Don't Panic

It's the 10th anniversary of Dougla Adams' death today.  I am a huge fan of his work as you can see my the cover of my Nook and its name, Deep Thought.

I started reading the Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy in high school around junior year, if I remember correctly.  Then I read the Dirk Gently series, one of which has my favorite title of all time, The Long Dark Tea Time of the Soul.  I'm not sure how many times I've read them, just a handful.  But they are always worth a read and a laugh.  I got my husband to read the Hitchhikers series when we started dating and made a fan out of him.  We've seen the British sitcom and the newer movie and liked them both. I can credit Douglas Adams with many of the jokes that go around my house and partly with my love of random British things.  Because of him, I have tried other authors like him like Terry Prachett and Neil Gaiman.  His books are genuinely different and funny and I'm pretty sure that everyone should try them at least once.

And Another Thing

Jacket:
An Englishman's continuing search through space and time for a decent cup of tea . . .
Arthur Dent's accidental association with that wholly remarkable book, The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy, has not been entirely without incident.
Arthur has traveled the length, breadth, and depth of known, and unknown, space. He has stumbled forward and backward through time. He has been blown up, reassembled, cruelly imprisoned, horribly released, and colorfully insulted more than is strictly necessary. And of course Arthur Dent has comprehensively failed to grasp the meaning of life, the universe, and everything.
Arthur has finally made it home to Earth, but that does not mean he has escaped his fate.
Arthur's chances of getting his hands on a decent cuppa have evaporated rapidly, along with all the world's oceans. For no sooner has he touched down on the planet Earth than he finds out that it is about to be blown up . . . again.
And Another Thing . . . is the rather unexpected, but very welcome, sixth installment of the Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy series. It features a pantheon of unemployed gods, everyone's favorite renegade Galactic President, a lovestruck green alien, an irritating computer, and at least one very large slab of cheese.

Ah, yes, thought the old man.  Tea.  At the center of an uncertain and possibly illusory universe there would always be tea. p.6

The sixth installment in the Hitchhiker's trilogy comes from Eoin Colfer, best know for his Artemis Fowl books.  Before his death, Douglas Adams had expressed an interest in continuing the story of Arthur Dent, Ford Prefect, and the rest of the characters since the last book, Mostly Harmless, ended on a rather bad note with everyone dying and so on.  So Colfer was commissioned to write the sixth book.  I was a bit apprehensive starting since I'm a big fan of the series and Adams in general, but I was extremely impressed.  It was such a Hitchhiker's book with the tone and notes and irreverence that is expected in this books.   I was happy with the characterization of Arthur, Ford, Zaphod, Trillion, and some other familiar faces.  It was nice to have a better wrap-up for all the characters even if Arthur still has no luck.  I wonder what the book would have been like had Adams been able to write it, but Colfer did an great job of continuting the story  in a way that I think Adams would have approved of and with his sense of humor and style.