Very very fascinating but also very very sad. I think some of Adams' best writing is found within this work. Sadly, the publication of this book meant that there would be no more new Douglas Adams books.

This was a weird one for me. I started listening to this book about a year ago and hated it. Today, I unexpectedly finished another audiobook at the beginning of my drive to work. I searched my phone and found that I hadn't deleted The Salmon of Doubt yet. Begrudgingly, I started it over.

I had a completely different reaction today. I thought it was hilarious. I thought the essays/Articles were great. There was one about the inevitable random cords that people end up collecting that was especially poignant for me, as I purged my cord collection last month.

I don't always agree with the Essays, but even the ones that I didn't were still entertaining and well thought out.

The main event, so to speak, of the book was the first nine chapters of what would have been the third Dirk Gently book. I wasn't a fan of the first two. At all. This one was shaping up to be really good. His death robbed us of what would have been a great book.

I don't know why I didn't get into the book on my first attempt, but it may force me to reconsider a few other books that I didn't like.

This is a delightful and maddening book. This collection of essays, columns, speech transcripts and random musings was culled from Adams' computers after his tragic death at the age of 49. The collection offers new insight into one of the world's most gifted humorists, and there is both pleasure and education to be had in reading his thoughts on such diverse topics as music, atheism, evolutionary biology, conservation and computers.

The last section of the book contains the beginning of an unfinished Dirk Gently novel tentatively titled The Salmon of Doubt. Though Adams was an avowed atheist, the frustration I felt at having this tale end so abruptly was enough to make me wish he's wrong about the afterlife and hope some trance channel will track him down in the ethers so we can all find out just who was sending Mr. Gently those wire transfers and what, exactly, the rhinoceros was doing on the highway to Santa Fe.

Funny. Sad because he died and that’s sad. Also, the part that is the third book of the dirk gently series was so good and I wish it was a finished book. I also enjoyed most of the other excerpts and essays.

This partially posthumous volume consists of a collection of magazine articles, newspaper columns, interviews and such like, along with one short story (about a young Zaphod)originally published in the Utterly Utterly Merry Comic Relief Christmas Book...a copy of which I own...and the (very) incomplete conflated text of three versions of the third Dirk Gently's novel. This novel was abandoned whilst Adams was still alive, in favour of a 6th Hitchhikers' novel. Adams had decided that the material/theme was better suited to the latter. Personally, I think a 3rd Gently's would have been much more fun than a 6th 'Hikers'. The Long Dark Tea-time of the Soul is my favourite Adams novel and The Salmon of Doubt looked to be very much in a similar vein, structurally and stylistically. It's a great shame that we will never see an end to this fragment.

THIS REVIEW HAS BEEN CURTAILED IN PROTEST AT GOODREADS' CENSORSHIP POLICY

See the complete review here:

http://arbieroo.booklikes.com/post/33...

Passata l'iniziale diffidenza verso questo genere di operazioni, che mi sembrano sempre molto commerciali e prive di amore verso gli autori scomparsi, mi sono trovato davanti qualcosa di gradevole e gustoso.
La prima metà, saggistica, è buona, con articoli ed aneddoti su vari aspetti dell'ingegno umano e dell'umana condizione, che fanno riflettere, sorridere, interrogarsi. Certo, alcuni sono un pò sottotono, ma tutti hanno il pregio di farci conoscere meglio questo autore, le sue idee ed il suo modo di pensare.
La seconda parte contiene un breve racconto dell'universo della Guida Galattica ("Sicuro, sicurissimo, perfettamente sicuro") ed i primi capitoli de "Il salmone del dubbio", nuova avventura del detective olistico Dirk Gently, incompiuta.
Questa parte è tanto meravigliosa, nella misura in cui amate questo autore: se la Guida Galattica vi ha lasciati indifferenti, non troverete nulla di interessante. Se Dirk Gently non vi è piaciuto, odierete lo spreco di pagine dedicato alla sua nuova avventura, anche se incompiuta.
Ma se viceversa li avete apprezzati, troverete "pane per i vostri denti": storie e personaggi assurdi, stravaganti, a tratti follemente divertenti.
Personalmente ho gradito molto la parte saggistica, perchè mostra l'uomo, prima dello scrittore. Un uomo arguto e sagace, raffinato nell'intelletto, dannatamente "british", capace di tratteggiare situazioni ed idiosincrasie del nostro tempo.
Viceversa il racconto incompleto di Gently, proprio perchè incompleto lascia l'amaro in bocca.

