Wednesday Weekly Blogging Challenge: Funniest Book I’ve Ever Read

Hosted by Long and Short Reviews.

Click here to read everyone else’s replies to this week’s question and here to see the full list of topics for the year.

A quick note first: if you see this, Tanith, know that I try to leave a comment on your posts every week. I’m not sure if they’re getting through.

Some books are funny the first time but quickly lose their lustre. Others are most amusing to readers at very specific ages or developmental stages in life. They might not be so much fun if you return to them one, ten or twenty years later.

Then there are those few, precious books that transcend age and pay no mind to how many times you might have read them before.

The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy  by Douglas Adams has made me laugh just as hard every time I read it. My fifth experience with it was every bit as humorous as my first one.

Here are a few quotes from I like to reference in ordinary conversations:

“The Answer to the Great Question… Of Life, the Universe and Everything… Is… Forty-two,’ said Deep Thought, with infinite majesty and calm.”

“Anyone who is capable of getting themselves made President should on no account be allowed to do the job.”

“Don’t Panic.”

“Isn’t it enough to see that a garden is beautiful without having to believe that there are fairies at the bottom of it too?”

“A towel… is about the most massively useful thing an interstellar hitchhiker can have. Partly it has great practical value. You can wrap it around you for warmth as you bound across the cold moons of Jaglan Beta; you can lie on it on the brilliant marble-sanded beaches of Santraginus V, inhaling the heady sea vapors; you can sleep under it beneath the stars which shine so redly on the desert world of Kakrafoon; use it to sail a miniraft down the slow heavy River Moth; wet it for use in hand-to-hand-combat; wrap it round your head to ward off noxious fumes or avoid the gaze of the Ravenous Bugblatter Beast of Traal (such a mind-boggingly stupid animal, it assumes that if you can’t see it, it can’t see you); you can wave your towel in emergencies as a distress signal, and of course dry yourself off with it if it still seems to be clean enough.”