Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #3182 in Books
• Published on: 1979-10-12
• Original language: English
• Binding: Paperback
• 160 pages

Customer Reviews

Forty Two Reasons to Buy.
And then, one Thursday, nearly two thousand years after one man had been nailed to a tree for saying how great it would be to be nice to people for a change, I borrowed Hitch Hikers from the library and changed my outlook on reading forever. At school they told us what and when to read and as a consequence I'd never read anything except for `Winnie-the-Pooh' and `The House at Pooh Corner', then they sent us home to revise for our `O' levels and I needed a silent occupation to keep me entertained whilst my Mother thought I was revising. Early on I was caught with my walkman on, I hadn't heard my mum coming up the steps, and so reading seemed like the ideal solution.

I'd enjoyed the TV series of Hitch Hikers and so got this from the library and changed overnight from a non-reader to a prolific reader. I didn't so much read as consume this and the remainder of the then four Hitch Hikers books over the next couple of days. Douglas Adams prose was so entertaining that it not only made him instantly my favourite but also introduced me to reading for pleasure. Before my revision leave was over I'd not only read the four part Hitch Hikers trilogy three times but I had also read the entire output of Tom Sharpe as well as all the James Bond and Phillip Marlowe books.

Twenty five years later Adams is still my favourite author and I can't help but think if I'd not discovered these books then I would never have read and would have missed out on all the hundreds of great books I've read since. Mind you I might have done better in my `O' levels, I could have been a contender....

Very clever "...the Best Bang since the Big One..."
I'm not really a science fiction fan, which might go some way to explain why I only read this for the first time at the age of 28!

Born in the year of it's release, I remember being vaguely aware of the TV series, but had never watched it. This is a book that everyone has heard of. Even if you've never read it, it's one that's in your consciousness. I remember seeing the book in the library as a kid but passing it over as I thought it was "a boys book". (This was a girl who wanted to read Anne of Green Gables and Little Women).

I wish I had read this as a pre-teen. Although some of the humour and observations made in the book would be appreciated by adults, on a different level, it is written in a pre-teen style.

Hitchhiker's is a lot of fun. It's silly, comical and satirical. It also makes some fascinating and pertinent observations on politics, beauracracy, philosophy and human nature in general. Douglas Adams was clearly a hugely intelligent, perceptive man and a great conceptual thinker. Obviously, written in 1979, some of his references are a little outdated - such as the digital watches; and of course the Guide itself exsists today, in the guise of an on-line encyclopaedia such as Wikipedia! However, despite this, many of the ideas in the book have stood the test of time.

I would definitely recommend this book, even if you're not a sci-fi fan. As sci-fi goes, it's more Red Dwarf than John Wyndham. Adams is a cracking comedy writer and some of the lines in the book are hilarious. I now look forward to reading The Restaurant at the End of the Universe".

Dont panic just buy read and enjoy
I read these books ( please get all of them ) every year and they never fail to make me smile or enrich my life. So many wonderful ways to approach the mysterys of the universe and make it fun. It should be in every school and part of every teenagers life. Mr Adams , thank you , wherever you are. This ranks with Spike Milligans war memoise, the Pythons and The Simpsons.