The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy

The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy by Douglas Adams

Arthur Dent is not having a good day. He is hungover and sees his house about to be destroyed to make way for a highway bypass. He meets his friend, Ford Prefect who takes him to a pub and tells him the earth is about to be destroyed to make way for an interplanetary bypass. (Shortly after it is destroyed, these become no longer needed.)

Things get crazier. They hitchhike a ride on a Vogon construction ship that is building the bypass. They don't like hitchhikers, but their help does. They are using the Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy to make their way around. Earth's entry is just "Harmless" (though will be updated to "mostly harmless".) They are tortured with poetry and try to talk their way out of punishment, but end up being shot out of the ship into space.

They get picked up by zaphod beeblebrox on the Heart of Gold ship. This ship is powered by the improbability drive. It was almost impossible for them to be picked up, and thus the ship's improbability picked them up. Many other "improbable" things happen. (For example, Dent knew Beeblebrox from his time picking up a girl he liked at a pub - and the girl is here.) They end up in a place that makes custom planets. They are about to get nuked before the missiles turn into a sperm whale. They have a babelfish that translates any language to be understood (and just happens to have evolved that way.) They also learn that answer to life the universe and everything was 42 and earth was created to find the question - but it was destroyed just a bit too soon. Mice were the most intelligent creatures. Dolphins were trying to tell people that the earth would be destroyed, but people just saw it as tricks.

The book is filled with memes and humor. It goes quickly, but is zanily entertaining, while also providing witty societal commentary.

The Restaurant at the End of the Universe: The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy, Book 2

The Restaurant at the End of the Universe: The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy, Book 2 by Douglas Adams

The second Hitchhiker's Guide book is comedy couched in nihilist philosophy. The earth has been destroyed just before it produced the question for life the universe and everything. (The answer was 42.) The gang are traveling around with some bizarre gadgets (including glasses that make things go black to help avoid bad things). The paranoid android continues to be negative, but can help them get places. They are hungry and end up at the Restaurant at the End of the Universe. There is some time travel involved, so people can go, watch the end of the universe and then return back home. The restaurant includes animals that are bred to be eaten. The cow comes out and asks people what part of them they would like to eat. 

The gang ends up stealing a totally black ship and eventually end up on early earth. They run into primitive cultures, as well as a culture that has formed bureaucracy before innovation. (They need market research before producing the wheel.) There is also a group of "unneeded" people that were sent away from their planet under the guise of being the first to inhabit a new world before their planet is destroyed. The book includes some humorous explanations for hard to grasp processes (like the beginning and end of the universe.) There are plenty of funny moments as well as parts of interesting observations of the silliness of people, especially in the context of a vast world.

And Another Thing... (Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy Book 6)

I used to really like reading Douglas Adams' books as a kid. Perhaps I have grown out of them. Or perhaps Colfer is just not able to meet the expectations. I found And Another Thing to be a mishmash and not very interesting. There are characters. They go around and have some silly adventures while others get annihilated. There are various types of sentient animals as well as a long encounter with the Norse gods. It sort of rambled together, but didn't really keep my attention.

Misc. Books: Salmon of Doubt, Waiting for Aphrodite, summary of Das Kapital

Sue Hubbell - Waiting for Aphrodite: Journey into the Time Before Bones (1999). This is part nature book, part narrative of life changes. She has intriguing account of a number of 'less-studied bugs' (such as rolly pollies and centipedes.) Parts of the book get a little slow. However, it does open up interesting questions about the interrelations in the ecosystem and the presence of 'superfluous' living things that are not needed for the survival of other species. She guesses that there may be very few of these, with perhaps man being the most notable. I would think otherwise - man's absence would surely have a negative impact on many of the domesticated plants and animals that would not be able to survive without his intervention. (Not to mention the many microorganisms and bugs that depend upon him.)

Louis Rekeyser - Karl Marx: Das Kapital.(1992)  This purports to be a brief summary of Marx's key work. However, it is more a critique of Marx himself and the shortcomings of his economic philosophy.

Douglas Adams - The Salmon of Doubt. (2002) The intro states that this book is essentially a posthumous dump of Douglas Adams' hard drive. The contents span a couple decades and include many great short essays. Most memorable are ones detailing the absurdity of driving law enforcement and critique of the multitude of "little dongly things (power supplies)". About half the book is devoted to the actual incomplete "Salmon of Doubt" book. This is easily the weakest part of the whole collection. Though it has funny parts, it is obviously not in a complete state and doesn't stand up to the great essays.


( These below are added to another post) 
Voltaire - Candide. Life is a Journey, not a destination. Everything that could possibly go wrong goes wrong, yet Candide remains an optimist. He even gives up on the city of gold and peace to try to find and marry the girl of his dreams. Through it all, he keeps on a face of naieve optimism. Alas, even that starts to go wrong, but he remains happy until he finally sinks in to a dull life on the farm. Finally the "lack of something bad" becomes the one thing that makes him question the "best of all possible worlds". It turns out that bad things actually kept life interesting. It is monotony that is the true bad.
Voltaire takes hilarious jabs at royalty, church hierarchy, society, and just about everybody. Its amazing that it survived all these years. As I was going through it, I kept hearing Bernstein's Candide overture in my head. So, I listened to the CD and ... well, I still don't have anything more than the overture going through my head.

Stephen E. Ambrose - Undaunted Courage. This is primarily a biography of Merriweather Lewis, with extensive coverage of the Lewis and Clark exploration. The superlatives and endless complements of Lewis get tiring. It reads more like a family tale, attempting to place the family member in the most positive light, with his adventures being the most important in the world. The laudatory prose gets very tiring.

Orson Scott Card - Speaker For the Dead
This is much better than Ender's Game. The story telling is much more "together" and riveting. It presents some interesting questions. Humans secure intergalatic peace, and in doing so bring their technological and social evolution to a veritable 3000 year stand still. When they do encounter other intelligent life, they look at it through there own condescending eyes. They don't realize that the others may have many abilities that they don't recognize. Furthermore, they also expose the futility of an "observe, not disturb" mantra in science. Any observation will lead to some change in the observed, even if the observer does not notice them.
Then there is the human interaction aspect. A quest to eliminate potential harm may bring about many external damages - while still letting the undesired harm take place.


Tom Stoppard - Arcadia
This funny play is filled with mathematical references, while at the same time taking jabs at literary critics and biographers. History is storytelling through the eyes of the historian. Their biases and time period can have a significant impact on the story that they tell. I think I'll be exploring other Stoppard plays.