When Arthur Dent wakes to find a bulldozer heading for his house, his day gets measurably worse when the Earth is destroyed and Arthur finds himself on a space ship heading for parts unknown...

I first read this when I was 23 and have been saying I'd reread it for years. I grabbed this ancient tome from my bookcase about a week ago, marveling that I was twice the age when I'd last read it. If I was a real hoopy frood, I would have reread it the year I turned 42 but that was the year my son was born and there wasn't a lot of extra brain power to be had.

Anyway, I enjoyed this on the reread and it was fairly timely for a book written in the 1970s apart from all the references to digital watches being cool. The jokes still land well for me. My wife is listening to the audio book read by Stephen Fry and she's enjoying it as well.

The writing isn't as breezy as I remember, though. I think if I'd read Terry Pratchett before Adams, I wouldn't have enjoyed this as much the first time through. I'm slowly chewing through the trilogy in five parts omnibus but I might stop after Life, the Universe, and Everything this time through.