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

I am such an idiot

So last night, I went to a bookshop. Okay so far. I picked up a copy of 'Sorcery' by Terry Pratchett, to buy. This is because my sister's boyfriend reccomended it to me a while back. Still looking good. I then decided to buy copies of 'Nine Stories' by JD Salinger and 'Raise High the Roofbeams, Carpenters, and Seymour, an Introduction' also by JD Salinger. Perfectly sensible.

Then I decided to buy a super incredibly fabulously wonderful leather-bound shiny gold page-edged with one of those ribbon bookmarks special edition of the complete 'Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy' omnibus by Douglas Adams.

Now, I know that sounds like a wonderful idea, but the snag is that I already have multiple copies of all the Hitchhiker books. But I simply could not resist having this. I go crazy for anything shiny. It was also the only copy they had, and it was marked down to 19 dollars. So I bought it, and now I slightly regret doing it. At first, I totally hated myself for it, but now it doesn't seem so bad. But still, all things considered, it was stupid of me to buy it.

And a side note, something funny I noticed: They had similar editions of other books available, you know, all fancy and such. They were things like 'Emma', 'Huckleberry Finn', 'The Scarlet Pimpernel', 'Great Expectations' and 'Moby Dick'. And then silly science fiction humour books from the eighties.

Hitchhiker's is not just a silly science-fiction humour book from the eighties! It's more than that!

You know you're addicted to h2g2 when you're American and you start using British spelling in normal conversation. "Humour" - very nice.

Yes, I know, I didn't mean to sound like that. I just think it's strange that they would do that for the Hitchhiker books along with all those really old classics....

Nah, I have pretty much always spelled things British, even before I came here.

I can't really explain it, but for some reason, if I read too much JD Salinger at one time, I get depressed. Some how, he has a depressive effect in his writing, even though it's really good.

I can kind of see that. As my friend once said about Catcher in the Rye: "Wow, Holden Caufield (sp?) can swear, big deal!"

That's true. A while back, the second time I read Catcher in the Rye, I read most of the book (all but the last thirty pages or so) within a single day, and then I was depressed all evening. So next time, I will make sure I take my time with it. But the problem is that JD Salininger is pretty easy to read a lot of at one time, since his writing flows pretty fast. Or at least that's the way it is with me.

I looooove Catcher in the Rye. I haven't read anything else by him though. Actually I haven't been reading to much lately. The last two books I read were The Great Shark Hunt by Hunter S. Thompson and The Zombie Survival Guide by Max Brooks- which was hilarious.

I don't think it's silly that you bought the book. I have the mini-series on VHS and dvd.

I am now re-reading Catcher in the Rye, again. You ought to read Nine Stories, there's some really good ones in there.

I'll keep an eye out for it. I haven't been to a bookstore in ages but maybe I can get there this weekend.