I have heard only good things about The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy by Douglas Adams so when it came up as an option for book club this month, I was all for it. After all, it's been a part of pop culture (and nerd culture) for so long, it was about time I'd read it for myself.
Arthur lives in a country village in a modest home and is startled awake one morning by the sound of bulldozers preparing to demolish that home to make way for a bypass. As you can imagine, he is unhappy about this. Just as he is prostrating himself in front of the machines in protest, a friend comes to inform him that his greater home, the Earth, is also set to be demolished for an intergalactic bypass. This friend, Ford, turns out to be an alien in the process of updating The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy, a very useful book for those familiar with the rest of the universe. Hijinks ensue, there are capers and antics, THE Question must be answered and Arthur is along for the ride.
I'll be honest with you: I could not get into this book. Actually, I was having so hard a time with it that I had to pause halfway through and watch the movie just to try to make heads or tails of it. It helped...a little. I can see that some people would really love this book and all the fun, nerdy, sci-fi aspects of it, but me- not so much. There was humor and parts of it could have been interesting, but this book just wasn't for me. The only reason I muscled through it was because it was for book club. Otherwise, I doubt I would have made it through the first three chapters.
I will leave you with one quote that I really appreciated:
It might not even have made much difference to them if they'd known exactly how much power the President of the Galaxy actually wielded: none at all. Only six people in the Galaxy knew that the job of the Galactic President was not to wield power but to attract attention away from it.
Well, that's certainly something to think about, isn't it?
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