On what was a seemingly endless set of flights to, inside-of, and back-from Europe last week I was able to knock off a book and a half. The book was Douglas Adams' Last Chance to See (the 1/2 was a Grisham that was such a huge let down after Douglas Adams that I instead spent the time reading airline flight routes, the profiles of the various aircraft fleets, and memorizing safety instruction cards).
Douglas Adams could be my favorite author, I guess I haven't put enough thought into the question to give him the title exclusively at the moment, but if he's not the top spot he's for sure medaling. Oddly, and to the benefit of most who aren't familiar with his stuff beyond Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy, I don't think Hitchhiker's is even his best work. He also wrote a detective series about a P.I. named Dirk Gently that is so funny it will make you laugh until your tummy hurts.
If you're not completely sold on Adams after reading the Dirk Gently books - then the final push will come from Salmon of Doubt. Salmon was published posthumously by Adams' wife and publisher based on scraps of his writing from his personal computer - I was almost arrested in Montreal airport a few years ago for spontaneous bouts of laughter while reading it.
It took me a while to finally get to Last Chance to See, largely because I have a deep aversion to books on ecology and conservation. Not because I don't care, but because I do too much. I just find them so overwhelmingly depressing that they bring this deep melancholy about the hopelessness of life and the dark side of humanity. But Adams' draw was greater than I could resist and I bought the book for last week's flight.
I had to put the book down after this description of part of his trip to Africa in search of the Northern White Rhino:
"Three days later I found myself standing on top of a termite hill staring at another termite hill through binoculars."
Trust me and buy a copy - it will be an instantly accretive investment because the book is priceless.