The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy, a comfort read for bad days

There's barely a plot. The Earth gets demolished on page thirty or so to make way for a space bypass, and things get less serious after that. Every couple of pages there's a joke you want to read out to whoever is in the room, which my wife has asked me not to do.

It's short and I've read it maybe six times. Whenever a deploy goes badly I go home and read the bit about the Vogons and I feel a bit better about things.