They are quirky, fascinating and transport you to an alternate universe Douglas Adams was a man of many hats. Not just an author, Adams was a screenwriter, essayist, humorist, satirist, and dramatist. Though he started off as a screenwriter for radio and television, it was a long road before Adams took to writing books. The 49-year-old writer is more famously known for his book, The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy. The book originated in 1978 as a BBC radio comedy before it got transformed into five books. Here is presenting a list of must-read Douglas Adams books that you must at least read once in your lifetime. Dirk Gently's Holistic Detective Agency First published in 1987, Dirk Gently's Holistic Detective Agency is a humorous detective novel, as described by the author is "thumping good detective-ghost-horror-who dunnit-time travel-romantic-musical-comedy-epic". Nothing more is to be said about the book. The story is a crazy journey of mind from one scenario to another, leaving the characters and the audience wondering about the connections. As the quirky name, the quirky characters, protagonist Dirk Gently, his secretary Janice Pearce and Sergeant Gilks, are a delight to see them at work. What do a dead cat, a computer whiz-kid, an Electric Monk who believes the world is pink, quantum mechanics, a Chronologist over 200 years old, Samuel Taylor Coleridge (poet), and pizza have in common? Last Chance to See This is a 1989 BBC radio documentary series and accompanying book published in 1990 that was written and presented by Douglas Adams and Mark Carwardine. In the series, the two travel to various locations with the hope of encountering species on the brink of extinction. It was in 1985 when Douglas Adams went to Madagascar in search of the possibly extinct lemur, the aye-aye, where he met zoologist Mark Carwardine. Their journey was to discover the Komodo dragon on the island of Komodo in Indonesia, the kakapo in New Zealand, the mountain gorilla in Zaire, the northern white rhinoceros in Zaire, the Yangtze river dolphin in China, the Rodrigues fruit bat on the island of Rodrigues, Mauritius, the Amazonian manatee in Brazil and the Juan Fernández fur seal on the Juan Fernández Islands, Chile. A few other of Adams's works are The Long Dark Tea-Time of the Soul, The Meaning of Liff, and The Deeper Meaning of Liff, to name a few. Douglas Adams also wrote two stories for the television series Doctor Who, co-wrote City of Death and the sketch Patient Abuse for Monty Python's Flying Circus. In 2002 a posthumous collection of his selected works, including the first publication of his final (unfinished) novel, was published as The Salmon of Doubt.
