We like him 'cause he's naughty! :p

I'm glad you cleared that up, I cringe at Benny Hill and I'm Canadian.

For me the best thing about HHGTTG was that you always knew there was someone out there that missed something you got, or you missed something that someone else got. One of my favorite quotes from HHGTTG was whan Zaphod said: "Shee, you guys are so unhip it's a wonder your bums don't fall off."

Another Adams quote, or story he wrote.

"Every country is like a particular type of person. America is like a belligerent, adolescent boy, Canada is like an intelligent, 35 year old woman. Australia is like Jack Nicholson. It comes right up to you and laughs very hard in your face in a highly threatening and engaging manner. In fact it's not so much a country as such, more a sort of thin crust of semi-demented civilisation caked around the edge of a vast, raw wilderness, full of heat and dust and hopping things."

Douglas Adams

If you would like to read the rest of that quote go to: http://www.douglasadams.com/dna/980707-08-a.html

My dad is from Grenada and found Hill to be hilarious. I'm a Bahamian female, and found him grossly-funny; like when your friend does something disgusting but you can't help but laugh.
I really don't see how nationality makes any difference.

Isn't it 33?

Not really. If there's a 4 in the "thirteens" place and a 2 in the ones place, then using good old base ten to make sense of it: (4 x 13) + (2 x 1) = 54. Which in what we normally think of as what you get when you multiply 6 by 9.

I avoided reading HHGTG for so long and after reading it this month thought it was ok. Nothing spectacular or very funny, just quirky. It's a good short read and the second book is almost as good as the first. I just finished the third book and didn't like it at all. Douglas Adams is an acquired taste.

I first read HHGTG as a teenager in the 1980's. *After* reading Life, the Universe & Everything. LTU&E made a lot more sense--but was still damn funny--after reading HHGTG.

I have no idea how many times I've read HHGTG at this point. At least 10, I'm sure. It's funny every time.

I've done readings of Chapter 18 (the falling whale) for friends before as an introduction to how funny the book is. Or just to read it. It's a great chapter. I've also done readings about the art--or rather the knack--of flying.

I love those books. Some day I'll read "Mostly Harmless", the fifth book in the trilogy (it's not in my "More than Complete" volume).

-David

I think this sentence--- 'By a curious coincidence, “None at all” is exactly how much suspicion the ape-descendant Arthur Dent had that one of his closest friends was not descended from an ape, but was in fact from a small planet somewhere in the vicinity of Betelgeuse and not from Guildford as he usually claimed'---is one of my favourite transition sentences in all of literature :)

And who else but Adams would have ever conceived of a character responding to the announcement by a friend that he is from another planet and that the Earth is about to be demolished to make way for a hyperspatial express bypass with the words, "This must be a Thursday. I never could get the hang of Thursdays."

I'm very fond of the scene with Deep Thought, Majikthise and Vroomfondel.

"I mean, what's the use of our sitting up half the night arguing that there may or may not be a God if this machine only goes and gives you his bleeding phone number the next morning?"

You caught me before I edited my post. 42 (base 10) = 33 ( base 13).

So I'm not sure of the significance of "6 x 9"? Did I miss something when I read the book?

As for the book itself, I found it very entertaining and plan on reading the rest in the series.

I think it must come in the next book, The Restaurant at the End of the Universe.

It turns out that the Question might be (but probably isn't) "What do you get when you multiply six by nine?"

My DXG cover has "DON'T PANIC" stencilled onto it in large friendly letters.

Harmless.

Just to expand on my previous comment a little. Mostly Harmless.

HHGTTG is something that I find myself utterly unable to be objective about. It is ingrained into my psyche as deeply as any other formative experience from my childhood and teen years. I can quote whole sections of the thing almost verbatim, along with Monty Python and Faulty Towers. I woke one Sunday morning in bed and switched on the radio and found the very first episode of the very first radio series just about to begin. I was there at the beginning. I had never heard anything like it, ever, and I lay in bed laughing so much my mother banged on the wall. (I wish I'd listened to my mother - Why, what did she say? - I don't know; I didn't listen!) I bought the LP's, read the books, missed the TV shows because I was going to night classes, hated the movie, then started all over again back at the radio shows, over and again.

It was a phenomenon and I am glad I was there at its start because no one now will ever get it quite the same way they would have got it back then. Better than digital watches!