I visited Douglas Adams' grave at Highgate and partook in the tradition of leaving a pen. I'm not sure why that's done by so many. Were Adams' pens always running out of ink? I would have left a towel, but I didn't have one with me.
Call me an idiot (I've been called worse) but until recently I didn't know there were four books in Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy. I remember chortling on bus journeys while reading the first two, so I recently picked up books three and four to find out whether I would be equally enamoured.
I've just finished book three - "Life, the universe and everything" and plenty of chortling occurred.
Arthur Dent and Ford Prefect are tasked with saving the Galaxy from a bunch of "really sweet" xenophobes who are obsessed with killing everything that isn't Krikkit. But it's the puns and wordplay that really make Adams' books great. The plot is secondary or tertiary and frequently forgotten or side-lined.
Hitch-Hiker's Guide to the Galaxy is the perfect series of books to read when life starts to feel too serious and you start channelling Marvin the Robot. Book four next.