So, a long time ago, many weeks ago, I got an audio book from the library, one which I expected to be great. Why did I expect it to be great? Because the movie the book inspired was fantastic, one of my favorites, in fact. What book was this? Douglas Adams's The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy!
Like I said, I expected this book to be amazing. I was sadly disappointed. Perhaps it was the fact that I was listening to a man read the book, but I was not impressed. It wasn't bad, but it certainly isn't something I would make a point to read again. I will say, though, this book is entirely out of my normal reading style and may be a wonderful sci-fi comedy, I haven't read any others so I would not know.
This book is, as I said, a Sci-Fi comedy about a man named Arthur. This man is entirely ordinary and unimportant. He lives a normal life, that is, until some men decide to destroy his house to build a by-pass, oh, and some aliens decide to destroy his planets to do the same. His friend, Ford, is from a small planet and had recieved news of the planet's impending doom. Ford, being the good man he is, chooses to save his confused best friend and they hop onto an enemy ship, only to be tossed out into the horrors of space, and picked up by another, less diabolical ship. On this ship, the earthling meets a man, and remeets a woman, with whom he travels the universe and learns much.
So much more happens in the book, but that's a simplistic explination.
In truth, the idea of the story and the execution are fantastic. I love the story, the characters, the quirky feel, but the audiobook was not overly pleasant. I believe that the style of the book and the story in general lend themselves more to a visual representation, rather than textual or audio. I really think the movie is much better than the book, which I have never said before. Again, I admit this is certainly not my area of expertise. If you find that sci-fi is your style, or comedy, or especially, sci-fi comedys, then you may love this book, I personally only barely enjoyed it because it reminded me of one of my favorite movies.
Have you read this book? What did you think of it? What about the movie?