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First of all, I need to clear up a common misconception about this book: it’s not an unfinished sixth chapter in the Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy series. That’s what I thought it was going to be, based on the descriptions I’d read leading up to its release a few weeks ago. And that’s what I’d been telling my friends ever since — so much so that I may have completely talked them out of giving it a chance.

Because, let’s face it, an unfinished book pried from the hard drives of a dead author just seems like a bad idea all around. Fortunately, that’s not what The Salmon of Doubt is. It’s actually a decent tribute to a great man — a collection of essays, interviews and other miscellaneous bits, compiled in one convenient, final volume. (There can be little doubt of its finality — Adams didn’t write nearly enough in his short life, and I’m not sure there’s anything left to salvage.) I’ve actually read much of this material before (mostly by following links from various Douglas Adams-related sites), in order to satisfy my appetite for something — anything — he had written. Many adjectives can be used to describe Adams, but “prolific” has never been one of them. As he mentions many times throughout the course of this collection, he thoroughly enjoyed being a writer; it was just the actual writing part he wasn’t crazy about. I can certainly sympathize.

And really, that’s what makes this book so special to me — I can sympathize, commisserate and relate to almost everything he writes. He displays a gleeful (and quite contagious) fascination with technology, but holds the very sensible Mac-user opinion that “complex” doesn’t have to mean “complicated.” He describes the moment at which he first truly understood evolution and its implications, and remarks that if your entire world didn’t change like his did, you haven’t quite grasped the concept fully yet.

He was an unapologetic atheist (not cruel about it — just confident), a literary enthusiast with a passion for language (more specifically words, and how they work together), an adventurous fellow unafraid to attempt the bizarre (one article showcases his attempt to compare a test drive of a new personal underwater vehicle to a test ride on a manta ray) for the sheer experience of attempting it. In short, he was everything I have attempted to be in my own creative life. I’m not sure if I have unconsciously patterned myself after him (I certainly could choose worse role models) or if we’re just that similar. (The key difference being that he was a much better writer than I, of course — and that’s not false modesty.) I guess it doesn’t really matter. The point is, this book very aptly sums up this man’s brilliant career and, really, his life — it’s clever, exciting and far too short.

As for the Hitchhiker’s Guide non-sequel, allow me to provide a little clarification: the unfinished story contained within this volume is presented as an intended third Dirk Gently book. However, a few memos from Adams hint at the fact that he felt it would work better as a Hitchhiker’s book, and would probably re-form the material into something along those lines. Sadly, he never did find the time. And, if nothing else, that’s the lesson I came away with from this book — it’s all well and good to pattern myself after Douglas Adams (if that is in fact what I’m doing), but it might be useful to leave out the procrastination bit. I really don’t want to end up dying with more books in my head than on paper.

I have very mixed emotions when it comes to Dave Barry. On the one hand, I can almost singlehandedly credit him with inspiring me to write comedy, specifically in short essay form. When I first discovered his work, it had never occured to me that a person could make a comfortable living writing page-long diatribes on fire ants or ficticious conversations about income taxes. Granted, I’m not actually making a comfortable living doing that, but at least he gave me a goal in life.

On the other hand, having been exposed to Dave Barry for well over a decade, I tend to find his work very predictable and formulaic. (If he tells me one more phrase that would make a good name for a rock band, I swear he’s lost me as a reader.) Maybe I’ve become so adept at comedy and composition that I have now surpassed my original inspiration. Or maybe it’s just because anything tends to lose its luster if you stare at it for too long. In any event, he still does make me laugh, and given a limited choice of books-on-tape for the long Thanksgiving car ride to the in-laws’, Dave Barry was deemed an acceptable acquisition.

Below the Beltway starts off in typical Dave Barry fashion, with a silly and frequently digressional recap of the history of government in general and the US in particular. It maintains this lighthearted tone until about halfway through (addressing modern government, lobbyists and the like), when it takes an abrupt turn into the semi-serious — an exhaustive diatribe on the weird state of affairs that is Barry’s hometown of Miami.

This major digression could have almost been a seperate book of its own, and a pretty darned good one, at that. Here, it’s a different, more mature Dave Barry who actually seems to have something to say, yet retains the witty and accessible tone that’s made him such a mainstay of modern journalism. The central thesis of this non-fictional Miami section of the book deals with Cuban exiles’ passionate hatred for Castro, their disgust for how the Elian Gonzales debacle was handled by the Clinton administration and the very real possibilty that the disastrous 2000 election — which, you will recall, hinged on only a few Florida districts — may have ended in a victory for Gore if not for said debacle. It’s a point I never even considered before — it just doesn’t quite seem to fit in with the otherwise fictional material that bookends it.

Having followed Bryson across America and England (in The Lost Continent, A Walk in the Woods and Notes from a Small Island respectively), I found myself eager for another installment of his running travelogue of the English-speaking world. In a Sunburned Country does not disappoint.

As always, the author shows a great passion for the truly important things — that is to say, the really quirky and trivial details that most travelogues would gloss over or skip entirely. In this book’s introduction, he mentions two important facts: in the 1960s, Australia “lost” a vacationing Prime Minister in the ocean; and in the early 90s, a seismic event was detected that could may very well have been the testing of an atomic bomb by Japanese terrorists. This sets the stage for his grand down-under adventure, which showcases, among other things, a giant fiberglass lobster, a mysteriously villified Australian criminal and bizarre and fantastic fauna that would leave Dr. Seuss scratching his head.

Australia is a bewildering place entirely on its own, but with Bill Bryson as a tour guide, it somehow manages to come off as even more amusing than it is inherently.

I’ve been interested in Buddhism for quite awhile now, but I’ve never managed to find a book that can really hold my attention beyond a few chapters. This is primarily due to the fact that most teachers of this ancient philosophy (which I consider it to be, as opposed to a religion) seem to get caught up in the ancient traditions and rituals and, most difficult of all for me, the foreign language.

Thank goodness for Dinty W. Moore. (And really, I could tell just from his name that I wasn’t exactly looking forward to a seriously reverent treatise.) The author, a slightly sarcastic fellow with an off-center wit, a wandering attention span and a seemingly genuine desire to find inner peace (sound familiar?), takes us on a journey to discover what “American Buddhism” really is.

He eventually reaches the same conclusion I have — Buddhism isn’t about costumes and chanting, at least not in the same sense that Western religions are. At its center, it’s really just a really good approach to life — “Be kind, be careful, be yourself. Think before you act. Love your neighbor. Pay attention. If you are miserable, look in the mirror to find out why.” These things are neither expressly “American,” nor are they expressly “Buddhist.” They’re just common sense, as far as I’m concerned.

From what I’ve been able to ascertain from poking around in various bookstores and on Amazon, Bertrand Russell is the greatest thing to happen to non-religious types since the First Amendment. He was a very smart man: a mathematician, a modern philosopher, and (incidentally) not a Christian. Coming up, as he did, in the early twentieth century, this obviously required a bit of defending on his part (especially when he was fired from a very prestigious teaching job simply based on his lack of faith).

This book — which is really just a collection of various essays on the subject — does just that. So far, it is an excellent intellectual defense for atheism/agnosticism/deism/any other belief that is at odds with any of the major established religions. Russell uses the basic rules of logic to establish his beliefs (or the lack thereof) and very deftly provides criticism for some of Christianity’s more deplorable characteristics.

Despite the fact that he clearly has a lot going on in his head, he manages to write in a way that is accessible to just about anyone. (Trust me, if it were too deep, I wouldn’t have made it this far so quickly.) Best of all, he does all of this with great humor, occasionally stepping beyond a perfectly linear argument just to get in a good zinger. This book certainly belongs on the shelf of any freethinker — which, by my way of thinking, is anyone with enough sense to ask questions. This is probably the closest that people like us will ever get to having a Bible.

Sometimes I have a hard time with non-fiction, so I approached this one with a little reluctance. Thankfully, it wasn’t at all a difficult read, though it also didn’t feel like I really achieved any extraordinary philosophical breakthroughs here. My theory is that, since I was essentially just reading something that backs up my own personal beliefs, it was hard to really sit up and take notice of anything particularly mind-expanding.

The central point of the book is this: America needs more personal accountability and, well, common sense. The creation of an elaborate system of rigid right-or-wrong laws, originally intended to curb corruption, has instead done the opposite. It has tied the hands of those who would be willing to be accountable for their actions by making law the absolute word, and provided an incomprehensible tangle of bureaucracy capable of being manipulated by anyone with a good enough lawyer. Whether it’s the New York public restroom idea that got shut down because a few of the city’s residents (the wheelchair-bound, who comprise a fraction of a percent even of the disabled community) insisted upon being able to use the same facilities rather than accept a less mainstream alternative, or the wave of discrimination and reverse-discrimination suits that are creating a more hostile racial climate than ever, Howard makes his point well and accessibly without oversimplifying. Personally, I feel that this book should be required reading for every American citizen. Common sense can’t be taught, but its importance can be illustrated through strong arguments like this one.