I had such a great time reading this book. If I wasn't laughing out loud, I was grinning from ear to ear. xD
After planet Earth is demolished to build a hyperspatial express route, Arthur Dent is rescued by his friend Ford Prefect and together they travel through space.

“How did we get here?” he asked, shivering slightly.
“We hitched a lift,” said Ford.
“Excuse me?” said Arthur. “Are you trying to tell me that we just stuck out our thumbs and some green bug-eyed monster stuck his head out and said, Hi fellas, hop right in. I can take you as far as the Basingstoke roundabout?”
“Well,” said Ford, “the Thumb’s an electronic sub-Etha signaling device, the roundabout’s at Barnard’s Star six light years away, but otherwise, that’s more or less right.”
“And the bug-eyed monster?”
“Is green, yes.”
“Fine,” said Arthur, “when can I get home?”

This review describes my feelings much more coherently  J.G. Keely's review

Best part of the book:  
“We are the ones who will hear,” said Phouchg, “the answer to the great question of Life…!”
“The Universe…!” said Loonquawl.
“And Everything…!”
“Shhh,” said Loonquawl with a slight gesture, “I think Deep Thought is preparing to speak!”
There was a moment’s expectant pause whilst panels slowly came to life on the front of the console. Lights flashed on and off experimentally and settled down into a businesslike pattern. A soft low hum came from the communication channel.
“Good morning,” said Deep Thought at last.
“Er… Good morning, O Deep Thought,” said Loonquawl nervously, “do you have…er, that is…”
“An answer for you?” interrupted Deep Thought majestically. “Yes. I have.”
The two men shivered with expectancy. Their waiting had not been in vain.
“There really is one?” breathed Phouchg.
“There really is one,” confirmed Deep Thought.
“To Everything? To the great Question of Life, the Universe and Everything?”
“Yes.”
Both of the men had been trained for this moment, their lives had been a preparation for it, they had been selected at birth as those who would witness the answer, but even so they found themselves gasping and squirming like excited children.
“And you’re ready to give it to us?” urged Loonquawl.
“I am.”
“Now?”
“Now,” said Deep Thought.
They both licked their dry lips.
“Though I don’t think,” added Deep Thought, “that you’re going to like it.”
“Doesn’t matter!” said Phouchg. “We must know it! Now!”
“Now?” inquired Deep Thought.
“Yes! Now…”
“Alright,” said the computer and settled into silence again. The two men fidgeted. The tension was unbearable.
“You’re really not going to like it,” observed Deep Thought.
“Tell us!”
“Alright,” said Deep Thought. “The Answer to the Great Question…”
“Yes…!”
“Of Life, the Universe and Everything…” said Deep Thought.
“Yes…!”
“Is…” said Deep Thought, and paused.
“Yes…!”
“Is…”
“Yes…!!!…?”
“Forty-two,” said Deep Thought, with infinite majesty and calm.
  

I would definitely be reading more of Douglas Adams's work! This was light, fun, and yet so very memorable.

It's that time of the year again when I take out the towel I embroidered with "42" as well as "Don't Panic" and sit down to enjoy this classic and silly scifi story.

The story is well-known to most but let me recap real quick:
Arthur Dent is losing his house because of a bypass. Funnily enough, he doesn't have to suffer the injustice for long because the planet Earth is scheduled to be demolished to make way for a hyperspace bypass as well.
His friend, Ford Prefect, turns out to be an alien who tells him all about interstellar hitchhiking. Thus begins an epic quirky adventure through the galaxy, meeting aliens that use poetry as a form of torture and trying to get our home planet back.

Many say this book in a mess. And in many ways it is. But it's a good mess. The kind of mess life itself is. Humour is when you laugh no matter what. Douglas Adams was great at showing the tragedy in life through humour, making the characters here so lovable that I have no problem reading the story every year on the day he died far too soon (aged only 49) of a heart attack.

Here's to you, DNA, thanks for all the fish!


...
Yeah, I'm reading it again ... Especially for Towel Day ... xD
...
Every year I'm reading the book for Towel Day now (the third time by now) and every year it's as good as the very first time. xD Simply brilliant! 42!

Another classic. If you don't like this series, you probably put your babel fish in the wrong hole. You are the reason that human beings are only the third most intelligent species on earth behind mice and dolphins. So long, and thanks for all the fish!

n  n    “You know," said Arthur, "it's at times like this, when I'm trapped in a Vogon airlock with a man from Betelgeuse, and about to die of asphyxiation in deep space that I really wish I'd listened to what my mother told me when I was young."
"Why, what did she tell you?"
"I don't know, I didn't listen.” n  n

Did this make you laugh already? Fine, because the rest of Douglas Adams' famous novel includes many more of those humorous elements.