A good send-off for Douglas Adams.

The Salmon of Doubt is a hard book to categorize. It contains various items from Douglas Adam's hard drive downloaded after his death, along with some items from other sources, and his half finished novel The Salmon of Doubt. It was compiled and published after his death. The book as a whole is an interesting look into the mind of a man who, although remembered for The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy, is so much more. If you want to truly know all the facets of his mind, this is the book to read. He was not only a great wit, but a concerned environmentalist, and philosopher. Highly recommended for any Douglas Adams fan!

Certainly a gem for all Douglas Adams fans, containing a collection of articles, speeches and short stories with a broad topic ranging from such as hiking up Kilimanjaro in a rhino-suit to how computers' keybords will look in the future. If you're familiar with Douglas's writing style, you'll recognise that he uses similar techniques when writing both long novels and short chronicles. The book is an opportunity to not only enjoy the writers ideas one last time, but also to get to know the person behind those ideas better.

The beggining of what was supposed to become a new Dirk-Gently book doesn't dissapoint, and it lures you in to a world of hollistic complexity, only in the way that Douglas Adams can.
My personal opinion is that the book is a casual read. Because it consists of unrelated material, it's easy to get into any page at any time and there's no need to rush the read.

Another sidenote is that the book can be enjoyed by readers who are not familiar with Douglas Adams or his work. It can be a good way of getting to know the author and his writing style, but, of course, the book is most appealing to Douglas Adams fans who appreciate his character and know a thing or two about the guy.

This technically is the 3rd book in the Dirk Gently series. Sadly, it's not really a Dirk Gently book. You see, before Douglas Adams could write/finish this third book, he died of a sudden heart attack in a gym in Santa Barbara in 2001.

But he left behind fragments of chapters or chapters and their rewritings and a lot of other notes on his various computers. His wife, daughter, agent, editor, assistant and other people then pieced together what is now The Salmon of Doubt which would have been the title of the third book.

This book is divided into three parts:
1) Life
2) The Universe
3) And Everything
which is a tribute to his Hitchhiker book(s).

There is much more in this book than simply another story (or the beginning of one). The first two parts are filled with snippets, random thoughts DA wrote down about tea and cookies and computers and other stuff, interviews for various magazines and newspapers he did, as well as speeches he gave for all sorts of occasions.
For example, did you know how much Douglas Adams got involved with environmentalism? Yes, this giant (literally) of a man did not just love all things Apple, but thanks to a trip done with biologist Mark Carwardine, he also became a staunch defender of bio-diversity. Most notably, he loved and tried to protect rhinos. He even climbed the Kilimandscharo in a rhino costume in order to raise money for "Save the Rhino" (a wildlife conservation organisation). Here he is:

Naturally, it was much more of an ordeal than he had originally thought, which he explains in his very unique hilarious way (seriously, I almost suffocated when reading his account of that trip).

My favourite story though is of the cookies. Here it is:

This actually did happen to a real person, and the real person is me. I had gone to catch a train. This was April 1976, in Cambridge, U.K. I was a bit early for the train. I’d gotten the time of the train wrong. I went to get myself a newspaper to do the crossword, and a cup of coffee and a packet of cookies. I went and sat at a table. I want you to picture the scene. It’s very important that you get this very clear in your mind. Here’s the table, newspaper, cup of coffee, packet of cookies. There’s a guy sitting opposite me, perfectly ordinary-looking guy wearing a business suit, carrying a briefcase. It didn’t look like he was going to do anything weird. What he did was this: he suddenly leaned across, picked up the packet of cookies, tore it open, took one out, and ate it.

