While I only contributed a few passages to one chapter, I’m super stoked to have written words that are now ink on paper in like, a real book that you can get in a bookstore. Ultimately I’d love to have my name as the primary author instead of a contributor, but this still represents a huge step toward livin’ the dream.

Check it out. There’s a lot of new shit in there that you can bring to light. I think you’ll dig it.

Approaching this text as a complete novice with no idea of the traditions that have evolved around in in the 2,500 years since it was written, I’m initially puzzled that Taoism is considered a “religion.” (But then I’m probably bringing my western preconception of what a “religion” is to the table.) Taoism seems so much more elemental than what most of us call a religion or even spirituality. Its name — the way — is the perfect description of what it is. It doesn’t command or compel. It helps you realize that you’re probably dragging around a bunch of psychological and physical baggage that you just don’t need, and it helps you feel the weight drop when you put it down. There are no threats of punishment nor promises of ecstasy in some kind of afterlife. That’s not the task at hand, and the Tao Te Ching is a text that lives utterly in the moment. I’m thinking for the first time about how I move through the moments of my life, and how I connect those moments smoothly with the world around me. For the first time I’ve recognized the value of inaction as an important tool in life. Doing nothing is not doing “nothing.” Mindful inaction usually does a heckuva lot more good than thoughtless action.

This book has a lot to offer people of any background. Its emphasis on mindfulness and humility are main ingredients for a virtuous and peaceful life for all of us. I look forward to digging in deeper and having my mind blown.

Today at the office we are celebrating Towel Day with a lunchtime reading of The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy. And brownies.

Douglas Adams was the first author who made me think that maybe after all I could become a writer. I’d been plagued with self-doubt for most of my life, which kept me from trying or from sharing any of the work I did. Being a grade a weirdo is generally frowned on when you’re in grade school, and in college I found myself in an environment that valued conformity so highly that independent thought was a virus that caused social leprosy. It wasn’t till I skipped town for my junior year in London that I realized there was a wide world of weirdos out there, and cutting myself down to size so I could fit into a prepackaged box wasn’t the only path life offered me. I could be myself, and people didn’t have to like me. In fact, if people didn’t like me for choosing myself over conformity, they weren’t worth my time.

Shortly after arriving in London, I picked up a battered paperback of The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy at a second hand shop on Portobello Road, and finished it in a few hours at a pub near Notting Hill Gate. The title sounded entertaining, and at 35p it was within my budget range. It blew me away the first time I read it, and I still relish being thrown into fits of giggles by Adams’ turn of phrase. It was utterly unlike anything I’d ever been exposed to. The stunted literature courses I’d taken in college chose tame titles and taught them within safe boundaries, using the curriculum to make been-there-done-that observations worthy of a monthly book club — nothing that expanded thought and experience. But this text threw all convention out of the window. Whatever I had previously believed that literature had to say about the meaning of life, religion, god, interpersonal relationships, and the kitchen sink, it was all blown away with the irreverence of a rowdy kid doing a high-dive cannonball into a nice orderly lap pool. It was the first book that really made me think about reality and existence, and it made me laugh while I was doing it. What a revelation.

I gobbled up all of his works as quickly as I could. As much as I was enthralled by his fiction, it was ultimately his least known work that I loved best. Last Chance to See is an amazing text; it ought to be taught in high school Biology courses because I have never encountered something that really gets it when it comes to conveying the nature of the relationship between human beings and the rest of the planet. I can’t recommend this work strongly enough.

The day Douglas Adams died I was very upset. He’d spent most of his career trying to get the damn movie version of his book made, but he died just shy of its release. Leave it to the creator of the Infinite Improbability Drive to kick off in the most improbable way possible; prematurely and while exercising at a gym. I wish he could have written a few more books, and that he could have lived to see the iPad so he could have made fun of it.

So wave your towels high, kids, and raise a cup of tea in honor of DNA. So long, and thanks for all the fish.

“Topless Robot is of the opinion that this book is a cash grab by the late Douglas Adams’ wife, that Douglas Adams was so individual a writer that no one could or should try to replicate him, and that And Another Thing should be avoided at all costs. If there was a way to not buy the book any harder, I would do that. Maybe I can demand a refund for it from a bookstore just by virtue of its existence.”

