The Hitchhikers Guide to the Galaxy (Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy, #1)

by Douglas Adams

[nannah]

I've been meaning to read this for such a long time! My friends introduced me to the (bad but entertaining) 2005 movie adaptation back in grade school, so this has been on my to-read list for a while. Glad I finally got around to it.

The prose is incredibly charming, and I know of so many more recently published books whose authors have tried to copy this particular style of voice, prose, and narration. It's very entertaining and difficult to put down (and for a sci-fi, really readable).

I know pausing the action to talk about some planet's history, some spaceship, some random army, or something or another, is supposed to be part of the book's eccentric humor, but about halfway through it began to bother me. Like I really don't care about this whale or bowl of petunias that suddenly appear into existence. I started to skim over these departures to get to the main characters, which saddened me.

And then there's Marvin, the manically depressed robot. As someone with bipolar disorder, reading this awful, awful representation of someone (something) with bipolar disorder - which is what manic depression is, for those who don't know - almost made me cry. I get this book was written in the 80s, and bipolar disorder isn't even understood or portrayed well today, but to create a character whose portrayal of a mental illness is for comedic effect? It's just so unbearably bad.

I'll still read the others in this series because it's so fun, but I really hope Marvin doesn't appear much later on.