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Dec 16, 2009

Jon rated 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, e More...

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Jul 11, 2007

Katherine rated it:

If you love Douglas Adams this book is an absolute must read. It's got some great incite into the man who could make a pot of petunias think to itself, 'Not again.' A large part of my enjoyment was finding out about Adams as a person, and in turn finding out that I've got some stuff in common with him. I mean sure I haven't ridden a stingray like he has or written the funniest books of all time and granted I'm not British, BUT we do make our tea the same way, we're both have the same religious b More...

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Dec 17, 2009

Lena rated it:

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 beginnin More...

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Aug 15, 2008

Nick rated it:

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 More...

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Dec 31, 2011

MJ rated it:

A collection of essays, speeches, ramblings unearthed on his hard drive(s), one short story culled from a BBC annual, and the titular unfinished Dirk Gently novel. The essays are breezy and witty, often lacking focus when discussing science and technology, but comprise (realistically) the most readable of his non-fiction output. There are some readers, yours included, who feel Adams spent himself on the Hitchhiker’s books: although the Dirk Gentlys were absurdist romps sutured with awesome logic More...

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Feb 21, 2009

Suzie rated it:

Definitely worth reading. The first two-thirds is short pieces by or about Douglas Adams, so don't go buying it thinking it's a nearly complete novel. The last eighty pages or so is the 'novel', which is sort of halfway between Dirk Gently and the Hitchhiker's series. It's good, for unfinished stuff. There's only four pages or so where the prose is obviously rough, and it's still pretty funny. It reminds me of the whole 'Gilda does something funny' thing from Saturday Night Live. One of the guys More...

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Jan 19, 2012

Frank rated it:

An enjoyable but utterly pointless book.

I'm a huge Douglas Adams fan but sadly this book doesn't deserve his name. It's not that it's filth, or worthless. In fact this is has some lovely moments in the book and that's what gets it 2 stars from me.

But the issue is it's a book that shouldn't exist. This should be free on the internet, or some other format. You get a large amount of articles, a few random chapters from a book, a book that no one even knows what series it More...

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Jan 04, 2012

Dan rated it:

The cover suggests this is mostly the unfinished third novel featuring Dirk Gently but actually it's mostly a collection of various articles written by Adams for various magazines and newspapers. Whilst some are of interest, many are outdated now and of little interest to most.

However, there are also several short stories, one of which being "The Private Life of Genghis Khan" which is very funny. The ten chapters of the unfinished Dirk Gently novel are brilliant and I would a More...

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Aug 09, 2011

Tim rated it:

Indeed - only 50 pages of a possible novel called "The Salmon Of Doubt". The version here was put together from chapters found on the late Double Adams' harddisk, and is mostly a Dirk Gently story. The rest of the 300 pages is filled with other bits and bobs including interviews, newspaper columns for The Independent and short stories.

The bits and bobs are very interesting and worth a read even if you think you read them when they were originally published. The Dirk Gently Salmon of Do More...

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Jun 13, 2011

Melissa rated it:

Published upon his death The Salmon of Doubt is Douglas Adams' final work. It is composed of various interviews, speeches, observations, short stories and the beginning of a new Dirk Gently novel. It is a combination of technology, science, fiction and humor. (It is also the title I assumed would be my fiftieth.)

I liked the book, but think I would have liked it more had I heeded the advice on the back cover and not read it straight through. There's not enough continuity to make it More...

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Apr 01, 2011

Kathleen rated it:

I would love to have met Douglas Adams. The man was a genius. He was extremely intelligent, had wide-ranging interests, and could make anything he chose to write about (or talk about) enormously funny. It wasn’t so much what he said, but how he said it.

Ironically, Adams himself, in the very book I’m discussing, says “I wonder if we don’t have too much comedy these days.” What?!? “Nowadays everybody’s a comedian, even the weather girls and the continuity announcers. We laugh at ev More...

