Douglas Adams is one the best-known and beloved comedic authors of the 20th century. Best known for The Hitchhikers Guide to the Galaxy, Adams's peculiar work has delighted—or at least confused—readers the world over for decades. But in 1987, he released the first in a series of novels of a different sort. A series about a detective whose methods were founded upon the belief in the interconnectedness of all things. A novel involving a ghost, time travel, an electric monk, a murder… and a missing cat.

This is Dirk Gently's Holistic Detective Agency, and it might just be your next favorite book.

Whatever our beliefs, we all believe something about God. Even if our belief is to disbelieve in the existence of any god or higher power, we still believe something about who God is and what he is like. And these ideas that really do affect every other aspect of our lives. And this has created a problem for many western Christians, who don't seem to really know the God we say we believe in—we lack a foundation in the truths we believe. We need to learn to re-ignite our relationship between the truths we confess, the way we live, and our emotional life. To not focus solely on the head or the hands, but to deal with our hearts too. 

One book that can help? Knowing God by J. I. Packer. After you read it, it might just be your next favorite book.

In the 1990s, Neil Gaiman's The Sandman was the comic book of choice for the self-described sophisticated reader (and I should know, because I was kind of one of them). Post-modern and progressive, the story of the Dream King paved the way for Gaiman's career as a celebrated—and bestselling—novelist. In this episode, I'm sharing a favorite novel by Neil Gaiman, which is also one of his earliest: the story of a young Scotsman who moved to London for work and had his world turned upside down when he stopped to help a girl on the sidewalk named Door.

This is Neverwhere, and it might just be your next favorite book.