This book review is a long-time in coming. You know the book that everyone loves, and though you’ve tried reading it several times already, you could never get into it? So then you tried watching the movie, hoping that would help you better understand what in the world people loved about it, but even that didn’t work?

That’s been my exact experience with The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy by Douglas Adams, and perhaps yours too.

How to Read This Book

Well, I finally sat down with the book again, determined to give it one final go. After all, I’m 42 this year, so what better age to try!?

I’m glad I did. I finally read the book entirely—and thoroughly enjoyed it this time!—and I’m ready to tell you my secret of how I accomplished this extraordinary feat.

You ready for the secret? Here goes: I turned off my brain.

That’s it! I stopped trying to figure the book out. I stopped trying to track the planets and alien species. I stopped trying to understand the plot beyond its most essential elements. I stopped reading it like I would any other book, and instead I simply sat back and enjoyed it for what it was: a very funny romp through the world of science fiction.

Incredible Writing

Douglas Adams’ flare for irony is on full display here. His humor is viscous throughout Arthur’s ordeal on Earth and in space (following Earth’s quick and sudden demise just five minutes too early). His writing and humor are really all that matter, because the characters and plot and universe are like—golly, to what can I compare it?—like Mysterious Science Theatre 3000 style of wondrously awful.

About Adams’ writing, for example, I loved this insight into a random character who died with the Earth about 12 minutes later:

[Prosser] felt that his whole life was some kind of dream and he sometimes wondered whose it was and whether they were enjoying it. (33)

It was lines like this that kept me going. Sure there were times when I felt like I had to slough through whole paragraphs of plot just to hit upon the next ingenious turn or phrase. But it made the book worth reading, because I’d already unplugged my brain. Nothing in the book needed to make sense—not the 3-armed ruler of the galaxy who stole a spacecraft, not the depressed robot, and not Vogon poetry—a piece of literature, by the way, that I wish I had memorized for my Freshman Speech Class in college!

In case you missed it or want to perform the third-worst poetry in the universe at your next dinner party in a voice “rising to a horrible pitch of impassioned stridency” (83), here’s what’s been recorded:

Oh frettled gruntbuggly
Thy micturations are to me
As plurdled gabbleblotchits on a lurgid bee.
Groop I implore thee, my foonting turlingdromes.
And hooptiously drangle me with crinkly bindlewurdles,
Or I will rend thee in the gobberwarts with my blurglecruncheon, see if I don’t!

My absolute favorite scene in the entire book came in Chapter 18 with the sudden appearance of a sperm whale (thanks to the Improbability Drive) and his first and final 30 seconds of existence. What went through his mind before he exploded on the planet below? Douglas Adams has the answer. The epitome of “random,” this small scene flavors the entire book to perfection.

What about the Other Five Books in the Trilogy?

It’s possible that I don’t have enough brainless stupidity in me to complete Adams’ entire 6-part trilogy, but I’m glad I’ve made it over this first hurdle. I was glad that this fictional book, The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy, was an apparent rival to the equally fictitious Encyclopedia Galactica by Isaac Asimov (even though it should predate it by some 50,000 years). Perhaps there will be more connections throughout the series between Adams and Asimov—though I promise my mind won’t be engaged enough to notice them.

This book is a modern classic you should probably read, but believe me, you’ve got to wait until you’re in the mood for it. Wait until your brain is so full of school or life or troubles that you just need a time-waster to give your pistons a rest. Wait for a time when you’re ready to accept that mice were the true rulers of our planet before Earth was destroyed. Wait until you’re ready to accept that the meaning of life, the universe, and everything is “42.” Wait until you’re curious enough to wonder, if “42” is the answer, then what exactly was the question?

©2025 E.T.