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.

Es el primer libro de humor con el que de verdad me he reído.

Es una historia disparatada en la que todo encaja perfectamente y hace que tenga sentido.

Al principio me costó entrar en la historia porque tenía que estar muy atenta al haber tantas palabras inventadas, pero poco a poco te acostumbras y la lectura se hace más ligera.

Todos los personajes tienen algo que los hace especiales. Marvin es genial, cada vez que aparecía a mí me daba la risa. Y el pobre Arthur, que no entiende nada de lo que está pasando... La escena con los ratones ha sido hilarante.

Y por último hay que destacar el trabajo del traductor/traductora/traductores (no he encontrado quién fue). Tuvo que ser dificilísimo sacar adelante este trabajo y que todo quedase tan bien. Sin duda, se merece/merecen un premio.
*Ya los he encontrado, no había mirado aquí en Goodreads

From what I can tell, I'm not in the majority when it comes to rating The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy by Douglas Adams. I'm giving it a 3, which means I still liked it... but unfortunately, I wasn't as fond of the humor as most people are.

This was a book club selection from about 6 or 7 years ago. We agreed to read just the first one in the series. And it was the first science-fiction novel we took on. I was excited. Several had already read it but wanted to again.

I'm generally a fan of crazy humor. I love Spaceballs, the movie. I kinda liken it to that, but for some reason, this wasn't as funny as I felt everyone said it was. Tons of laughs. Many great lines. The characters were memorable. I'm pretty sure there are a few movie or cartoon adaptions of it.

And I honestly would recommend that everyone read it -- even non SF fans. There are parts you will totally enjoy. But it's hard to get into for a non-SF reader right from the beginning. My first reactions were "Oh that's not possible..." But then I realized I wasn't reading a typical novel, so I suspended the lil' bit o' grouch in me... and I was able to enjoy it.



Very imaginative. Lots of cool commentary on life as other people would see it. A fair approach for someone new to the universe, so to speak.

I may go back and read it now that I'm older and have read a few other SF and fantasy books. I'm curious... what's the huge appeal for others about this book?



n  n    About Men  n
For those new to me or my reviews... here's the scoop: I read A LOT. I write A LOT. And now I blog A LOT. First the book review goes on Goodreads, and then I send it on over to my WordPress blog at https://thisismytruthnow.com, where you'll also find TV & Film reviews, the revealing and introspective 365 Daily Challenge and lots of blogging about places I've visited all over the world. And you can find all my social media profiles to get the details on the who/what/when/where and my pictures. Leave a comment and let me know what you think. Vote in the poll and ratings. Thanks for stopping by.

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The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy starts on a Thursday, and Arthur Dent is having a very bad day. Things start going sour when a construction crew tries to knock his house down so they can build a highway bypass through the land it sits on, and get worse rather quickly when the Earth is suddenly and completely destroyed. A galactic orphan, Dent embarks on an interstellar journey with his longtime friend Ford Prefect (who is really an alien who has been stranded on the Earth for the past fifteen years), Zaphod Beeblebrox, who is President of the Galaxy, Zaphod's girlfriend Trillian, and a depressed robot named Marvin.

There were some things I didn't like about this book, but overall I really enjoyed it. Just after the halfway point in the book, when the travellers reach the planet Magrathea, the tone changes from constant joke-telling and silliness, with a frenetic story and dialogue, to a more serious tone, with a more static story taking place in just one locale (on and around the planet Magrathea), with less jokes and humour and noticeably denser prose. This made the two halfs of the book quite tonally different from each other, which I personally found jarring. The book started to get funnier again near the end, but in a book that is only 180 pages you really notice when the tone changes for even 20-30 pages, as it did in this book.

I also generally didn't care much for the second half of the book for this reason; the first half was more fun, and I wish the entire book had been written in that way. It felt a bit like Adams got tired of trying to write non-stop silly prose and dialogue and somewhat gave up on that for a decent amount of the second half of the book, only picking it back up again near the end.

Some characters were also very one-dimensional and didn't add much to the story. The best example of this was Trillian. I would have liked to see her have a larger role in the story, given she is the partner of one of the main characters, but I found her to be flat and mostly invisible. Maybe she is developed more in later books in the series; I guess I'll find out when I pick these books up again.

