Off-and-on I've kept this list of books I've read. I often neglect it for a long time. I've probably left off some favorites, and included others that I skimmed once in great confusion and never thought about again. Adams, Douglas, "The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy", "The Restaurant at the End of the Universe", "Life, the Universe, and Everything", "So Long and Thanks for all the Fish", "Mostly Harmless", "The Original Hitchhiker's Radio Scripts": OK, so I admit I may still be able to recite the first page or two of Hitchhiker's from memory. Adams, Douglas, "Dirk Gently's Holistic Detective Agency", "The Long, Dark Tea-Time of the Soul": Adams, Douglas, "Last Chance to See": Adams, Douglas, "The Salmon of Doubt": miscellaneous posthumous scrapings from his hard drive. Probably of no interest to anyone but die-hard fans, but has some fun bits in it. Adams, Richard, "Watership Down": Aldiss, Brian, "Heliconia Spring", "Heliconia Summer", "Heliconia Winter": Alexander, Lloyd, "The Westmark Trilogy" ("Westmark", "The Kestrel", "The Beggar Queen"): Alexander, Lloyd, "Chronicles of Prydain" ("The Book of Three", "The Black Cauldron", "The Castle of Llyr", "Taran Wanderer", "The High King"): great kids fantasy. Rereading it around 2002, maybe it loses some of it excitement as an adult, but it's still pretty fun. Asimov, Isaac, "Foundation", "Foundation and Empire", "Second Foundation", "Foundation's Edge", "I, Robot", "The Caves of Steel", "Robots and Empire", "The Robots of Dawn", "The Stars, Like Dust", "The Currents of Space", "Pebble in the Sky": Atwood, Margaret, "The Handmaid's Tale": Augustine, "The Confessions": one of the few things I read in my freshman humanities course that I really liked and would read again. Austen, Jane, "Pride and Prejudice": comfort reading--one of those things I come back to on a regular basis. Austen, Jane, "Mansfield Park": the central character is hard to deal with in some ways, but it's an interesting book. Ballard, J.G.: "Concrete Island", "Running Scared": Ballard, J.G.: "Empire of the Sun", 2000: I think this may be the only Ballard I've read that I've unequivocally liked. It has a lot of the same themes as the other things I've read by him, but somehow they make more sense to me in the context of a story about a child (his younger self) caught up in a senseless war in China. Barker, Clive, "Weaveworld": characters are total blank slates. Prose seems overdone, and the story overlong. Barlow, Toby, "Sharp Teeth": noir thriller with werewolves, told in free verse. I was a little disappointed--I think I hoped for more epic poetry and a less conventional story. Barnes, Julian, "Flaubert's parrot" Baylock, "All The Bells on Earth", 2000, gift from Ruth: Slow to start---really takes a long time to build up the story, and nothing "fantastic" happens for ages. The story could be interpreted almost entirely in terms of the mundane world. Good stuff. Baylock, "The Last Coin": I like his characters quite a bit. Baylock, "The Paper Grail": Beagle, Peter S., "The Folk of the Air", "The Last Unicorn", "A Fine and Private Place": Benchley, Peter, "Q Clearence": Blount, Roy jr., "Not Exactly What I Had in Mind": Bradbury, "Fahrenheit 451", "Something Wicked This Way Comes", "Dandelion Wine", "The Machineries of Joy": Braithwaite, "To Sir, With Love": Brooks, Bruce, "The Moves Make the Man" (high school): nice young-adult fiction, by a Silver Spring native. Brooks, Terry, "The Elfstones of Shannara", "The Sword Of Shannara", "The Wishsong of Shannara", "Fantasy Land for Sale--Sold!", others: Burgess, Anthony, "A Clockwork Orange": Burgess, Anthony, "The Wanting Seed" (f&sf/t 2004): Camus, Albert, "L'étranger", "La Peste": Card, Orson Scott, "Ender's Game", "Speaker for the Dead", "Songmaster", "Unfinished Sonata", "Seventh Son", "Red Prophet", "The Worthing Chronicles", "Hart's Hope", "Wyrms", "Xenocide", "Ender's Shadow", others: Carroll, Jonathan, "The Wooden Sea": Nicely done, likeable characters, and I like the way very imaginative fantastic ideas are combined with the commonplace, but in the end I couldn't really see how it hung together. Carrol, Lewis, "Alice's Adventures in Wonderland", "Through the Looking Glass": Clark, Arthur C., "2001, A Space Oddysey", "Childhood's End", "Prelude to Space", "The Fountains of Paradise", "2010:Oddysey 2", "A Fall of Moondust", "The Sands of Mars", "The City and the Stars", "Earthlight", "Expedition to Earth", "Imperial