Now this, I have to say, is the sort of thing the British are very bad at dealing with. There’s nothing in our background, upbringing, or education that teaches you how to deal with someone who in broad daylight has just stolen your cookies. You know what would happen if this had been South Central Los Angeles. There would have very quickly been gunfire, helicopters coming in, CNN, you know… But in the end, I did what any red-blooded Englishman would do: I ignored it. And I stared at the newspaper, took a sip of coffee, tried to do a clue in the newspaper, couldn’t do anything, and thought, "What am I going to do?"

In the end I thought "Nothing for it, I’ll just have to go for it.", and I tried very hard not to notice the fact that the packet was already mysteriously opened. I took out a cookie for myself. I thought, "That settled him." But it hadn’t because a moment or two later he did it again. He took another cookie. Having not mentioned it the first time, it was somehow even harder to raise the subject the second time around. “Excuse me, I couldn’t help but notice…” I mean, it doesn’t really work.

We went through the whole packet like this. When I say the whole packet, I mean there were only about eight cookies, but it felt like a lifetime. He took one, I took one, he took one, I took one. Finally, when we got to the end, he stood up and walked away. Well, we exchanged meaningful looks, then he walked away, and I breathed a sigh of relief and sat back.

A moment or two later the train was coming in, so I tossed back the rest of my coffee, stood up, picked up the newspaper, and underneath the newspaper were my cookies.

The thing I like particularly about this story is the sensation that somewhere in England there has been wandering around for the last quarter-century a perfectly ordinary guy who’s had the same exact story, only he doesn’t have the punch line.

Typically British. And, strangely, or not so strangely because it's typical DA, a perfect anecdote about life.

This book, therefore, grants a unique insight into the author's mind, his anxiety that sometimes bordered on depression, his early years and struggle, the sudden fame and success, the maddening battle with Hollywood, his private life even.
And it shows how beloved and respected he was by family, friends and colleagues. I mean, Stephen Fry penned the Foreword and Richard Dawkins the Epilogue! Just the list of people he knew and often also how he got to know them is staggering.

Alas, this is the end. So to speak. Fortunately, I can look forward to reading the 4 other Hitchhiker volumes as I haven't read those yet. It's amazing what kind of a legacy this man left behind (not just through his books, but also radio programmes, BBC contributions, movies, TV shows etc).

Trigger Warning:
This book is sometimes difficult to read; at least to those people who mourn the author, or generally feel for people who have to cope with sudden loss. It sure made me cry at certain points.

I stopped reading this book. I enjoyed the first part, but I think this book is really for people who know and love Douglas Adams and want a little bonus of reading all his book introductions and opinion pieces in one place. I might come back to it after I've read some of his other work.

Oh, how bittersweet is was to read Douglas Adams’ “The Salmon of Doubt.” His writing is witty and reflective. Some words make me laugh and some words make me cry. How sweet the taste of those Dirk Gently chapters, but how sorrowful I am that he did not have the chance to complete the book. How fortunate we all are to have been alive at a time when his books graced our bookshelves!

I can recall the time that I first picked up his book “Dirk Gently’s Holistic Detective Agency.” This must have been about six years ago or so. I had finished watching the 2016 TV series before that and I had the spontaneous insight that I’d like to read the book version. In my country, and my specific city, we have posted around our neighbourhoods these wooden boxes with plexiglass doors that look like oversized bird houses. They are called “Little Free Libraries” and there are about half a dozen in my neighbourhood. Sometimes they will be empty, but sometimes they will be overflowing with books, it’s really luck of the draw.

That day, the day that I decided it was time to read “Dirk Gently’s Holistic Detective Agency” I decided that I would find it in a “Little Free Library.” You could call it a hunch. I walk up to the first one, it wasn’t there. I walked a couple blocks more to the second one—nope, not there either. Third time is the charm! There it was, “Dirk Gently’s Holistic Detective Agency” staring me right in the face. I suppose life gets you to where you need to be. Since that day, I have never seen “Dirk Gently’s Holistic Detective Agency” in another “Little Free Library.”

“Anything that happens happens, anything that in happening causes something else to happen causes something else to happen and anything that in happening causes itself to happen again, happens again” (p.278 e-book).

Thank you Douglas Adams, for causing so much to happen in the world.