Review of The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy: The Complete Radio Series by Douglas Adams

The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy: The Complete Radio Series by Douglas Adams is a radio play series that follows the adventures of Arthur Dent, who manages to escape the Earth after it is destroyed, with his friend Ford Prefect. There's not much of a central plot to this series, but a lot of subplots as Arthur and the people he meets experience one improbable event after another. This series is hilarious, zany, and nonsensical, and I never get tired of listening to it, so I highly recommend it. I would say that I enjoyed the radio plays even more than the books. While the books are very funny, there is just some humor that is better expressed through an actor's voice and with music and/or sound effects. I would strongly suggest that any fans of the books should give the radio plays a chance. I would even recommend listening to them multiple times, because even though this is at least my third or fourth time around, I'm still picking up on things that I don't remember hearing before.

Review of Last Chance to See by Douglas Adams & Mark Carwardine

Last Chance to See by Douglas Adams and Mark Carwardine isn't sci-fi or fantasy. In fact it isn't even fiction, but since I've been on a Douglas Adams kick lately I decided I wanted to give this book a chance. The book basically details the travels of Douglas Adams and Mark Carwardine around the planet to visit/research endangered species. It makes for a very good story and it is quite educational and humorous. I think anyone who is a Douglas Adams fan would enjoy reading about his real life adventures.

Review of Douglas Adams's Starship Titanic by Terry Jones

Starship Titanic is a sort of spin off of The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy series. It was a collaboration done between Douglas Adams and Terry Jones of Monty Python. Douglas Adams did the computer game and Terry Jones wrote the novel. It's not the first time I've read this book, but I found it just as enjoyable this time around as from previous reads. I think it keeps very much in line with the style of the Hitchhiker's Guide books and I'd definitely recommend it to anyone who is a fan of the series.

Review of And Another Thing... by Eoin Colfer

For those that don't know, And Another Thing... is the 6th book in the Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy series that was written after the death of Douglas Adams.

At first I was a little put off reading it because it felt as if I was reading fan fiction(which I suppose it technically is) due to the style not quite meshing with that of the original books. It also felt like it was written for a younger audience which I guess is somewhat understandable given that the author has mostly written books for young adults. There were a few other minor things that annoyed me such as the use of abbreviations and nicknames that were never used in the original books. An example of this is that pan galactic gargle blasters were often shortened to just gargle blasters.

However, the book seemed to get much better after the third chapter as far as style and reading level goes and the annoying abbreviations/nicknames were also much reduced in frequency. So I'd say that overall I rather enjoyed the book and gave it a 4 star rating, though I was quite disappointed that Marvin did not make an appearance in this story.

I would definitely recommend this book to those that are fans of the original five books especially since this one has a much less bleak ending than Mostly Harmless. As a side note, I am glad I decided to read The Salmon of Doubt before I read this book as it helped me to get a joke made regarding something that happened in the childhood of Douglas Adams. It's a rather minor thing though and it is by no means necessary to read The Salmon of Doubt before And Another Thing...

Review of The Salmon of Doubt: Hitchhiking the Galaxy One Last Time by Douglas Adams

There were some parts of the Salmon of Doubt that I found interesting, funny, and enjoyable, but on the whole I found the book rather tedious to get through. I'd still recommend it though to any Douglas Adams fans.