Earth", "Tales from the White Hart", "The Nine Billion Names of God", "The Songs of Distant Earth", "The Other Side of the Sky", "The Wind from the Sun", "Songs from Distant Earth": Clark, Arthur C., "Rendezvous with Rama", 2000 (f&sf/t book group): Clavell, James, "Shogun" Cooper, Susan, "The Bogart" (2002): The family of two kids inherits a Scottish castle, and with it, and invisible, mischevious spirit (a "bogart"). Very well done except for the computer stuff. Cooper, Susan, "The Grey King" (reread 2002): Read this as a kid. It seemed more straightforward and less interesting as an adult, but there's good local Welsh color. Cooper, Susan, "Silver on the Tree" (reread 2002): Even more than "The Grey King", this is very cut-and-dried; there are poems which give the kids laundry lists of things they have to remember to do, and they do them. Crossly-Holland, kevin, "The Norse Myths": Fun to see stories that you catch glimpses of in so many other places. Maybe a little dry. Dante, "Inferno": My eyes also passed over most of Purgatorio and Paradisio at some point, but I didn't retain much. Davies, Paul, "Superforce: The Search for a Grand Unified Theory of Nature" Dawkins, Richard, "The Ancestor's Tale": Delany, Samuel R., "Triton": Delany, Samuel R., "Stars in My Pocket like Grains of Sand": I like the title. The novel is long and weird and some would probably find it ponderous, but there's bits of it I like a lot and remember frequently. Delany, Samuel R., "Nova": Grail story. Delany, Samuel R., "Babel-17": Language as a weapon. Delany, Samuel R., "Neveryona",...: Delany, Samuel R., "The Einstein Intersection", 1999, sf&ft group: I was confused as heck, but enjoyed it anyway. Delany, Samuel R., "Dhalgren", ?grad school?: Loved it. Dick, Phillip K., "Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep?", "The Unteleported Man", "The Zap Gun", "Flow My Tears, the Policeman Said", others: Dickens, Charles, "Oliver Twist", "David Copperfield", "Great Expectations", "Nicholas Nickleby", "Bleak House": Dickson, Gordon R., "Dorsai!", "Lost Dorsai", "Necromancer", "Soldier, Ask Not", "The Spirit of Dorsai", "Tactics of Mistake", "The Final Encyclopedia": Di Filippo, Paul, "The Steampunk Trilogy": sf&fant. th. gp: Satire based in Victorian England and America. Disch, Thomas, "334", 1999, 2000, sf&fantasy theory group: Very interesting. I want to reread this some day. Disch, Thomas, "Triplicity": contains "Echo Round His Bones", "The Genocides", and "The Puppies of Terra". Disch, Thomas, "Genocides", 1999: Great. Just reading the last chapter is enough to fill me with despair for a week. Donaldson, Stephen R., "Lord Foul's Bane", "The Illearth War", "The Power that Preserves", "The Wounded Land", "The One Tree", "White Gold Weilder", "Daughter of Regals", "The Mirror of Her Dreams", "A Man Comes Riding Through": Donaldson, Stephen R., the Gap series, ?(grad school): Very fast-paced, plot-driven. Five books, but clearly conceived as such from the start. The first book ("The Real Story") describes an event whose implications are gradually revealed, and not completely understood until much later. I'd like to re-read and see if I still liked it. Dostoyevsky, Fyodor, "Crime and Punishment", "The Brothers Karamazof": Dumas, Alexandre, "Le Comte de Monte-Cristo": Interesting contrast to "Les Miserables" Dumas, Alexandre, "Les Trois Mousquetaires", "Vingt Ans Après": Ernaux, Annie, "La Place": story of the author's father. Evanovich, Janet: Stephanie Plum mysteries 4-7: Biolerplate genre stuff in some ways, but with some good jokes and characters. Perfect for distraction from the flu or the sound of aircraft engines.... Exupery, Antoine de, "Le Petit Prince" Farmer, Philip José, "To Your Scattered Bodies Go", "The Fabulous Riverboat", "The Dark Design", "The Magic Labyrinth", "Gods of Riverworld", "Dayworld", "Dark is the Sun", "The Unreasoning Mask", "Dayworld Rebel", "The Lovers": Faulkner, William, "As I Lay Dying": Feynman, Richard P., "Surely You're Joking, Mr. Feynman!": Flaubert, Gustave, "Un Coeur Simple": Fitzgerald, F. Scott, "The Great Gatsby": Funke, Cornelia, "Inkheart": Gaiman, Neil, "Don't Panic: Douglas Adams and the Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy" (1988): See, I was into Neil Gaiman way before he was hot. Wait, no, I was just a hopeless Douglas Adams fan.... Gaiman, Neil, "American Gods": Garner, Alan, "The Voice That Thunders": essays by and about my favorite