conclusion somehow makes life seem a great deal more worth living.

As you probably know, Dave Gorman fell under the spell of Googlewhacking and traversed the world several times searching for people who owned websites that included Googlewhacks; two words that together produce just one search result from Google.

While most of us would feel satisfied if we found a single googlewhack in itself, Dave Gorman takes the game to a much higher level. He attempts to find a chain of ten Googlewhacks, encouraging the owner of each whack included website to furnish him with two more whacks to further the quest.

The result is a roller coaster ride through the world wide web and across the world. It's no surprise that he spent much time in the US, given that so much of the internet is based there. However, due to the nature of the journey Gorman found himself inhabiting airspace far more often than most people would deem possible. The exercise in statistics and cumulative jet lag would be enough to floor many, but the energy that can only be produced by the ultimate displacement activity sees this adventure to its nail biting conclusion.

If your life seems dull and mundane, leaf through Dave Gorman's latest offerring. It'll show you that the alternative to the quiet life, while entertaining, is not for the faint hearted.

Bearded but brilliant!
The best thing I can say is that I toyed with giving this to my wife for Christmas - and then kept it for myself. Anybody who has already seen the stageshow will know that the book is about another seemingly impossible Dave Gorman quest - this time to make a chain of 10 Googlewhacks.

The funniest thing by far is that Dave really, really did not want to take this bet on. However, thanks to a bizarre series of co-incidences (not to mention a large amount of tequila), he found himself yet again travelling the world, foresaking both the novel he should have been writing and his vow to be sensible.

If you don't spend half of this book laughing out loud, there must be something wrong with you; and if you then don't find yourself thinking of strange bets you yourself could make with Dave, then you're a better man than me.

It's a shame this book isn't out for Christmas; I have been lucky to somehow get a copy delivered early. If you make only one New Year's resolution for 2004, it should be to buy this book before everybody else does. And, whilst you're at it, buy 'Are You Dave Gorman?' as well. And then, when Dave is as famous as God in six months time, sit round looking smug and making sure everyone knows that you were one of the first to buy it.