Negatives aside, I loved Adams' humour; this is a very funny book, sometimes laugh-out-loud funny. I thought some aspects of the story and world-building were crazy but absolutely brilliant, and I feel, with this first book, like Adams has only just begun to craft what will end up being a hilarious and impressive tale of our universe and its "history".

Recommended!

4.5 stars

Hitchhiker's, volume 1.

Earth is destroyed to make way for a bypass. Fortunately for Arthur Dent, his friend Ford Prefect turns out to be an alien and manages to escape, with Arthur.

The plot is not bad, but it's the writing that is fantastic:

Vogon ships "hung in the sky in exactly the way bricks don't".

The Hooloovoo is a super-intelligent shade of the colour blue.

The old man who said nothing was true but was later found to be lying.

"After a second or so, nothing continued to happen".

"This must be Thursday. I never could get the hang of Thursdays" (borrowing from Truman Capote's "Breakfast at Tiffany's).

"Bits of it were dullish grey. Bits of it were dullish brown. The rest of it was rather less interesting". "An acute attack of no curiosity".

"Almost, but not quite, entirely unlike tea".

"It's unpleasantly like being drunk. What's so bad about being drunk? Try asking a glass of water."

God refuses to prove he exists because proof denies faith and without faith he is nothing. But the Babel fish is a dead giveaway - so God disappeared in a puff of logic.

Infinite improbability drive.


Brief summary and favourite quotes from the other four of the five books, as follows:

Restaurant at the End of Universe (vol 2): http://www.goodreads.com/review/show/...

Life, the Universe and Everything (vol 3):
http://www.goodreads.com/review/show/...

So Long, and Thanks for all the Fish (vol 4): http://www.goodreads.com/review/show/...

Mostly Harmless (vol 5): http://www.goodreads.com/review/show/...

And Another Thing...( vol 6), by Eoin Colfer : https://www.goodreads.com/review/show...


Adams' thoughts on the Babel Fish are cited by linguist David Crystal in Language Death

I read this book about 51,017 times when I was in seventh grade. I wore my copy out. That was a time in my life when I very much would have preferred to belong to some alien species, trapped here through no fault of my own. Also: "The ships hung in the air in much the same way that bricks don't." How can you improve on writing like that?

Q: What's so bad about being drunk?
A: Just ask a glass of water.

ahhh, good times.

Arthur Dent is having a bad day his home is being demolished, a new highway bypass is needed progress you know, it's for his own good...really, so goodbye house. On the bright side (by the way), it does not matter either. Earth too will no longer be, soon just billions of inconsequential floating pieces scattered throughout the cosmos, no one left to remember. The powers of the galaxy have decided this little insignificant, dull planet at the edge of the Milky Way must go. A hyperspatial express route is being built, Earth is in the path no big deal to the rest of the universe, just a few souls disappear think of the convenience to others , people... His friend drops by, Mr. Ford Prefect and finds Arthur lying in the mud in front of the bulldozers, and asks him what's new ? And can he go to the local pub for a drink, they must talk... Seems okay to Dent, but first the intelligent man gets a gentleman's solemn sacred promise, from a bureaucrat (who shall remain nameless), that his house will still be standing when he gets back. Even has Mr. Prosser, replace him in the dirt (I can never keep a secret). After a few drinks which relaxes Arthur, Ford tell's his friend he's an alien from a another planet in the vicinity of the great star Betelgeuse, just 600 light-years away. Dent always thought Prefect was an eccentric man but this being England, perfectly permissible, goes on to explain he's a researcher for something called, "The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy". A weird sound emulates from the outside disrupting this enlightening discussion, Arthur jumps up runs out the door and sees that there are no more gentlemen in the world now. Home gone, but the over excited man starts calling the wrecking crew unkind names. Such language (I will not repeat them, in mixed company, besides this is a family site ). People should be calm, always calm nothing to be concerned about, remember you are English...Looking up, odd yellow streaks in the sky Dent wonders, Ford did say the Earth would be destroyed today but he is strange...Stiff upper lip ...But something is occurring, though. Ford arrives and the noise level rises also...A short time later the waking, Dent...Mr. Dent, comes to in the dark in an alien spaceship , one of those that vaporized his not quite beloved planet, with Ford there... Evil green, and very ugly aliens the Vogons who like to torture people by reciting bad poetry, I mean really bad Vogon poetry, resulting in captives welcoming death, rather than listen to another word... Captain Jeltz hates hitchhikers, and Ford had a devise to enter the ship, secretly. But the clever friends say they loved the excruciating poem, of the captain's; obvious lying, the angry poet has the two rudely thrown off the craft into space, without... spacesuits...these aliens, are barbarians... They can hold their breaths for thirty seconds, so don't worry... A miracle, on the 29th second, they're saved by the President of the galaxy , in a stolen vessel. And the runaway politician ( surprisingly not exactly honest), Zaphod Beeblebrox is on board, so is his two heads and three arms, with his girlfriend Trillian and Marvin, the paranoid robot, don't talk to it, he's very depressing, you would want to crush him, with your bare hands ... As the semi cousin (what's that?) of the president, Ford Prefect is in luck. All the galaxy, are after the Heart of Gold, the new spaceship which can cross the Milky Way, in a flash, on ship the greedy, seek the legendary, lost and fabulously rich planet, Magratha. In the vastness of the whole endless Universe everything's is possible, except an android like Marvin...Remember the Guide's motto, "Don't Panic"...

