This book was great fun. I'd read some of Thompson's short stories and loved his sort of frantic, unreliable, trippy style and this book is basically the epitome of that drug-skewed paranoia without being devoid of meaning and introspection.

That said, I didn't feel like the book added much over the 1998 Terry Gilliam movie based on it. The movie hits all of the major plot points, and frequently quotes the book verbatim in both dialogue and narration. There were a few minor things that didn't make it to the movie, including one that had me in stitches, but the movie ends a little tighter and ultimately was a worthy stand in for reading the book.

Anyway, this was a blast to read and hard to put down (I read it in a day, the 200 pages frequently broken up with chapter and part breaks and great Steadman illustrations) but I was hoping for more content that I hadn't already seen on the screen.