A collection of Adams’ unpublished works, an unfinished Dirk Gently novel, magazine articles, letter, interviews, snippets.

It could be more enjoyable with a much more composed editing and structuring.

A kind of poor book which just happens to be filled with awesome.

I'd really like a well-organized and indexed collection of all of Douglas Adams' short writings. Round up all the columns and editorials he wrote, the text he did for his websites, everything, and get it all tied up with a bow and some context. Salmon isn't that collection; the writings are just tossed into poorly-defined buckets with no real TOC to speak of (and let us not speak of indexes), and there's no real way to tell what's missing or what's even important. There's some occasional interesting serendipity to be had, but eh.

On the other hand, it's Douglas Adams, bringer of joy and wry, good-natured English despair, and even inferior collections of his work are crucial.

The title comes from the unfinished third book of the Dirk Gently series. As well as 11 chapters of this story, there are essays, interviews, and articles written by Douglas Adams on such subjects as PG Wodehouse, The Beatles, hangover cures, and testing an underwater Sub Bug vehicle on The Great Barrier Reef.

I am glad that I finally listened to this audiobook which I purchased several years ago. I knew that this book was unfinished but hadn't realized that the majority of it wasn't Adams' unfinished manuscript at all but instead a collection of interviews, articles, speeches and other short works of his. I found these very pleasant listening but due to the nature of the collection, there was a fair amount of repetition of some of Adams' favorite analogies/stories/anecdotes.

I was pleased though not surprised to learn that Adams was a fan of P.G. Wodehouse (as am I)!

Douglas Adams’ final, only-half-finished book, with copious bonus features. The half-finished book is a Dirk Gently story, the first one I’ve read, but it’s so good it makes me want to read the others. The 200 pages of bonus essays, short stories, and interviews is well worth it just for the way Adams strings words together. Maybe not an essential read for everybody, but I enjoyed the heck out of it.

Readers beware: The Salmon of Doubt is not a single novel, but rather a collection of goods pulled from Adams' computer after his death--including a draft of the first few chapters of his next Dirk Gently story (also titled The Salmon of Doubt, thus the larger part of this collection's title). Also enclosed in this volume are a series of short stories, essays, travelogues, and other random snippets, some of which date back over a decade, and most of which have little to do with the next entry, except they were all written by Adams.

How, then, to review this book? How does one go about commenting on a collection of miscellanea the author never intended to exist in single-volume form? How does one offer criticism on a draft of an unfinished novel? Indeed, how does one offer any insight into a bricolage of material that, pessimistically, smacks of the publishing industry's frantic attempts to make one last posthumous dollar off of a popular writer?

I answer through a personal narrative. Any review ever published is, of course, subjective. This one is more so than even most. There's your grain of salt.

My wife bought me this book for my birthday, and I took it with me when I flew home (alone; my wife wasn't able to accompany me) the next week to visit my parents. I read the entire book in one day as I shuffled between airplanes and ticket counters, fast-food stands and uncomfortable plastic seats. Much of what appeared in Salmon... was completely new to me, as I'd somehow never read Adams' shorter works--only his novels. But in short, I was both entranced and maddened: the former at the brilliant intelligence and humor that marble-streaked its way through the pages; the latter at the frustratingly incomplete Dirk Gently novel (imagine if Sir Arthur Conan Doyle had only written the first half of "The Hound of the Baskervilles" before suddenly perishing, or if Shakespeare had never completed "Romeo and Juliet"). I saw in Salmon... sides of Adams both familiar to me, as in his intelligent satire, and unfamiliar, as in the extemporaneous and atheistic speech he delivered at Cambridge, sections of which forced me to close the cover temporarily while I pondered my own thoughts about the nature of God. Most importantly, through all of these scattered scribblings I saw the inner workings of a man who truly, admirably loved life. And as I turned the last page and stared helplessly at the blank sheet before me, and realized that I had just read the last "book" Adams would ever "publish," I was overcome with a sadness so deep and painful that I've never yet been able to even pull Salmon... off of the shelf again, much less read it.

Douglas Adams never knew I existed: we never met, exchanged correspondence, or even caught a glimpse of one another in a crowded airport. Yet I consider this man one of my dearest mentors, a man whose writing has shaped the last fifteen years of my life in areas too varied and extensive to number. How then to review a book like this? Simply put, I can't. I'm too close. Even now, five years after the only time I managed to read Salmon..., and six years after Adams' death, I'm too close.

Why, then, do I give this book five stars?

How could I not?

I don’t want to finish this book.

I really don’t.