I have a very difficult personal history with Sci-Fi novels; some of them I could appreciate but not enjoy; some I could appreciate but got bored with them very quickly; but The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy was the first Sci-Fi novel which ever made me simultaneously appreciate, enjoy and even love the book. Love is a strong word, but if a book is filled with sentences like “The ships hung in the sky in much the same way that bricks don't” or “Anyone who is capable of getting themselves made President should on no account be allowed to do the job” or “My capacity for happiness you could fit into a matchbox without taking out the matches first”, then I simply can't help but fall in love with it.

n  n    “So this is it," said Arthur, "We are going to die."
"Yes," said Ford, "except... no! Wait a minute!" He suddenly lunged across the chamber at something behind Arthur's line of vision. "What's this switch?" he cried.
"What? Where?" cried Arthur, twisting round.
"No, I was only fooling," said Ford, "we are going to die after all.”n  n

I could go on and quote the entire book now, that's how much fun it was reading this and that's how quotable the book is. But Douglas Adams didn't only attempt (and succeed) to write this groundbreaking approach to the science fiction genre, he was also able to make you think a lot about several important questions: What is the meaning of life? Why do we live? Why do we die? What is the meaning of the Universe? Adams intentionally answers these questions in rather absurd ways, mainly because it is impossible to find ultimate answers and definitions for these topics. But those are all questions everyone has already asked themselves, and Adams isn't afraid to tackle them in a way that the reader can't help but laugh about it.

n  n    “For instance, on the planet Earth, man had always assumed that he was more intelligent than dolphins because he had achieved so much—the wheel, New York, wars and so on—whilst all the dolphins had ever done was muck about in the water having a good time. But conversely, the dolphins had always believed that they were far more intelligent than man—for precisely the same reasons.”n  n

If you haven't read this book yet, perhaps because you are afraid of the Sci-Fi genre (which I was as well, until I started my adventures with Arthur Dent, Ford Prefect, Marvin and all the others in this book): then don't hesitate to read it. But don't be mistaken, The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy is (probably) not the best book you will ever find, it is (probably) not going to make you cry because of its emotional intensity, it is (probably) not going to keep you on the edge of your seat due to its ming-bogglingly suspenseful plot. Adams' book is rather an episodic account of several random adventures in the cosmic space, and for me it was mostly Adams' writing style which it was impossible to resist. He lures his readers into the story and before you even realize it, you are probably already laughing.

And don't forget to bring your towel!

I have spent almost six hours in the delightful company of Stephen Fry, reading the satirical science fiction classic with incredible skill and humour.

As I had read it before, I had to bow to Fry’s ability to speak the strange, evocative names of the characters without giving away his amusement more than with a tiny rise in the voice.

The story starts with a bleak outlook on life on Earth, of course. While Arthur Dent, a regular human being, is in a rage over a bulldozer which is about to tear down his house to make space for a bypass road, a slightly bigger construction project in space causes an alien company to erase the whole planet Earth for the same reason. Gone is our home, just moments before the extraterrestrial company receives information to the effect that the demolition of Earth is unnecessary.

Well, it is not the first time unnecessary things have happened in the construction business, and Earth is not that important anyway, from a universal standpoint, as Arthur realises while travelling with an alien journalist researching for a book called “The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy”. After 15 years of studying Earth, he is able to expand the entry on our planet by adding a “mostly” to the previous one-word comment summing up our entire globe: “harmless”. Arthur, reflecting on the loss of Trafalgar Square and McDonalds as the planet is destroyed, has a moment of hardship accepting that all that is left of his previous home now is a redundant note on it being “mostly harmless”.

Thus thrown on an odyssey in space, the pair makes acquaintances of diverse kinds, always learning something new about how not to take life too seriously, while still trying to understand it. One fabulous scene features the travellers on a hostile space ship, subject to the so-called vogons’ Poetry Appreciation Chair, where they are kept in place while inundated without mercy with the unbearably horrific Vogon poetry, the third worst in universe. I imagine it a bit like being strapped to a chair and forced to listen to and appreciate some famous twitter that is produced on our mostly harmless ex-planet.

When asked to choose whether they prefer to be thrown into space or to appreciate the value of what they have heard, the two heroes deliver a duet of superb poetry appreciation bullshit bingo, leaving the mean vogon wondering whether he might really have talent after all: but being heartless and cruel, he kicks them out of the spaceship anyway. Escaping certain death yet again, with a second’s margin, the hitchhikers are picked up by another ship in an act of major improbability, which is accurately calculated for them.

