Home Sweet Own Book 25

For Classic I reread Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy by Douglas Adams. I haven’t read this since college. It has been incarnated as a TV show, movie, radio show, and book. A series must be some sort of special to get that treatment and it proves true since the story still holds up.

It starts with Arthur Dent trying to stop his house from being torn down to make a freeway bypass. It turns out there are bigger problems, like Earth about to be destroyed to make an intergalactic freeway. I like how Adams has all of this intelligent life just as in love with bureaucracy as we are. It’s a good way to showcase the British style of humor used here, subtle and sarcastic.

Adams invents a fish that lives in your ear that can translate any language for you and a depressed android. He also shows us the world’s first ebook in the Hitchhiker’s Guide. The universe is so vast and with so much life that the book could never exist as a physical copy. Adams makes this point not by being profound but as a subtle joke about all the cultural minutia you should know.

It’s absolutely brilliant. If you haven’t read it yet, shame on you. What’s been keeping you so busy? Nope, not good enough. Go and buy a copy right now young [gender/species].

1) Fiction – A Once Crowded Sky by Tom King

2) Nonfiction – The Man Who Loved Books Too Much by Allison Hoover Bartlett

3) Sci-Fi – Redshirts by John Scalzi

4) Fantasy 

5) Mystery – Book of Lies by Brad Meltzer

6) Horror 

7) Memoir/Biography – Data, A Love Story by Amy Webb

8) Chick Lit – Me and Mr. Darcy by Alexandra Potter

9) Feminist – Commencement by J. Courtney Sullivan

10) Teen – What Happened to Goodbye by Sarah Dessen

11) Holiday 

12) Essays – What Was I Thinking? ed. by Barbara Davilman & Liz Dubelman

13) Short Stories 

14) Library 

15) Animal 

16) Book about Books – Judging a Book By Its Lover by Lauren Leto

17) New – Pitch Perfect by Mickey Rapkin

18) Old – Dark and Stormy Knights edited by P. N. Elrod

19) Pop Science – Why Men Fake It by Abraham Morgentaler, MD

20) Near 

21) Far 

22) Graphic Novel – Love and Capes: Do You Want to Know a Secret? by Thomas F. Zahler

23) Reread – Ready Player One by Ernest Cline

24) Wild Card 

25) Otherworldly Creature 

26) Free – Point Your Face at This by Demetri Martin

27) Noteworthy 

28) Bestseller – How to Be a Woman by Caitlin Moran

29) Themed Anthology – Red edited by Kris Goldsmith

30) Steampunk – The Immersion Book of Steampunk edited by Gareth Jones and Carmelo Rafala

31) Movie-Book 

32) Media – Doctor Who: Touched By an Angel by Jonathan Morris

33) Travel – Love with a Chance of Drowning by Torre DeRoche

34) Food 

35) Classic – Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy by Douglas Adams

36) Humor – Sleep Talkin’ Man by Karen Slavick-Lennard

37) Poetry 

38) Past – Stasiland by Anna Funder

39) Future 

40) Dystopia/Post-Apocalyptic 

41) Zombie 

42) Sports – Red Rising by Ted Starkey

Music: Who’s There by Smash Mouth