If I finish this book that means I’ll have finished the last work of Douglas Adams. And since it is technically ‘unfinished’, that means I’ll actually need to acknowledge that he’s gone. Dead. Breathed his last. Snuffed it.

Have you read anything by Douglas Adams? If you were born in the last fifty years and are a fan of British comedy, I’ll assume you’ve come across The Hitchhikers Guide to the Galaxy. Maybe you’ve even read about his detective Dirk Gently. Or his work of non-fiction, Last Chance to See, where he travelled to see almost extinct animals, like a very rare lemur in Madagascar and the Komodo dragon. If you haven’t, I must insist you do. If you don’t like British comedy? You may want to back away slowly. I’m sure there are many other book reviews you would find more pleasurable and I must insist you find one. Now, back to the book.

Adams’ friend and fan, Stephen Fry, introduces The Salmon of Doubt. It is a posthumous collection of things taken from his Macbook after he died (urgh, that hurts to say). The Salmon of Doubt includes articles from the late eighties and nineties about technology, book introductions, speeches and works that have never been published before. It is packed with Adams’ quirky sense of humour and contains plenty of the self-deprecating jokes common to British comic writers. Classic Adamisms include his section for children, where he explains how to tell the difference between things. Since I can’t actually for you to slowly wander to this section in the book, please continue to read it here!

You will need to know the difference between Friday and a fried egg. It’s quite a simple difference, but an important one. Friday comes at the end of the week, whereas a fried egg comes out of a hen. Like most things, of course, it isn’t quite that simple. The fried egg isn’t properly a fried egg until it’s been put in a frying pan and fried. This is something you wouldn’t do to a Friday, of course, though you might do it on a Friday. You can also fry eggs on a Thursday, if you like, or on a cooker. It’s all rather complicated, but it makes a kind of sense if you think about it for a while.

The second half of the book is the first half (or is it… technically if the first half follows the second half, I must be making a mistake somewhere) of Adams’ uncompleted novel The Salmon of Doubt. Dirk Gently is on the trail of half a cat and a mysteriously easy-to-track actor. It’s probably fantastic. But if I read it – that means I have to acknowledge that it is unfinished. Which means the story of Douglas Adams, the writer, the environmentalist, the radical atheist, and all around brilliant person, is finished. So, I haven’t read it yet. I will, I promise. But first, I must read the rest of the Dirk Gently series. Then I shall read it.

Anyway, you may ask who is this book for? If it’s not even finished, what’s the point? Unquestionably, The Salmon of Doubt is for the fans of Douglas Adams. Since I am undoubtedly that, I recommend this book wholeheartedly to other fans. If you want a few more Adamisms before you have to acknowledge (again!) that the man is gone, you can even divide this book up into each section and chapter. It truly is a delight to read. I found myself laughing in strange places and insisting the stranger sitting next to me or the friend I’m having lunch with read just this one paragraph.

Now, if you’ll excuse me, I have to go read another section as I edge slowly towards finishing this book.

But I really don’t want to.

This review was originally posted at Teapots and Typewriters

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.

While many of the pieces included in this collection were, a) entertaining, b) somewhat informative, c) diverse, and d) well written peeks into the beliefs and personality of the author, the overall effect was also, e) incomplete. Of course that's to be understood, as it IS a posthumous gathering of magazine articles, interviews, and an unfinished 'Dirk Gently' story. One does wonder, however, if it was really necessary to publish "The Salmon of Doubt". Being as unfinished and maybe haphazardly thrown together as it sort of appears, do you think Mr. Adams himself would really have wanted to attach his name to this?
For all the good intentions involved, and the glorious little bits of wisdom and humor contained therein, "Salmon" still feels more like a tease than a satisfying conclusion.
It is understandable that fans of Douglas Adams may hunger for any scrap they haven't yet read by the man before his unexpected departure (Mr. Adams died suddenly, of a heart attack, in 2001), but overall, in my opinion, the assembly of the contents here feels rushed, desperately collected and lashed together, just so readers could feel as if it were that proper last goodbye. Is it? In my opinion, no. It is perhaps a sincere tribute put together by friends and admirers, but no, not a fitting conclusion.

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.

Well now I'm doubtful of salmon or is it something else, a brilliant book by the master himself. Dirk Gently is a fabulous character construct as is the interconnectedness of all things. A holistically great book - Read it!!

Perhaps I should have researched the book before reading it but I assumed it was a continuation of Hitchhikers Guide to the Galaxy. It is in fact a tedious collection of anecdotes, radio broadcasts, and magazine columns from Douglas Adams life with a partially written Dirk Gently novel at the end. But when the subtitle to the book is "Hitchhiking the galaxy one last time", what else is one supposed to think?