I read this on a cross-country flight, feeling guilty about the carbon cost despite finding a forgiving explanation of aviation emissions via a well-crafted Google search beforehand. Mercifully this book about endangered animals predates the 2015+ awareness of climate change, colony collapse syndrome, bleaching coral reefs, and so on. Like Hitchikers Guide, it opens with a torrent of clever turns of phrase, such that I doubt he can keep it up for hundreds of pages, but by sheer wit, he finds a way. Adams’s lovely, lighthearted, touching tone doesn’t quite capture the current phase of extension but fits more alongside My Family and other Animals as a celebration of the wild. And it turns out being equally a story about how to be a human - well, at least a British, misanthropic, gin-drinking human.