50 Books in 2026
The Soda Springs Library is hosting a 2026 reading challenge. The challenge is to read 50 books this year (or 25 for younger readers), and have them signed off by library staff members. There are prizes along the way for reading, and a grand prize of a library hoodie with the completion of 50 books. There is a list of category prompts and signup information available at the library. As often as possible, I will try to post my results from the week. If you would like to submit a book review for your part of the challenge, you can either email it to [email protected].
“The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy” Douglas Adams
Full disclosure—this is one of my favorite books, and I’m using my “A book you’ve already read” prompt. Partly, that’s just due to timing and the fact that due to the fifty book schedule I’m prioritizing books under 120,000 words or so.
But mostly it’s because the world, which can often be an unpleasant place, seems to be in overdrive lately in that way. It’s true that there are always negative elements to the world around us no matter when you find yourself. But it’s just as true that during some times the pace and intensity of that negativity are more noticeable. And the last month has been a real doozy, so to speak.
At times like that, a beloved book can go a long way toward providing comfort. There’s something about encountering a familiar narrative again and having it be just what you expected. I find it soothing, and “Hitchhiker’s Guide” is a soothing kind of book for me. Of course, it’s more complicated than that. One way it’s more complicated is that the Hitchhiker’s Guide phenomenon isn’t really first or foremost a book, and the book itself might be one of the lesser components of whatever the whole thing is.
Douglas Adams originally scripted the story of humans Arthur Dent, Tricia McMillan (Trillian), aliens Ford Prefect and Zaphod Beeblebrox, and paranoid android Marvin (among many others) as a six part radio drama for the BBC in 1978. The radio series was produced at the sort of fading edge of BBC audio production majesty, when the medium had perfected what it was capable of in terms of resources and execution, but had ceded a good part of its entertainment audience to television.
It’s no surprise then that a 1981 TV series was made from a version of the same source material, although with major changes and a number of plotlines and characters thrown out, added, or otherwise scrambled. It’s a ton of fun, and more faithful to the anarchic spirit of the radio play than the 2004 film starring Martin Freeman and Zooey Deschanel (which is still good, in any case).
Between those things came the novelization. Because the written word provides for a certain luxury of digression, it is the least focused and most chatty of the versions. Arthur Dent’s house is scheduled to be demolished by a Vogon construction fleet to make way for an interstellar bypass. The plans had been publicly available for examination in a nearby solar system, and it’s humanity’s fault that they never bothered to check. Before the planet is removed from existence, Arthur manages to hitchhike on a passing ship courtesy of his friend Ford Prefect, who turns out to have been an alien freelance writer for the Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy, the most famous publication from the great publishing houses of etc etc.
The novel is episodic in the manner of a picaresque, which is a novel of loosely connected vignettes, a la Don Quixote or the Adventures of Huckleberry Finn. Throughout it all, Arthur learns a lot about how the universe works, and even more about how it doesn’t. Goofball characters fill every chapter, and dry humor is the order of the day.
On top of the surface level smart-aleckry, the book actually poses a number of captivating metaphysical questions, and offers a surprising amount of legitimate emotional depth. As the series (“a trilogy in five parts”) progressed, the real emotional complexity of Arthur’s relationships became a heavier focus, with “Mostly Harmless” being a bit of a downer to end on.
The first salvo, though, is an unmitigated treat. It has rightly earned its place as one of the most accessible books about probability formulae and simulation theory—to say nothing of towels—ever written. If you have never read it, it’s a quick read, and well worth the time. Because the British 70s (Adams himself worked for the BBC, was a writer for Doctor Who, and was involved with Monty Python) influenced so many comics in the UK, US, and all across the western world, there is a lot of pop culture currency that you may not know derives from this book. If you’ve wondered about anyone using the number 42 with a knowing grin, the book is the reason.
Although I read this because I needed something I already knew to take in while working on other things, I found that I just gave myself over to fully engaging with the book. It’s not a literary masterpiece in the conventional sense. There are some dropped threads, clumsy sections, inscrutable sentences, and pointless excursions that go nowhere. But as the book is about wandering about in confusion, the execution fits the theme perfectly, and in many ways it’s better for its sloppiness. It’s also a nice break from the chaos of our everyday lives, which is usually nowhere near as entertaining!
