Tuesday, March 15, 2005

The 306 Greatest Books #36 - The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy

I am going back and posting all of my previous book reviews so that they are listed on my site in chronological order. The reviews are dated for the time when I read the book, hence the reason many of them will be listed for times before this website existed. 

The next up on my reading of the 306 greatest books is The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy by Douglas Adams. This book can be found on the BBC and My Book Lists. 



Continuing on my "I'm going to read some "funner" books on this list" trend, I dove into my first outright humorous book. Prior to this I was not much accustomed to "British humor", having not watched much of British comedy shows or movies before. But afterwards I became a convert. I thought this book was absolutely hilarious, and I could not stop laughing through the whole thing. Just thinking about it now makes me want to dive back headlong into it. The plot follows one man, Arthur Dent, as he gets transported off Earth just as it is about to be destroyed. We follow along as he is shuffled around the galaxy just trying to figure out what is going on. I loved this book so much that I continued on through the next four books (making what Adams called "the longest trilogy in the world"). These books also continue the plot-line and are a great fun to read, although the final couple of books in the series start to get a bit bizarre (even more bizarre if you will) and deviate from the original plot-line of the story. This is definitely on my list of books to read, and if you have time, read the entire series.