The Ultimate Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy (Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy, #1-5)
by Douglas Adams
I didn't like Hitchhiker's Guide much in high school, seeing it as a less-funny Discworld. For some reason reading the anthology over the last two summers (well, to be fair, read all but 50 pages in summer 2008 and finished it in May 2009) made me appreciate it much more.
Adams is weird; he goes back and forth on how nice he wants to be to his characters. For entire books, nothing could go more wrong for them, and they wind up in disheveled lumps in some godforsaken corner of the universe. And then you get books like [b:So Long and Thanks for All the Fish|8698|So Long, and Thanks for All the Fish (Hitchhiker's Guide, #4)|Douglas Adams|http://photo.goodreads.com/books/1165721451s/8698.jpg|3078120] where they get everything they ever could have wanted. Arthur has this weird mutation from bumbling comic relief into someone startlingly calm and insightful that's hard to follow-- except maybe that's the point, too.
If H2G2 actually has a point, which I'm not convinced of. People disparage [b:On the Road|6288|The Road|Cormac McCarthy|http://ecx.images-amazon.com/images/I/21E8H3D1JSL.SL75.jpg|3355573] as "typing" rather than writing; that goes at least quintuple for H2G2. I haven't decided yet if I mind.