The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy. The plans specifying that Arthur Dent's home is to be torn down for building a highway bypass are on public display in such a disused lavatory.

Get the book, yes, but do get the original BBC radio play. That's where it started, and it's excellent.

Seconded. The radio play is great.

Oh. Thank you so much. :)

I saw the movie, I think I really need to get the book...

The movie was a brief summary, and about 60% all-new content.

I recorded H2G2 off the radio as a teen, and listened to it so many times I could have quoted the entire 6 hours in one shot.

Me too, on cassette tapes, off the local college radio station WMUC!

I didn't mean to plagiarize -- those words are just so deeply embedded in my mind from listening to the radio shows and records, reading the books and playing the infocom game so many times, and they so perfectly described the situation. So I assumed everyone would recognize Douglas Adam's really really nice use of words, like a Shakespearian quote. ;)

"It's unpleasantly like being drunk."

"What's so unpleasant about being drunk?"

"You ask a glass of water."

If you haven't already listened to the 1978 radio show millions of times, it's on youtube!

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SaV8XOYviB4&list=PL5nE2JSEwP...