Bu kitap bir rüya gibi! Hayır hayır iyi anlamda değil. Hani rüyan bütün gece sürüyormuş gibi hissedersin, kalktığında birine anlatırsın da 3-4 cümleyi geçmez. Sonra anlattıklarını kulağınla duyduğunda ne saçma sapan bir rüyaymış ya diye farkına varırsın ya. Hah işte öyle bir rüya gibi bir kitap Hayat, Evren ve Her Şey.

( پایان بازخوانی دوم )...
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همون شیوایی متن، همون طنز محشر، همون موضوع عالی، همون مفهوم عمیق و همون داستان علمی کاملی که در جلدهای اول و دوم وجود داشت، با غلظتی بیشتر توی جلد سوم هم وجود داشت.

واقعا میگم، داگلاس آدامز یک نویسنده‌ی محشر و دیوانه‌ست

Probably the only book in the universe that is both centred on cricket and really comical!

In this third volume of the Trilogy of Five, Arthur Dent has spent five harrowing years in his cave on prehistoric Earth. Ford pops out of nowhere, and they travel in time to Lord’s Cricket Ground, just as England win the Ashes. Arthur and Ford end up fleeing a chaotic scene on board Slartibartfast’s cleverly disguised spaceship. And the adventure begins!

In his usual laugh-out-loud style, Douglas Adams tells an astonishing story centred around cricket, its wickets, a Golden Bail buried deep within the Heart of Gold, and a Key that needs protecting.

We discover the Krikkit Wars, sentimental robots, the power of reincarnation, the paradoxes of time travel and restaurant bills, the knack of flying, a 4-generation cosmic party, Zem the floopily flobbering globbering mattress, not to mention Trillian’s level-headedness and Arthur Dent’s dismal bowling skills.

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The format is great, with short, funny chapters.

The plot is slightly more elaborate than in his previous books. Simon Brett, who produced the pilot episode of the Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy, says in the preface “‘Life, the Universe and Everything’ is the book in which Douglas gets closest to actually having a plot.”

I enjoyed this book, even though it didn’t quite work as well for me as the previous two did (so it’s a 3.5 rounded up).

“Life the Universe and Everything” is both the logical and absurd sequel to “The Restaurant at the End of the Universe”, bearing the distinctive hallmarks of Adams’ clever mix of nonsense, play on words and deeper thought.

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Past the peak at this point in the series, but still at a high humorous and inventive altitude, particularly if you are, or have ever been, a fan of cricket, which Douglas Adams obviously was. The unexpected featuring role for my favourite character is a bonus.

Wasn’t much into the plot with the planet Krikkit. Too much going on. You get Douglas’s usual lovely nonsense and chaos, but in this book it goes too far. Too much nonsense and chaos, and so some of the joy and humor is lost. Enjoyed Agrajag and the weirdness of Arthur’s having killed him accidentally and that being tied to Arthur’s fate. Also loved the silliness of Arthur learning how to fly and the couch on the cricket field being a space time eddy.

The 3rd book of The Hitchhiker's Guide series was nowhere close to being as good as the first two books were for me.
It altogether lost its humor. The characters got separated, so the fun group dynamics were gone. Most of the time I was reading, I felt confused about what is going on. Too many things to keep track of, which would not have been the problem if those things were at all interesting to follow, and these just weren’t.
Oh, and since I know absolutely nothing about cricket, I definitely missed a lot of references there.
The only thing I really loved was Agrajag, with his incredible unfortunate fate and his Cathedral of Hate painted in "Infra Dead" and "Ultra Violent".
But as a whole, this book actually made me think about whether to continue with the series at all.

DNF'd at just before the half way mark.

Nonsensical musings, no semblance of plot whatsoever, things happening with no explanation and what Douglas Adams littering what he considered to be funny anecdotes throughout.

As I type this I have no real idea what the book was even about to the point I'm left even more confused than Arthur.

I was planning on finishing the series but after this I don't know if I can honestly be bothered. Which is a shame because it's not as if they're long books. At 200 pages I should have gone through this in a day or two.

My rating simply reflects my enjoyment of the novel.

I get the humor, but I didn't laugh. There were several clever little plot sequences and lines, but nothing much more than that, it seems. The first book presented some great ideas. The second book presented, more or less, two good ideas. The third book... I couldn't find anything worthwhile. Please do comment below if you noticed something I didn't, because I really don't want to set down this book without gaining anything from it.

Arthur Dent finds himself in a prehistoric Earth and he has to save the universe from robots. I loved the first one, the second was highly entertaining but the third one was rather meh. This is the first one I have listened to on audio book so maybe that's why I didn't quite enjoy it or maybe the quirky sillyness just was enjoyable in small doses for me. I don't know but I think I'll wait until the library is open again before I read the next one

A series losing steam, and it's a real shame given the potential of the first two books--both fun, quick reads. This title is less focused on the sci-fi and philosophical underpinnings of the first two books. Instead, Adams here maintains sequences that hinge on bizarre chains of events and silly, ponderous exchanges between characters who have less and less of an idea as to what exactly is happening around them. These felt a long 200+ pages indeed.

