DNA

I am currently smack dab in the middle of reading The Salmon of Doubt, which is a collection of Douglas Adams' speeches, columns, articles, and musings, as well as most of The Salmon of Doubt itself, which was going to be his next novel. (I bought the book as an early wedding present for myself, and I was going to save it for the honeymoon, but frankly, how could you have an unread Douglas Adams novel in your house and not start devouring it immediately?)

I'm a little bit struck dumb by how important and incredible this book is, and extremely frustrated at Adams' early death. Somehow for the Hitchhiker's Guide has always been something of a book out of time; in other words, it just exists and is wonderful and in a way it is so good, the characters so rich and realistic and hilarious and fallible and perfect that I basically had no need to know anything about the other (other than to read everything else he has ever written). (Creepily interesting side note: I couldn't remember how to spell "fallible", as I always seem to misspell it as "falliable", so I typed my incorrect version into Google to see what it would suggest. The very first result that pops up is a BBC site for h2g2, which is the business/ website/ encyclopedia co-created by Douglas Adams.)

So, back to my original point (if it can be said that I had one): I was pretty shocked and saddened to learn that Douglas Adams died in 2001, and was not even 50 years old when he died. I'm mad at myself for not appreciating him more when he was alive, although I'm not sure precisely how that would have made a difference. I'm mostly just mad that now I can't read the hilarious novels, speeches, columns, articles, and musings that he could have written.

Read The Salmon of Doubt. It's worth it.