h2g2 The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy: Earth Edition

This is an excellent bathroom book (for those moments in the day where you need something for your brain to do whilst other parts of the body are busy - generally 5 to 15 minutes).

Leave it on the Cistern.

It doesn't matter where you open it, as chronological order was never that important to it. Once you have read it once, you can pick up the thread whatever page you open at.

One word of advice tho, the loo seat gives the knees cramp and things start to get chilly after 20 minutes or so, so don't get too engrossed.

It is good bathroom reading. However, I made the mistake of starting it that way, and I'm a slow reader... so it had to go back to the library before I could finish it! And as I've never finished it, I'll have to start it all over again the next time I get a chance!

Joseph Heller did come up with some great stuff with names, though.

~Irving Washington (AKA Washington Irving)

I don't agree about the chronology not mattering. The chaplain's struggle to come to terms with his deja vu and whether or not he really did see a naked man at the funeral, the long delay before we discover why Major ––––– de Coverley has no first name, the long dark sequence in the Eternal City where the world has gone completely mad, all depend on information being fed to you in the right order. The same thing is true about the number of missions they have to fly. The book is full of jokes, so opening it at random is rewarding, but it's even better when you start at the front and work your way through.

Which is why I have to start all over again

Any book with 289 favourable reader reviews at Amazon.com must have something going for it.

I agree with this one.

Screw Tolstoy, this is the greatest war book ever written. Heller reinvented the novel with a totally unique approach to character development.

He lets us get inside the mind of very disturbed people in one of the funniest and clever books ever written. And the dialogue and character studies are still some of the funniest, and most original in print today. A modern classic by any measure.

Will agree with you ... hence the proviso that you can open it at random, AFTER the first reading.

Doesn't work otherwise, you have to read it from front to back otherwise the tangled chronology doesn't fall into place in the first place

Rumfoord, you've got flies in your eyes. Only you can't see them because you've got flies in your eyes.

The tangled chronology is very confusing. The only thing consistent is the steadily increasing number of missions (it seems to me). Also, I've gotten maybe 2/3 through, maybe a bit less, and I still don't see how the /first two sentences/ are relevant to the rest of the book.