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The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy

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If they don't keep exercising their lips, he thought, their brains start working.

'All right', said Ford, 'just stop panicking!' 

'Who said anything about panicking?' snapped Arthur. 'This is still just the culture shock. You wait till I've settled down into the situation and found my bearings. Then I'll start panicking!'

i found this whole exchange quite sad even though it's funny (it represents our politicians)

“Zaphod,” she said patiently, “they were floating unprotected in open space … you wouldn’t want them to have died, would you?” “Well, you know … no. Not as such, but …” “Not as such? Not die as such? But?” Trillian cocked her head on one side. “A second later and they would have been dead.” “Yeah, so if you’d taken the trouble to think about the problem a bit longer it would have gone away.” “You’d have been happy to let them die?” “Well, you know, not happy as such, but …”

it's kinda brilliant tbh, still annoying though

One of the major difficulties Trillian experienced in her relationship with Zaphod was learning to distinguish between him pretending to be stupid just to get people off their guard, pretending to be stupid because he couldn’t be bothered to think and wanted someone else to do it for him, pretending to be outrageously stupid to hide the fact that he actually didn’t understand what was going on, and really being genuinely stupid. He was renowned for being amazingly clever and quite clearly was so—but not all the time, which obviously worried him, hence the act. He preferred people to be puzzled rather than contemptuous. This above all appeared to Trillian to be genuinely stupid, but she could no longer be bothered to argue about it.

“Shhh!” said Zaphod. “There’s absolutely nothing to be worried about.” “Then why’s everyone so tense?” “They’re just interested!” shouted Zaphod.

it's the subtle humor that i really like about this book

He gestured Arthur towards a chair which looked as if it had been made out of the ribcage of a stegosaurus.

"It was made out of the ribcage of a stegosaurus," explained the old man as he pottered about fishing bits of wire out from under tottering piles of paper and drawing instruments.

Raffie Montgomery

'One of the greatest achievements in comedy. A work of staggering genius' - David Walliams

An international phenomenon and pop-culture classic, The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy has been a radio show, TV series, novel, stage play, comic book and film. Following the galactic (mis)adventures of Arthur Dent, Hitchhiker's in its various incarnations has captured the imaginations of curious minds around the world . . .

It's an ordinary Thursday lunchtime for Arthur Dent until his house gets demolished. The Earth follows shortly afterwards to make way for a new hyperspace express route, and his best friend has just announced that he's an alien. At this moment, they're hurtling through space with nothing but their towels and an innocuous-looking book inscribed, in large friendly letters, with the words: DON'T PANIC.

The weekend has only just begun . . .

This 42nd Anniversary Edition includes exclusive bonus material from the Douglas Adams archives, and an introduction by former Doctor Who showrunner, Russell T Davies.

Continue Arthur Dent's intergalactic adventures in the rest of the trilogy with five parts: The Restaurant at the End of the Universe, Life, the Universe and Everything, So Long, and Thanks for All the Fish, and Mostly Harmless.

laina

Funny, light hearted, witty, a simple read. At the ending of the book I really felt like I stepped away learning something about the universe. Beautiful story!

anjali

Funny, irreverent, and totally absurd, this book takes the most taken-for-granted and commonplace assumptions about the Universe and twists them, knocking everything on its heard and spinning a nonsensical tale of immense sense.

Timeo Williams

A hilarious take on life and the universe. Highly recommend.

DANA

Don’t panic. Time is an illusion. Lunchtime doubly so.

This book is a hit or miss, you either find the satire and the irony funny or you miss the humor and get miserable by reading. The fourth wall is pretty much nonexistent in this one. It's all over the place, but that's its charm. I'm not a fan of sci-fi but this is the exception, purely because of the humor. This is by far the book that made me chuckle most! 

siegs

light and easy but very entertaining and clever

Lindy

The last time I read this, I was eleven years old. The aspects of the humor that amused me the most this time around totally went over my head before.

mirin

Juliana Matias

This was my first time reading this classic and I thought it was fine. I mean, it’s been 2 months, but the impression it left me was: this book was fun, and absurdist, and I probably would have enjoyed it a lot more if I’d read it 20 years ago. But it was still cool. 

There were two things I particularly enjoyed.

Stephen Fry’s narration is superb – I have said it before, and I will repeat it now: I will listen to that man reciting the phone book. Listening to this book was just a delight to me and it plain made me happy.
I enjoyed the underlying philosophical questions posed by the book – the whole idea of there being a clear answer but how useless answers can be when you don’t know which questions to ask was deeply thought-provoking and I was here for it.
Other than that, the book was fine. A little too absurdist for me, and I felt no real connection to the characters. Things were happening and I had a passing interesting in it. The humour was not my kind of humour, but somewhat amusing… 

I guess I was happy enough with it – it was a solid 3-3.5 stars.

The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy

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