Saturday, September 11, 2004
Douglas Adams - Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy
I left the book that I was close to finishing (The Family Frying Pan) at work, so needed something to tide my reading habit over. This filled the hole nicely, a quick, enjoyable read filled with the patented Douglas Adams humour.
It would be very easy to miss the humour in what often seems to be nothing more than random twitches of his imagination, but I think that people like Terry Pratchett and Robert Rankin would admit that they owe a lot to this guy. It belongs to the type of humour that I think of as British, on the same shelf as Monty Python and The Goodies.
For those of you who haven’t read this before, it is basically the story of Arthur Dent, who is whisked away from Earth just as it is destroyed to make way for a hyperspatial express route through our star system. I don’t lie when I say that this is probably the most feasible part of the book.
I didn’t keep a notepad with me as I read it so I missed all the cool quotes that I could have added here, but I am sure a quick net search will uncover the gems.
I have one favourite that I can quote off the top of my head, and I think it is a good indication of the type of humour Adam’s uses.
“The ships hung in the sky in much the same way that bricks don’t.”
Not a serious read, no attempt at characterization, plot, or believability, but you are guaranteed to be giggling at almost every page.
It would be very easy to miss the humour in what often seems to be nothing more than random twitches of his imagination, but I think that people like Terry Pratchett and Robert Rankin would admit that they owe a lot to this guy. It belongs to the type of humour that I think of as British, on the same shelf as Monty Python and The Goodies.
For those of you who haven’t read this before, it is basically the story of Arthur Dent, who is whisked away from Earth just as it is destroyed to make way for a hyperspatial express route through our star system. I don’t lie when I say that this is probably the most feasible part of the book.
I didn’t keep a notepad with me as I read it so I missed all the cool quotes that I could have added here, but I am sure a quick net search will uncover the gems.
I have one favourite that I can quote off the top of my head, and I think it is a good indication of the type of humour Adam’s uses.
“The ships hung in the sky in much the same way that bricks don’t.”
Not a serious read, no attempt at characterization, plot, or believability, but you are guaranteed to be giggling at almost every page.
