Almost all of my friends, past and present, have read this book and they have always talked so fondly of it, but for some reason, I have resisted reading it. Then recently those Hollywood folks made a movie of it, and still I resisted. Not sure why now, because as I sat reading simply Douglas Adam's introduction to the "omnibus edition" as he so aptly describes this volume of his five 
classic novels of the Hitchhiker series (plus one story) I couldn’t stop laughing out loud – I was even perhaps ROTFL. And now that I am into the actual story itself, the laughter continues … and it is not just an occasional chuckle here or there quietly to myself; it is truly out loud laughter sprinkled by a snort there and here! Perhaps this is not a good book to take with you to the doctor’s office to read while sitting in the waiting room, or else people might think you’re crazy -- unless you don’t mind people thinking that of you … but anyway … about the book. I can’t do Adam’s explanation justice of how The Hitchhiker’s Guide came to be … besides it is too convoluted and hysterical for me to sum up in this weblog. And his stories themselves – they are absurdist, hyperbolic science-fiction at its finest. It all begins when the Earth is destroyed in order to build a cosmic freeway …
(Heidi Schachtschneider Cary, Information Services)
