Book Review - Dave Gorman's Googlewhack! Adventure

British comedian Dave Gorman receives an email stating that he is a Googlewhack. He allows himself to get distracted from his commissioned novel (of which he’s written nothing at all) and starts following a trail of Googlewhacks around the globe.

A Googlewhack are the two words entered into Google that return only one page. There are some rules: the words can’t be in inverted commas, the words must be real (as determined by www.dictionary.com) and the page returned must not be a word list of any kind. Googlewhacks were created by Gary Stock of googlewhack.com. Some examples from the book: Unconstructive Superegos, Grandmaster Sticklebacks and Hippocampi Wallpaper.

Gorman is goaded into a bet. He must follow a chain from Googlewhack to Googlewhack by physically meeting the person whose page is found and getting him or her to find two new Googlewhacks for him to follow. His goal is to follow a path of 10 in a row before his next birthday, three months away.

Some of the whacks are dead ends but his travels take him to Washington DC, Columbus OH, Seattle WA, Los Angeles, San Diego, Beijing, Wales, France, Boston MA, Austin TX, Holland and Australia with multiple stops at some places and some places I’ve forgotten to mention, I’m sure. He meets some incredibly nice people, some rather strange people and has many laugh out loud adventures.

Really fun book to read and Gorman is a nutjob but a funny one so he’s got that going for him.

I haven’t tried to Googlewhack yet because I know, with my OCD tendencies, I’ll be glued to the keyboard for hours and hours…

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