The bon mots and clever passages are fewer and further between than the previous two installments. In fact, much of this book is rather uninspired and infuriating; the Krikkit robots, the Bistromathematics, the reincarnations of the hapless multiple-murder victim Agrajag... none of the set pieces gave me more than a brief chuckle. Much of what aims to pass for characteristic Adams whimsy feels perfunctory, and the string of coincidences that form the crux of the plot are truly slapdash.

The highlights for me here are Wowbagger the Infinitely Prolonged's perpetual misanthropy and what amounts to the only real meat of the book--the story of the reason why the ultimate question and answer of the universe are (putatively) mutually exclusive. Thus leading to "So Long and Thanks for All the Fish". But nothing here matches the humor of, for instance, the truly inspired chapter containing the Hitchhiker's Guide's entry on The Universe in "Restaurant at the End of the Universe".

When Adams is working with less inspired ideas, his inability to write characters as anything but vehicles for punchlines and guttural confusions is trying. Vonnegut, while a weak painter of convincing personalities, instills a sense of humanity and pathos in the proceedings that eludes Adams. Some sense of feeling and sympathy, perhaps, plays foil to the general absurdity of exposition and content in Vonnegut. This is why he's a better read if you're comparing the two as I feel prone to do, and one of several reasons I'm not too concerned with making it through last installments in this series.

All of that being said, I have to say that the ending is pretty simpatico with me. Maybe Adams should have left it all at that.

Arthur and Ford are still on prehistoric Earth in the beginning, but thanks to timey-wimey stuff they are getting out of their predicament in no time (which equals approximately 5 years). Meanwhile, Trillian has found a new boyfriend and he is ... divine. The problem is that when Arthur gets back to Earth shortly before its demise (see book 1), there is an alien race from planet Cricket Krikkit who has suddenly become aware of the universe - and doesn't like it. So now our friends, with the help of my favourite fjord-engineer, have to literally save the universe, no matter how depressed Zaphod has become and how improbable it all is.

Weird aliens, white killer robots in addition to our favourite depressed one, a therapy couch, flying, another fantastic spaceship (this time powered by irrational behavior), time travel, a party-that-has-yet-to-end and the shocking realization that Arthur might seem like a bumbling fool but actually is a "mass-me-murderer" (complete with petunias and a squashed fly)! Say WHAT?!

This 3rd installment was once again a blast! Not quite up to the standards of the first book, but deliciously funny, deep in thought, god-critical, sharp, with lots of zingers and puns and therefore easily better than the 2nd volume (which nevertheless wasn't bad).

You want to know the truth? The truth, the whole truth and nothing but the truth?! In its absolute and final form?! YOU CAN'T HANDLE THE TRUTH (Jack Nicholson was right after all and I wonder now if that earnestest of movies had a mad easter egg)!
n  n

One of my favourite parts must have been the principle of flying. If you don't know, the trick is to throw yourself at the ground - and missing. While discussing this particular gem of the book with my buddy-reader, it struck us both how DNA was a master at telling you ridiculous things that shouldn't make sense but do. Every time. And if you really think about it, of course they do! That is the thing about life (as well as the universe and everything)!

Naturally, the quest isn't quite over yet because Arthur has been given some instructions. Will he follow them or stick to bord speak?

Hitchhiker's, volume 3.

Mostly about Krikkit - and the Bistromathic Drive, which is better than mere Infinite Improbability.

The immortal Wowbanger the Infinitely Prolonged gave himself the task of insulting everyone in the universe - individually (but nearly did Arthur twice).

It has the usual wonderful Adamsness:

The "knack" of learning to fly is to "throw yourself at the ground and miss".

"Aggressively uninterested".

"One thing has suddenly ceased to lead to another".

Slartibartfast, who has one of the best names in literature, "wrote a monograph to set the record wrong about one or two matters he saw as important".

"Time travel is a menace. History is being polluted. The past is now truly like a foreign country. They do things exactly the same there".

"They obstinately persisted in their absence".

To attack a transdimensional planet you need to work out how to "fire missiles at 90 degrees to reality".

"sat in darkened rooms in illegal states of mind".

"One of the least benightedly unintelligent organic lifeforms it has been my profound lack of pleasure not be able to avoid meeting" (Boris took that idea with "I couldn't possibly fail to disagree with you less").


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

Hitchhiker's Guide (vol 1): http://www.goodreads.com/review/show/...

Restaurant at the End of Universe (vol 2): 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...