My Favorite Book

I've had a number of favorite books over the course of my life. When I was very young, it was of course The Tawny, Scrawny Lion, a book I do not entirely recall, but whose naming fits with my brother's favorite book around the same age, The Saggy, Baggy Elephant. Growing up, I enjoyed books by Roald Dahl, especially The BFG, which hit that mixture of childhood whimsy and people dying brutally that really spoke to me as a child. This might have contributed to my discovery of Michael Crichton, whose books I read with great fervor through what most people would consider my middle school and early high school years. Not long after, I discovered the Ender Saga by Orson Scott Card, which despite controversy and declining quality surrounding Card's more recent work, gave me Ender's Game and Speaker for the Dead as two of my favorite books of all time.

Throughout the years since, I discovered other books that really stuck with me. Books like Fried Green Tomatoes at the Whistle Stop Cafe by Fannie Flagg and The Things They Carried by Tim O'Brien really resonated with me in high school, exposing me not only to fascinating narrative methods, but also to themes that I might have otherwise never accepted. In college, I have discovered an incredible love for poetry through the works of Langston Hughes and Billy Collins especially, both of whose unique styles I've sought to emulate and learn from. Additionally, books like The Melancholy of Haruhi Suzumiya by Nagaru Tanigawa, Brooklyn, Burning by Steve Brezenoff, and Looking for Alaska by John Green have really rekindled my love for young adult literature.

But throughout all of this, I often forget about what has probably been my favorite book through it all, much like how I often forget that The Blues Brothers really is my favorite movie of all time. When I was around the age of Junior High – I don't recall exactly when – my trumpet instructor suggested I read The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy by Douglas Adams. He said he thought it would fit with my sense of humor nicely, which was dry, sarcastic and silly as a sort of byproduct of growing up watching a lot of British films that often involved James Bond or the Monty Python troupe.

So I picked it up from a library, and I loved every line of it. I cannot remember finding anything so funny as the first time I read The Hitchhiker's Guide. It really remains an incredible book, a near-perfect blend of hard science fiction elements and mind-bending, absurd humor. Douglas Adams was the master of describing things in terms that are nearly impossible to visualize. A spaceship shaped like an Italian Bistro that can only be seen out of the corner of ones eye. A slender four that prances in the background of one scene. A cocktail that feels like getting bashed over the head with a slice of lemon wrapped around a gold brick. It's a masterpiece of both classic sci-fi writing and humorous literature at the same time.

The “Hitchhiker's Trilogy” of course contains a total of five books and a short story by Douglas Adams, as well as another novel named And Another Thing by Eoin Colfer. I haven't read this final one yet, apprehension prevents this for the moment. But I plan to after I reread the whole series, which I have just started again this week. Despite my uncertainty, I actually am looking forward to reading it. It would be nice to have an ending to the series that isn't the depressingly bleak Mostly Harmless.

But if you have not read The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy, I cannot think of any excuse for not at least attempting. It's a difficult book, one that can hurt the brain at times, but it is also one of the funniest things ever written, and the series explores a number of interesting themes. It probably is my favorite book of all time, but this is, of course, always up for debate.