Finished: The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy (Adams) Well, that was probably the oddest book I've read, but at least it was goofy and weird and not depressing. :-) Moments before earth is blown up by aliens, earthling Arthur Dent is swooped to safety by his friend, Ford Prefect, who is really an alien himself who has been living on earth for the past fifteen years. I say safety, but really he's just thrust into the galaxy, along with Ford, who happens to be a researcher for the famous Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy. He's been hitchhiking around the galaxy on various spaceships doing research for years and years. So, anyway, apparently earth is just the 10,000,000 year old experiment that is being conducted by the true brightest species, mice. They have been on a quest to find the answer to the big question, what is the meaning of life? Through a super-dooper computer, they got the answer "42". But now, they had no idea what the actual question was! Moments before the computer was about to spit out the question, after the 10,000,000 years, the earth was eradicated by the Vogons. Off Ford and Arthur go on an adventure where they "hitchhike" a ride on the Heart of Gold spaceship, which has recently been stolen by Galaxy president Zaphod Beeblebrox, who is on the quest to find the planet, Magrathea. Zaphod had also paid a visit to earth in recent months, and come back with the only other earthling in the story Tricia (or Trillion as she is now known). The story is basically a bunch of nonsense about them finding the planet and escaping the planet and continuing on their adventures. Rather silly, but silly is what was needed at this point in time. :-)