Dirk the Great

• The theme of belief vs. doubt: Funny your alternate selections, Glenn, also had connections to Salt Lake City—Conan Doyle's Study in Scarlet is my least favorite Sherlock Holmes (though not because of the Mormon misinformation), and Louis Lamour often shows the Mormon's more favorably. The Walking Drum novel (the first LL I'd read in twenty years), was like a reading a western with swords in the dark ages. Dirk was by far the best choice, and I enjoyed it even more than the Hitchhikers Guide series, which gets progressively sillier.

• "I only believe in SCIENCE": I really feel like I know comparatively less every day. If you consider that there are lots of people learning more and more about the universe every day, even including me, then the ratio of my knowledge compared to the sum of all knowledge gets progressively smaller. Especially when you think that there are worlds without number and endless creations. (I'm hoping one of you will correct my math here). So we really know less and less every day. My prejudice is that the Brits seem to sneer at anything that's not published in three scientific journals.

• It seems that another theme was random coincidence, of which I think Adams was expert. Unlikely things don't just happen. My aha moment occurred when I Dirk said he was more concerned about McDuff breaking into the apartment than about Gordon Way's death.

• Do kids believe in the Easter Bunny? I wonder. I don't think any of my children really believe in Santa or in the Easter Bunny. They sometimes act like they do because it's fun to pretend, but they don't really.

• Audio books vs. paper books. Some books are better read (Peter's choice for this month, for example). I like most fiction in audio format, but I wonder about Douglas Adams—sometimes he's a little tangential.

• I only know one Dirk in real life. He prefers to be called Dirk the Great; maybe I'll try Svlad.