The tibetan art of positive thinking - christopher hansard. This was a random book that just caught my eye as I unexpectedly waited for a train to go to Kiruna from Uppsala in Sweden. Faced with a depressing 15 hours on a train it seemed like a good idea, and it certainly was! I've been a big fan of the Barefoot Doctor's 'Return of the Urban Warrior' for a year now, however my main complaints with that were a) it takes a bit of a while to get going, b) it's bloody huge and a real pain to carry around when you're backpacking. Hansard's book, his second in this series, takes a similar path (Tibetan B�n rather than Taoist) but using different meditations and more burning of juniper. Hansard is very prescriptive about quite how often you need to do the meditations to get the desired results (for example 25 plus minutes, twice a day, for 28 days), which suits me better than the more rambling style of Barefoot. The book is well written, practical and with occasional side trips into Hansard's own training to be a B�n master - plus after a few days of reading it there have been definate improvements in my outlook, noticeable by the quality of the random things that happen through the day and how I react to them. Go get this book now - especially if you're feeling a bit down in the dumps!!

Hitchhiker: a biography of douglas adams - m j simpson. Strangely I looked at another Adams biography in large paperbook form in Adelaide a few months back and decided it was too expensive there (like most books in Aus unfortunately) and then ended up buying a second hand John Cleese bio to read instead. There's a strange connection there in that Douglas Adams was greatly inspired by the Pythons and Cleese was one of his idols, although he ended up being closer friends with Terry Jones - the Python often cited as being Cleese's greatest counter-point in the Python camp. Perhaps DNA would of appreciated that. I'm not sure how much he would of appreciated this biography though.

Simpson's biography, deeply researched by the author's own accounts, contains a lot of interesting factlets about Douglas Adam's life and work and also his working style. What it lacks though is the author's humour, except when relating his (changeable) anecdotes almost verbatim, and so often comes across as very dry. Adams was never dry, and I'm a firm believer that biographies should try and capture some of their subjects flavour or at least be entertainingly written themselves. Ah well. Will probably check out one of the other bios at some point although the reviews for those aren't exactly stunning either. I think in the end it's just sad that DNA's not around any more to write in his usual off-focus but fascinating manner. Sigh.