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Aug 09, 2010

Alan rated it:

Douglas Adams was brilliant—and it pains me to have to put that in the past tense. His novel-in-progress, The Salmon of Doubt, was cut short by Adams' untimely death in 2001. But this posthumous collection of miscellany from his computer's hard drive, also called The Salmon of Doubt, showcases Adams' brilliance, and is a worthy addition to his canon.

There's not much of the planned novel here—just a few chapters, and that's not what impressed me most about this collection anyway. The More...

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Jan 05, 2010

Margaret rated it:

I resisted reading this for a long time because I was under the misapprehension that it was merely a presentation of the sections of the Dirk Gently novel Adams was working on until his untimely death in 2001. Having seen multiple references to it in Neil Gaiman's excellent Hitchhiker's companion, Don't Panic, I finally broke down and got it from the library, and I was glad that I did.

The last third of the book does indeed contain the unfinished Salmon of Doubt, but that was to my mi More...

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Jul 28, 2011

Nathan added it

Douglas Adams is one of my literary heroes. Funny. Smart. Tall. And now sadly... deceased.

The author who will forever be famous for The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy died of a heart attack in 2001 at age 49. He left behind his computers, providing snippets now compiled in this book: his articles, interviews, thoughts, etc.

Some content is serious, but most (in classic Adams style) is bizarrely clever. One of my favorite clips:

"'Why?' is always the most difficult question to answer. More...

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Jul 07, 2010

Chris rated it:

It's a bit of a mess, the titular salmon never quite salmonizes, and it's kind of depressing (after all, it exists because heart attacks happen), but, well, to it's credit, The Salmon of Doubt is a book filled by words written, for the most part, by Douglas Adams, who, as we all know, was a very tall British man who happened to be very good at arranging words into arrangements both amusing and enlightening--arrangements prone, as one of Douglas' characters, Dirk Gently, might put it, "to ma More...

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Apr 16, 2011

Christoffer rated it:

"In the beginning the Universe was created. This has made a lot of people very angry and been widely regarded as a bad move."

The Salmon of Doubt: Hitchhiking the Galaxy One Last Time is a collection of writings by Douglas Adams, edited by Peter Guzzardi. In the book we find newspaper articles, essays, e-mails, previously unpublished scenes with characters from Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy, and the unfinished Dirk Gently book Salmon of Doubt. This is not something you sh More...

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May 29, 2009

Michael rated it:

How terribly sad I am to have read the final published words of Douglas Adams. To never again laugh for the first time at one of his absurdities or freshly marvel at his wit is a painful thing to consider. I've put off the reading of Salmon of Doubt for several years now because I always wanted to have something more of his in reserve. But now the timing felt right, having just purchased my Kindle, to make his book the very first e-book I've ever read. I know that that would please him, and it p More...

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Mar 21, 2011

Eric rated it:

Okay, the three star rating requires an explanation. The idea behind this book was to publish an unfinished novel and a number of Adams' uncollected writings in a collection for the fans. This is not a book for casual readers of Adams but for people who have read everything Adams wrote and want more. It was exactly what I thought I was buying, so why the mediocre rating?

There was nothing wrong with the writing. It's Douglas Adams, so the writing was good. My issue was with the collec More...

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Jan 22, 2011

Cindy rated it:

Reading this collection makes me feel like I know Adams better than I ever did before, and he was certainly a gem of a man. Throughout reading this book, I also felt like this was a last swansong to Adams, trying to bring Adams to his readers like never before, and filled with writing by other authors on Adams, and on his influence (Stephen Fry and Richard Dawkins, the latter writing an especially beautiful lament after Adams' death in 2001, near the end of the book).

I liked the firs More...

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Oct 12, 2011

Denise rated it:

After Douglas Adams' untimely death, several of his shorter works (short stories, the beginning of a novel, biographical essays, etc.) were collected into The Salmon of Doubt. Some of these works had found publication previously, but many of these pieces were previously unpublished. Under the heading "Life" there were several personal essays and interviews that gave insight into the Douglas Adams as a husband, father, and writer. The second section "The Universe" centers a More...