I thought this book was a freaking terrible idea when I first heard about it, and I still think that now. Can we please toss Eoin Colfer into the Total Perspective Vortex? Puh-lease? Anybody with a shred of decency would have considered frisbee seppuku just for contemplating writing a Hitchhiker’s sequel, let alone actually going through with it.

Douglas Adams was right. There is no god. Because if there were, she wouldn’t have let something like this happen.

Jane Austen is often called the first feminist fiction writer, and a new take on her most popular Regency romance — coauthored by Austen, Seth Grahame-Smith, and Kenneth Grahame — puts the POW in Girl Power. Seeing subtle wordplay and complex psychological portraits as insufficiently entertaining, Pride and Prejudice and Zombies is exactly that — the story, as we know and love it, with massive hordes of the damned undead causing almost as many difficulties for the sisters Bennet as jockeying for social leverage. P&P has been a long-standing object of veneration by women and derision by men. However, this text may be a way to close the gender gap with its claim to have turned the “masterpiece of world literature into something you’d actually want to read.”

P&P&Z is far from perfect, but it is spectacular fun. If you are even remotely familiar with Jane Austen’s work, there are laugh out loud moments on almost every page. The classic tale is given a fantastic reboot with the addition of “ultraviolent zombie mayhem” along with ninjas, weapons, and more physical interpretations of Elizabeth and Darcy’s famous sparring sessions. The authors are saucy and tongue-in-cheek from cover to cover, using a very funny altered Regency portrait on the cover in the style of common editions of the book, and concluding with a hilarious “questions for discussion” section at the end in the style of editions of classic works intended for students.

Like Shaun of the Dead, this is a story that is really a romantic comedy, but just happens to take place against the backdrop of a zombie uprising in England. Darcy, Elizabeth, and their relations are fundamentally the same people, but in this parallel universe the necessities of the day have left them altered. Everyone is more blunt when provoked. Ladies are admired for their skills in music, art, fine conversation — and kung fu. And yet, despite the nuisance of “unmentionables” that plague the highways and byways, financial status, social order and family expectations must be overcome to allow true love to find its way.

The text is illustrated, but the images are unremarkable and show no familiarity with Regency fashion, vanishing points, or perspective. The people who will really enjoy this work will be Austenite snobs, and the line-heavy scribbles featuring late Victorian waistcoats and sophomoric perspective will not impress readers. If the authors didn’t have the budget or connections to pull in first rate illustration, they should have left the book as a text-only work. Come to think of it, this book would have really been spectacular as a graphic novel, done in a Frank Miller style. Ah, if I only ruled the literary world . . .

Any problems in the text are squarely due to a lackluster editing job. Before the zombie bits were added the text was abridged and most of it is done deftly enough, but every now and then the gaps left from removing paragraphs remain obvious with little blurring to mask the deletion. There were also several typographic errors in the text. Either the author attempted to proof and edit their own work (a major mistake) or it wasn’t allocated in the budget (also a mistake). While the errors aren’t the kiss of death for this very entertaining read, it really would have benefited from a little more polish.

But despite the insufficiencies, this is a rollicking good ride. Whether the text takes a detour by adding rock-em-sock-em scenes that have nothing to do with the original story or improves well-loved plot elements with ninjas, boots to the face, or sloppy gore, the story holds together and the addition of zombies avoids simply being a gimmick that wears thin after a few chapters. Crowning the story’s action are Elizabeth’s two major confrontations — the first when Darcy proposes to her, and the second when Lady Catherine comes to Netherfield to warn her away from her nephew. The alterations to the text are substantial enough that the tale becomes new again. Pride and Prejudice is a work that holds up to multiple readings, but it certainly is fun to pick it up and really be able to wonder exactly what will happen next.

Whether you are a hardcore Austenite or someone who’s shunned her work for fear of having your Man Card pulled, this is a highly enjoyable text that is well worth the purchase price. Pride and Prejudice and Zombies is an epic work of mashup fiction, and if Simon Pegg and Edgar Wright don’t do the screenplay for a CG-animated film adaptation starring the voices of Jennifer Ehle and Colin Firth I will be sorely disappointed.