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.

Left for the OBCZ

Picked up at the meet-up on Saturday.

'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 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.

At the shop.