Reading H2G2

Yeah,  I’m finally reading Douglas Adams’s The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy. I’m reading the “Four parts of a trilogy” all-in-one book…. finished part 1 and part 2 (“The Restaurant at the End of the Universe”) and now reading part 3 “Life, the Universe and Everything”.

I wanted to read this book since quite a while because I’ve heard a lot about it and I mean a lot.  The other reason is I wanted to know what was the answer to life, the universe and everything. Yes, it’s 42.

The book is quite humorous and I was enjoying the first part. Now, I’m just reading to finish it off. Yeah, there are some funny passages like this one:

The Hitch Hiker’s Guide to the Galaxy has a few things to say on the subject of towels.

A towel, it says is about the mast massively useful thing an interstellar hitch hiker 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 vapours; you can sleep under it beneath the stars which shine so redly on the desert world of Kafrakoon; use it to sail a mini raft 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; 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.

More importantly, a towel has immense psychological value. For some reason, if a strag (strag: non-hitch hiker) discovers that a hitch hiker has his towel with him, he will automatically assume that he is also in possession of a toothbrush, face flannel, soap, tin of biscuits, flask, compass, map, ball of string, gnat spray, wet weather gear, space suit, etc. , etc. Furthermore, the strag will then happily lend the hitch hiker any of these or a dozen other items that the hitch hiker might accidentally have ‘lost’. What the strag will think is that any man who can hitch the length and breadth of the galaxy, rough it, slum it, struggle against terrible odds, win through, and still know where his towel is is clearly a man to be reckoned with.

… but still what’s the big deal about this book? My only guess is that I might find out once I finish it or I am just wasting my time. Maybe only Deep Thought can answer that one.