[BWF} The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy by Douglas Adams rounded up to 5 stars

[Karin]

FYI the link wouldn't show the MPE with the photo or even any edition with a photo! (193 pages) so I posted without it.

It must have been my mood, because I didn't laugh as much this time as I did last time, but I refuse to change my rating because this time it's me and not the book. I did still laugh out loud very hard the night I started this at one particular scene, but why spoil it by saying what that was? Once again, I reread it for a couple of challenges. I still agree that this would be funnier out loud but it would have to be an audiobook recording of the written book because there are a number of different versions of this Adams wrote about that in the introduction to the first book ominbus. This one came later after he passed away and there is a second introduction done by Neil Gaiman--I'm not a fan of Gaiman's fiction, so this was an opportunity to enjoy his writing talent.

That said, the very first time you read this book you ought to do it with zero spoilers of any kind. Adams wanted to write scifi that was funny and he succeeded.

Original Review
This novel is funny and fun at the same time--5 stars for the audiobook that I listened to some years ago, and 4 stars for the print book (some things are just so much funnier out loud). This time I'm going to read ALL of the books, not just the first two the way I did last time due to a lack of enough audiobooks at my library. However, one of my kids came home with an omnibus and I can easily read one a day while she's out. She'd have been none the wiser, but the cover isn't lying totally flat now.

But back to the book, of course. How can one not enjoy Ford Prefect (not a mistake or typo, a Ford car that never made it to the western hemisphere), Arthur Dent, the depressed AI and various and sundry other characters in this completely improbably adventure? Don't tell me, because unlike Deep Thought, I already know the answer--humour is subjective and (horror of horrors) not everyone enjoys scifi, even fun, silly ones like this one. And it turns out, this novel was written and published when Adams was still in his twenties, so another one off the 2020 Popsugar challenge.

Now I'm off to confer with some white mice...