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May 11, 2010

Travis rated it:

The only other thing I've ever read by Douglas Adams was the Hitchhiker's series. I've yet to read a Dirk Gently novel, mostly due to their absence along library and bookstore shelves. But the five books that make up the Hitchhiker's "trilogy" was enough for me to tell that Douglas Adams was definitely one of my favorite writers.

This book, a collection of various things written by Adams and random interviews and articles that once appeared in magazines and so on, goes on to More...

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Nov 03, 2011

Rob rated it:

A collection of media articles and other short items that were unpublished at the time of Douglas Adam's untimely death. So far they show some insight into the things his mind flitted around. Sounds as though he was easily distracted by the next interesting finding. His writing is always entertaining and the less fanciful items may even be based on real life!

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Jul 05, 2010

Onetruegeorge rated it:

It would be foolish to regard this a must-read. It is well known that the Douglas Adams works that best fit that description are his Hitchhiker novels, particularly the first two or three. Still, The Salmon of Doubt is an enjoyable, if bittersweet celebration of Adams as both a writer and a person. There are tributes and introductions and lamentations from his friends and colleagues bookending this collection, but once the reader reaches the real meat of the book - Adams's essays, short stories, More...

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Mar 22, 2011

Alberto rated it:

Questo libro è Douglas Noel Adams. Lasciatemi spiegare il perché. Premetto che è diviso in due parti: una che è la raccolta di testi, mail, conferenze e brevi storie dello scrittore e un'altra dove c'è l'inizio del vero e proprio "Salmone del Dubbio", che non è riuscito a terminare a causa della sua scomparsa. Ci si potrebbe aspettare la parte migliore proprio nel racconto, mentre le vere e proprie perle sono nell'altra parte del libro, quella dove si vede il vero Douglas Adams e la st More...

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Mar 03, 2009

stormhawk rated it:

A book by Douglas Adams. Well, it's not actually by him, except in the sense that they were words that he wrote, mostly in that order. But he was dead when it was published. Collection of some previously published essays and the fragments of his final novel, which was harvested in bits from filing cabinets and from the hard drive of his computer, including some bits that weren't meant to be seen by the general public, as they were deleted, but someone foolhardily recovered the bits and slapped t More...

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Aug 15, 2011

Steve rated it:

I bought this book as soon as the paperback edition was published and it lay unread for well over a year. Robert Louis Stevenson said that, “to travel hopefully is a better thing than to arrive,” and I felt to have one last Douglas Adams book to look forward to would be better than to actually read it. If you are holding back from reading this book for the same reason then you really are missing out. Every week I wasted by leaving this great book on the shelf unread could have been better spent More...

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Mar 27, 2009

Mike rated it:

An unfinished book, random articles retreived from the author's computer after his untimely death, and a few obituaries makes up this compelation.

I love Douglas Adams, and this book is filled with insights to his mind and thoughts over the years. His ability to point out the inane, such as our inability to predict the turn of the millenium when programming computers (remember the Y2K bug?), is simply brilliant.

The actual book part, the "Salmon of doubt" is unfin More...

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Nov 14, 2011

Katherine rated it:

I read Hitchhiker's Guide some time in middle school or high school, I think, and immensely enjoyed it, of course, but I didn't realize until reading some of the columns and speeches and other such shorter pieces collected just how absolutely brilliant Douglas Adams was. Not that I know that much about the history of technology, but it seems to me that he really understood the power of computers and the internet, of GPS, of social networking for brand engagement. There isn't very much to the act More...

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Feb 22, 2009

Grenx1 rated it:

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 ha More...

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Oct 01, 2010

Courtney rated it:

This is a book compiled from the contents of Douglas Adams' computers, previous works, interviews, speeches, etc. It gives the reader a glimpse into various aspects of his works and his personal views on religion, science, and preservation. It also contains the begginnings of a book that was either going to end up a third Dirk Gently book or a sixth Hitchhiker's book. I've read other works that were the collective mish mash left over by authors which didn't really capture the attention. However, More...

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