Bibliomusings: The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy--Douglas Adams

Saturday, June 27, 2009

The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy--Douglas Adams

Genre: Sci-Fi/Humor
Year Published: 1979
Pages: 215
Rating: 5

"Far out in the uncharted backwaters of the unfashionable end of the Western Spiral arm of the Galaxy lies a small unregarded yellow sun."

Douglas Adams was brilliant, and his books are hilarious. Impossibilities abound. Plot twists are ridiculous. Characters are stereotypic. Yet it works, beautifully. This is the first book in his five-book-trilogy (an impossibility in itself--who else could pull it off?) and it's a great read. Arthur Dent, of England, is forced to defend his house from being demolished for a highway bypass, but this becomes less important when he finds out his close friend, Ford Prefect, is actually an alien journalist, and that the planet earth is about to be demolished to make room for a hyperspace bypass. Luckily, Ford is a writer for The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy, and the pair escape on a Vogon warship. The rest of the book is a series of bizarre coincidences that explain what the Earth was really for and who was really in charge, AND provides the answer to Life, the Universe, and Everything. Then they all nip off for a bite to eat and...well, that's in the next book in the trilogy.

Book a week #: 23
Date Read: 4/11/09
Challenge/s: Read it Again, Series

2 comments:

Anonymous said...: I'm so glad you gave this 5. You know it's a triogy in 5 parts don't you? Random I know...; June 30, 2009 at 1:15 PM
Lisalit said...: My favorite five-part trilogy ever! Only Douglas Adams...rest his soul...; July 4, 2009 at 1:54 PM

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Great Quotes

"The one thing that doesn't abide by majority rule is a person's conscience." (Atticus, To Kill a Mockingbird; Harper Lee)

"But maybe the last part of the symphony was the music she loved the best--glad and like the greatest people in the world running and springing up in a hard, free way. Wonderful music like this was the worst hurt there could be. The whole world was this symphony, and there was not enough of her to listen." (The Heart is a Lonely Hunter, Carson McCullers)

"Dark of the invisible moon. The nights now only slightly less black. By day the banished sun circles the earth like a grieving mother with a lamp." (The Road; Cormac McCarthy)

"There is a theory which states that if ever anybody discovers exactly what the Universe is for and why it is here, it will instantly disappear and be replaced by something even more bizarre and inexplicable. There is another theory which states that this has already happened." (The Restaurant at the End of the Universe; Douglas Adams)

"I ought not to have listened to her," he confided to me one day. "One never ought to listen to the flowers. One should simply look at them and breathe their fragrance. Mine perfumed all my planet. But I did not know how to take pleasure in all her grace. This tale of claws, which disturbed me so much, should only have filled my heart with tenderness and pity."

And he continued his confidences: "The fact is that I did not know how to understand anything! I ought to have judged by deeds and not by words. She cast her fragrance and her radiance over me. I ought never to have run away from her... I ought to have guessed all the affection that lay behind her poor little strategems. Flowers are so inconsistent! But I was too young to know how to love her..." (The Little Prince; Anton de Saint-Exupery)

Some people never go crazy. What truly horrible lives they must lead. (Betting on the Muse; Charles Bukowski)

Disbelief in magic can force a poor soul into believing in government and business. (Tom Robbins)

But if in your fear you would seek only love's peace and love's pleasure,Then it is better for you that you cover your nakedness and pass out of love's threshing-floor,Into the seasonless world where you shall laugh, but not all of your laughter, and weep, but not all of your tears. (The Prophet; Kahlil Gibran)

You don't have a soul. You are a Soul. You have a body. (C.S. Lewis)

"For in a swift radiance of illumination he saw a glimpse of human struggle and of valor. Of the endless fluid passage of humanity through endless time. And of those who labor and of those who--one word--love." (The Heart is a Lonely Hunter, Carson McCullers)