The most impressive character in the book is the supercomputer Deep Thought, whose sulking voice is brilliantly interpreted by Stephen Fry. He has a godlike attitude, and is preparing for the arrival of the messiah of computers, which will ultimately trump him, even though it is to be designed by Deep Thought himself.

While awaiting the time of the new supercomputer, Deep Thought agrees to give the answer to life, the universe and everything. As the recipients of the answer are not happy with it, not being able to understand what it means, they set out to find the proper question to make sense of it. Deep Thought himself can’t do it, and tells them they have to wait for the new messiah computer.

However, being inventive, they try different questions that match the answer in the intermediate time, acting very much like true philosophers.

Their first try is a bit too straightforward:

“What is six times seven?”

Then they have a touch of genius, and find the perfect interim question for the answer:

“How many roads must a man walk down?”

“Brilliant!”

“The answer, my friend, is Forty-Two, the answer is Forty-Two!”

All universe must have conspired to make them come up with that deep question for the hard-to-understand answer. It could almost be a song, if you changed the lyrics a bit? Or maybe the kind of horrible Vogonian poetry that ex-Academies would award?

While our characters are off to have lunch at the end of the universe, Deep Thought is preparing for the arrival of his son, the new supercomputer. He has given him a name already:

“The Earth!”

And the most intelligent creatures on the old, demolished planet say:

“Thank you for all the fish!”

Delightfully irreverent journey through the nonsensical human existence!

All time classic I've read the whole series of 5 books at least twice. The adventures of Arthur Dent leaving earth and travelling the universe are brilliantly conceived and so human. Adams was a great science fiction writer and died too young.

Roses are red
Violets are blue
the Answer to the Ultimate Question of Life, the Universe and Everything
is 42

They stumbled out of the Heart of Gold and looked around them. It was very quiet among the tall buildings. The ground was covered with brightly-colored objects that, from a distance, looked a little like paperback novels. Trillian picked one up.

"It's a paperback novel!" she said, surprised. "Long Hard Ride, by Lorelei James." She flipped through it. "Hm, who'd have thought that the late inhabitants of Frogstar Z would have been into women's erotica?"

She picked up some more. "Be With Me, by Maya Banks... Dangerous Secrets, by Lisa Marie Rice... A Little Harmless Pleasure, by Melissa Schroeder. They're all women's erotica!

The rest of this review is available elsewhere (the location cannot be given for Goodreads policy reasons)

Definitely one of the great sci-fi comedy classics with slapstick comedy, philosophical queries and the Answer 42. Always a fun book to read when otherwise life is throwing you curveballs!

So much fun to read.

This book (and its Sequel, The Restaurant at the End of the Universe) are ultimately a story about how ludicrous we tiny little creatures actually are. How we fill our lives with bullshit trivialities that are nobody else’s business, with institutions and bureaucracies, and how the pattern repeats in micro and macro scale. How ultimately, people really are very silly, that we search for meaning in an existence where there probably is none beyond being, you know, nice to each other, that we’re always looking for the “will-be” and never savoring the “now”. How everyone needs to just fucking take it easy.

But most importantly, this book is funny. Laugh out loud funny. And it probably contains the greatest narrative device I’ve ever read to pass exposition along to the reader. Shall we have paragraphs of info dump? Shall we have long and tedious conversations amongst each other to explain to the reader what’s going on? No, let’s build ourselves a n00b named Arthur, and hand him a tiny electronic book that will not only explain everything the reader needs to know, but make them giggle like five years olds to boot.

Mr Adams, sir, you are missed.

I fell asleep while listening to this one... twice.



I fell asleep at the beginning of the book, and then at the end of it. I googled the ending because I didn't want to go to sleep again.

Don't get me wrong. I didn't dislike the book. It's just that I didn't like it either. It's not my kind of humor, not my kind of story. But I'm sure to remember to take a towel next time I hitchhike through the galaxy.

This feels like an accomplishment to have finally read. Not because it was a challenging read or anything, but simply because it’s one of *those* books I’ve had on my radar forever and just never got around to reading. I’m happy to report I really enjoyed it!

I won’t even bother explaining this book here because it’s so well loved and widely regarded as a staple of science fiction. But I will say this reading experience took me back to some of the stories I read and loved as a kid. It has the absurdity of something like Alice in Wonderland mixed with the tongue-in-cheek writing of a Lemony Snicket novel. It balances that wit with sincerity and big questions really well.

My only complaint is that the ending felt a bit lackluster. I would’ve enjoyed a bit more resolution for this installment, but I know this is a big series. Maybe someday I will continue with it!