Book before movie? Or movie before book?

I have always found it interesting to read the book a movie is based on or see the movie that a book is based on. It all started for me with Bridget Jones' Diary. In the book, Bridget is a very reasonable, slightly but adorably neurotic woman who meanders through her day with the self same thoughts that I think a lot of women have running through their heads throughout their day: how much have I eaten, how much do I weigh, is he looking at me? Did I say something stupid, etc. The book was perfectly reasonable - not my favorite thing in the world, but light, entertaining, and sympathetic. The movie, on the other hand, blew these tiny neurosis into huge slapstick routines, making Bridget a much less likeable character and much more cartoonish in the process.

In that case, I preferred one to the other, but ever since then it's been fascinating to do the thought experiment and see which is "better." I read Girl, Interrupted with hopes of comparing to the movie (but the thought of watching Winonna Ryder scratch her wrists bloody in an attempt to see if there really was bone under there was just too much to stomach, so I shelved that project). I read The Virgin Suicides, Clue, the book (so help me - it should be illustrative that I can't even find a link to the book anymore), and The Princess Bride book, to figure out which is generally better - the movie, or the book.

And, as one would expect, the law of primacy kicks in. If you saw it first, you like the movie better. If you read it first, you like the book better.

So why I expected to like Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy book, I'm not sure.

First off, I'm so late to the Hitchhiker's party, that it was hardly worth showing up at all. I avoided the book for years because I thought it was in the Dancing Wu-Li Masters mold - part physics, part philosophy, all parts serious. I think if I had had any inkling that it was short, light-hearted, and comedic, I might have given it a shot years ago.

So when I actually chanced it enough to see the movie, the movie was so different then what I thought the Hitchhiker thing was about it was hard to adjust. Once I understood that this was just a random comedy using space as its backdrop, it was a lot of fun.

Because the book is such an old stand by, I feel sure that the die-hard fans lo these many generations think it utterly blasphemous that anyone might like the movie better - especially since, in reading the book, it's clear that they really hacked it, and a few other of the series, together. The book is fun and light, for sure, but I think you must have to read the whole series to really get a "story" out of it. Versus the movie, where they seem to have cherry-picked book elements to string together the best semblance of a plot possible. The book is random and fun, but not nearly as directed and "storied" as the movie, which is, I imagine, the point and the appeal of the book in the first place. I think I might try the rest of the series and see if I can get recency to kick in and boot out primacy...