The Deeper Meaning of Liff by Douglas Adams

The Deeper Meaning of Liff by Douglas Adams

A rollicking, thought-provoking dictionary for the modern age, featuring definitions for those things we don't have words for, from the New York Times bestselling author behind The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy, Douglas Adams, and TV producer John Lloyd

Does the sensation of Tingrith(1) make you yelp? Do you bend sympathetically when you see someone Ahenny(2)? Can you deal with a Naugatuck(3) without causing a Toronto(4)? Will you suffer from Kettering

(5) During the summer

ProbablyYou are almost certainly familiar with all these experiences but just didn't know that there are words for themWell, in fact, there aren't--or rather there weren't, until Douglas Adams and John Lloyd decided to plug these egregious linguistic lacunae(6)They quickly realized that just as there are an awful lot of experiences that no one has a name for, so there are an awful lot of names for places you will never need to go toWhat a wasteAs responsible citizens of a small and crowded world, we must all learn the virtues of recycling(7) and put old, worn-out but still serviceable names to exciting, vibrant, new usesThis is the book that does that for you: The Deeper Meaning of Liff--a whole new solution to the problem of Great Wakering

1--How aluminum foil feels against your fillings

2--How people stand when looking at the bookshelves of others

3--A plastic package holding shampoo, mustard, and other items that can only be opened by biting the corners off.

4--Anything that comes out in a gush despite your best efforts to let it out slowly, such as flour in a white sauce, ketchup on fish, a dog in the yard, and another bad connotation that we can't put on the cover.

5--The markings left on your bottom and thighs after sitting on a wicker chair and sunbathing

6--Only God understands what this implies.

7--For example, parts of this book were first published in the United Kingdom twenty-six years ago.

8--Do your own research.

Douglas Noel Adams was born on 11 March 1952 in Cambridge. His parents divorced when he was five, and Douglas and his younger sister Susan were brought up by their mother in Essex. From 1959 to 1970 Douglas attended Brentwood School, and he first thought seriously about writing when a teacher named Frank Halford gave him ten out of ten for a composition. He was the only boy ever to have been awarded full marks.
Leaving school in December 1970, Douglas won a scholarship to study English at Cambridge. His main reason for going there was to join Footlights, although his first attempt to do so was a failure. He succeeded in joining in his second term, but found the group which ran the society a bit stand-offish. He also felt constrained by the limits of pantomimes and mid-term revues, so instead he set up his own revue group, Adams-Smith-Adams, with two friends. It was very successful.

Douglas left Cambridge in the summer of 1974 and took occasional office jobs before joining forces with Monty Python team member Graham Chapman. They collaborated on a number of projects; unfortunately, very few of them were ever broadcast. A while later he was invited to Cambridge to direct the 1976 Footlights revue, but even this turned out to be a disappointment. At the end of the year, broke and feeling like a failure, Douglas moved back home with his mother.
In 1977 his luck changed. Through his former flatmate John Lloyd, Douglas met BBC Radio 4 producer Simon Brett. He felt that Douglas' style of humour should have its own show, rather than being crammed into existing formats. Having been inspired by a copy of The Hitchhiker's Guide to Europe, Douglas came up with a draft for The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy. After several delays the first six-episode series was broadcast, with a second rapidly following. The worldwide phenomenon they spawned includes five novels, a book of scripts, two LPs, a television series, a computer game and two stage plays.
In addition to Hitchhiker, Douglas' work included two Dirk Gently detective novels and two humorous place-name 'dictionaries', The Meaning of Liff and The Deeper Meaning of Liff (both co-written with John Lloyd) as well as Last Chance to See, an account of a global search for rare and endangered species which he co-wrote with Mark Carwardine.

In 1999 Douglas moved to Santa Barbara with his wife and daughter to work on a proposed Hitchhiker film. Always a keen advocate of new technology, his last series for Radio 4 was The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Future, a look at the advances mankind was likely to make in future years.He died suddenly of a heart attack, aged 49, in May 2001. A Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy feature film was produced in 2005, whilst both Stephen Mangan and Samuel Barnett have portrayed Dirk Gently on television in recent years.

Simon Jones (born 27 July 1950) is an English actor. He portrayed Arthur Dent, protagonist of Douglas Adams' The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy on radio in 1978 and again on television in 1981. Jones also featured in the film. The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy (2005) in a cameo role.

SKU	Unavailable
ISBN 13	9780307236012
ISBN 10	0307236013
Title	The Deeper Meaning of Liff
Author	Douglas Adams
Condition	Unavailable
Binding Type	Paperback
Publisher	Random House USA Inc
Year published	2005-04-19
Number of pages	192
Cover note	Book picture is for illustrative purposes only, actual binding, cover or edition may vary.