Arthur Dent, you are a complete a*****e! (Life, the Universe and Everything - Douglas Adams)

Member Name: solas

Product:	Life, the Universe and Everything - Douglas Adams
Date:	03/08/01 (341 review reads)
Rating:

Advantages: Very diverse, Short , No plot

Disadvantages: Too short, No plot

When Douglas Adams first wrote "The Hitchhikers Guide to the Galaxy" as a radio serial, he found that he couldn't just leave it like that. I mean what on Earth was supposed to happen next?

Suddenly he had written four more books, and christened them a trilogy. Go figure!

So this book belongs right in the middle, it being the thrid book in the series of five. Like other Douglas Adams books, there isn't much in the line of character development of the main characters, apart from Marvin the Paranoid Android (an android that sits around complaining about how under-used he is the whole time - his depessed warblings are absolutely glorious!).

There not much point in going into the plot of this book, because to be honest, it doesn't really have one. Things seem to progress almost in a random fashion - rather tenuous links keep the whole thing together. But that does not mean that this is a bad book - NO SIR!

This is one of the funniest books I have read. When read as part of the trilogy, the lack of plot and random occurences actually start to make sense. You become more concerned with keeping up with all the asides that happen along the way. Very little action happens without Adams going off on a tangeant talking about a particular alien or something. This may sound silly in theory, but in practice it makes for a compelling read.

Personally, my favourite character has to be Wowbagger, the Infinitely Prolonged. This guy is an alien who due to an unfortunate accident with a time machine and a rubber band (amoung other things) was rendered immortal. At first, this was a novelty. But eventually it all got to him, and he decided to take revenge on the entire galaxy by insulting them. One by one. In alphabetical order.

I also like this (and the other books in the series) because it has only 150 pages, and you don't have to think too much about what happens. I'd say that this is the perfect h
oliday book. It's easy to read just a few chapters here and there, or even 10 pages here or there, without feeling like you're interrupting the entire story. However, on long train/bus journeys you can sit for hours and not grow bored of it.

To sum it all up, this book and the others in it's series are must-reads for every book lover. Think of the bonuses of reading this book - no longer will you feel awkward in the company of sci-fi freaks who talk of Slartibartfast and Zaphod Beeblebrox - in future you'll be able to impress them all with your confident nerdishness!! Hang on, wasn't I supposed to be trying to convince people to read this?!

Summary: