I wish I could say it doesn't normally take me half the summer to read a book that's barely 200 pages long and fairly enjoyable when I do read it, but it's not exactly a rare occurance. That being said, this review is very much going to be based on what I remember of the bits and pieces of the book.
Hitchhiker's Guide is about Arthur Dent, who gets swept away from Earth by his friend Ford Prefect, just before Earth's destruction by aliens trying to build a highway. From there, the two join up with a bunch of crazy characters - Zaphod Beeblebrox the two-headed ex-hippie, his human girlfriend Trillian, Marvin the brilliant but chronically morose robot, and other crazy characters. They travel across the galaxy on the run from the law, riding on an improbable spaceship obtained by illicit means.
WHAT I LIKED ABOUT THIS BOOK:
1) the humor.
This book is full of wit that's very dry, quite British, and really funny. Often this can point out important things in general. On the first page, the narration notes that most people were unhappy on Earth, and "many solutions were suggested for this problem, but most of these were largely concerned with the movements of small green pieces of paper, which is odd because on the whole it wasn't the small green pieces of paper that were unhappy." There are little asides that add humor to the whole thing - page two sets the date as "one Thursday nearly two thousand years after one man had been nailed to a tree for saying how great it would be for everyone to be nice to each other for a change..." Also, dolphins and mice are smarter than everyone expects, and the answer to the meaning of "life, the universe, and everything" is 42, after 7.5 million years and the realization that there was not actually a question posited in the first place.
2) Marvin the Robot.
Normally I don't laugh at sad people, but Marvin is the exception. Many of his statements begin with "Brain the size of the planet and they make me do [insert menial task]." My favorite Marvin quote comes near the end - he waited for the Participants in Main Action to come back, so "I got very bored and depressed, so I went and plugged into [the police ship's] external computer feed. I talked to the computer at great length and explained my view of the universe to it... And it committed suicide." (214). I know that's very morbid, but that's very much Marvin's personality. (Apparently he's voiced by Alan Rickman in the movie, which I really want to see now.)
THINGS I DIDN'T LIKE ABOUT THE BOOK:
1) I don't know if it was just the fact that it took me several weeks to read this book, but some of the middle bits weren't very memorable. It's hard to remember exactly which bits I can't remember, but it seemed to drag a bit in some points.
2) I would have liked a bit more from the actual Hitchhiker's Guide (it's an actual book in the book), since it does loan the novel its title.
In all, though, pretty good book, even though it took me forever to read. Next time, I'm doing The Professor and the Madman.
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