Edit: My review is unchanged, but I wanted to point out that this is my 15th straight year of reading this book!

The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy is my favorite book of all time, and most likely always will be. I’ve read it more times than I can remember, and it has made me laugh every single time. Lines like “Life, don’t talk to me about life”, “Space is big. Really big. You won’t believe how vastly, hugely, mind-bogglingly big it is”, and “Time is an illusion. Lunchtime doubly so” will never fail to make me smile, and just typing those out did the trick. I could sit here all day and talk about how great this book is and how brilliant Douglas Adams is.

This book is ridiculous in the best possible way, but the comedy isn’t the only thing that makes it so great. The plot is really interesting as well, and it takes you on an incredible journey across the universe with some very memorable characters. From Arthur Dent being completely overwhelmed by everything to Zaphod Beeblebrox’s total absurdity to Marvin the Paranoid Android (just as a whole, because he’s amazing), every single character is great in their own way.

There is a reason that this book is so highly regarded among science fiction works, because it’s a truly incredible work of art. It’s one of the best books I’ve ever read, and one that I would recommend to anyone. So remember, don’t panic, and always know where your towel is.

Not sure what it was about this book that made me not like it as much as I was hoping. When I was growing up I remember watching the BBC TV show and playing the text adventure on my Commodore 64 (yes, I am getting old). Before I actually read it, lots of my friends recommended it and the cool, edgy people all loved it (basically, the hipsters of the 90s!

Full review now posted!

I finally know the answer to life, the universe, and everything.

This was my third attempt at reading this book, because it’s just so gosh-darned silly that I could never get past the first three or so chapters. Well, what was the difference this time, you might be asking. The difference was a British gentleman by the name of Stephen Fry. I would have never made it all the way through this admittedly short book without the voice talents of Stephen Fry. The man is a genius! Every character had a completely unique voice, and they were all engaging. I’m not positive which came first, the movie or the audiobook, but Fry’s version of Arthur Dent sounded incredibly similar to Martin Freeman, who played Dent in the movie.

I’m not usually an audiobook girl. I tend to get frustrated with the slow pace and pick up the print version of whatever book I was listening to, because I can just read faster. But I never had that desire listening to Fry. He was absolutely fabulous, and now I want to track down other audiobooks he’s read. Just another reason to wish I was British, so I could have Audible access to his readings of Harry Potter. *disgruntled sigh*

Onto the book itself. I’m pretty sure Douglas Adams is a national treasure of the U.K., as he well should be. These books are meant to be silly, and they most definitely are. The tone of his writing was great, and I love the idea of the story, but something about the humor didn’t translate well for me. It was just too much, somehow, as stated earlier. Honestly, the book itself would have been somewhere between a 2 and 3 star read for me (please don’t lynch me!) had it not been for Fry’s marvelous audio. His reading saved the day and bumped the book up to 4 stars for me. I did end up really enjoying listening to this story, though I’m not sure I’ll continue the series. However, I’m glad to have read this book, and to now understand the cultural references and impact Adams provided here.

So long, and thanks for all the fish.

For more of reviews, as well as my own fiction and thoughts on life, check out my blog, Celestial Musings

3.5 Stars

I checked out the audio and I loved Stephen Fry’s narration. I love him anyway. I also checked out the book digitally so I could see Chris Riddell’s artwork which I loved of course and seriously, Stephen Fry makes it great with his voices.

Don’t forget your towel!!!

Mel

To look on the bright side, at least it's over.