20090630

Hitchhiking across the universe

I mentioned in an earlier post looking at The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy.

It wasn't the first time I'd looked at it, but several things occurred to me while reading it. The first won't surprise anyone, I think: Douglas Adams was brilliant.

The second might surprise some people, though; I found that comedy novels just don't keep my attention very well. While I enjoyed what I read of it, I had no problem putting the book down, and taking up another one. I'm not sure why that is.

It would explain why I've never read the entire series before (in fact, I haven't even finished the second one before). And it isn't the first time it's happened before, either. I started on Sir Apropos of Nothing, found it hilarious, but still put it down before I'd gotten more than ten or twenty pages into it.

I'm really not sure why that is, though. Hmm... I wonder if that's why I never finished Even Cowgirls Get the Blues? I thought that was absolutely brilliant, but it was still an effort to get through it. (And as I implied, I never succeeded in that.) Maybe it was just that it was so meandering. Or maybe it was that the language, while fascinating, just took too much effort to keep up with it. Honestly, it was ten years ago when I last tried; maybe I should try again.

Getting back to H2G2, though. I mentioned in that other post that the leather-bound edition was the closest to the one I have. When I looked at what I have, though, my copy has a more solid border, and uses a different font on the cover. I have no idea what that means. What's even a bit weirder, though, is that I have no idea why I have such a nice edition. Yes, it's a really interesting series, and all that, but since I never finished more than the first volume, why did I get such a nice omnibus edition?

Answer? I have no idea. But it definitely is something that any SF fan should read at least once.

(Oh, and if anyone's wondering, yes, the title is an homage to The Firm's "Star Trekkin'".)

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