author. Garner, Alan, "The Wierdstone of Brisengamen", "The Moon of Gomrath": Children's fantasy Garner, Alan, "The Owl Service": Garner, Alan, "Elidor": Garner, Alan, "Red Shift": adolescence. Very terse, somewhat cryptic, definitely worth the trouble. Garner, Alan, "The Stone Book Quartet": Four episodes covering 5 generations of a family and the land they live on. Very musical language. Probably my favorite Garner. Garner, Alan, "Strandloper": Garner, Alan, "Thursbitch": Gide, André, "L'immoraliste" (2003): Goldman, William, "The Princess Bride": Goldman, William, "The Silent Gondoliers": Graffman, Gary, "I Really Should be Practicing" Gripe, "In the Time of the Bells" (re-read 2000): Nice melancholy little fairy tale about a king, his "whipping boy" (and long-lost brother, wouldn't you know it), etc. Gunther, John, "Death Be Not Proud": Haldeman, Joe, "The Forever War" (2000): The main character is drafted into a war that lasts some thousand years, though only 5 or so by his clock, due to relativistic effects. This means, for example, that every time he comes back from a mission there's enormous culture shock. Any non-sf work would not have available such a technique for expressing this culture shock, confined to describing surroundings the reader may already be familiar with. Haldeman, Joe, "The Forever Peace" (2002, f&sf/t group): war is fought by remotely operated "soldierboys". Physicists have figured out how to end the universe, and religious fanatics want to do it. Hambly, Barbara, "The Time of the Dark", "The Walls of Air", "The Armies of Daylight", "The Silent Tower", "Silicon Mage" Hardy, Thomas, "Tess of the D'Urbervilles": Hawthorne, Nathaniel, "The Scarlet Letter": Heinlein, Robert A., "The Moon is a Harsh Mistress", "Stranger in a Strange Land", "Glory Road", "Starship Troopers", "Job: A Comedy of Justice", "Friday": He writes so well sometimes, but I just detest some of this stuff. Hemmingway, Ernest, "The Sun Also Rises" Herbert, "Dune", "Dune Messiah", "Children of Dune", "God Emperor of Dune", "Heretics of Dune", "Chapterhouse: Dune", "The Santaroga Barrier": My memory is that you're best off resisting the temptation to read past "Dune", but maybe I just missed the point of the sequels. Herriot, James, "All Things Bright and Beautiful", "All Creatures Great and Small": Hilton, James, "Lost Horizons" Hofstadter, Douglas R., "Gödel, Escher, Bach", "Metamagical Themas": Holdstock, Robert, "Mythago Wood": Homer, "The Illiad", "The Oddysey": Hughart, Barry, "Bridge of Birds", "The Story of the Stone": Huxley, Aldous, "Brave New World": Hilton, "Lost Horizons": Hugo, Victor, "Les Miserables": I was a great fan when I read this originally in high school. More recently I tried to reread it in the original language. I still enjoyed it, but somehow the time required to make it through the whole 2000 pages (or whatever it was) again just didn't seem worth it.... Hugo, Victor, "The Hunchback of Notre Dame": Ionesco, Eugene, "Rhinocerous": Ishiguro, Kazuo: "Artist of the Floating World", "The Remains of the Day", "Never Let Me Go": Well written. First person narratives with lots of subtle tricks played with the narrator's reliability. Full of emotion, but some readers (not me) seem too disappointed in the (often powerless, ineffective) main characters to get it. Jansson, Tove: "Moominpappa at Sea" (1993 (Jerry Shurman's recommendation), 2002 (f&sf/t group)): dark, frankly unhappy family relationships, but wonderful. Jansson, Tove: "Moominland Midwinter" (2002): Moomintroll wakes up early and experiences his first winter while the rest of his family is still in hibernation. Jansson, Tove: "Comet in Moominland" (2002): Episodic kid's adventure story Jennings, Gary, "Spangle" Joyce, James, "A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man": Joyce, James, "Ulysses": hah. I love the first few chapters, but I've never made it any farther. Maybe some day when I have a *lot* of time.... Keilor, Garrison, "Lake Wobegon Days", "Leaving Home": King, Stephen, "Christine", "Pet Cemetary": Kleier, "Last Day", 2000, sf&fantasy group: Terrible. May be some interesting potential ideas there, but almost every one resolved in the most boring and trivial way possible. The writing is bad too. Le Carré, John, "Smiley's People", "The Little Drummer Girl", "Russia House": LeGuin, Ursula K., "The Left Hand of Darkness", "The Dispossed", "City of Illusions", "The Eye of the Heron", "A Wizard of Earthsea", "The Tombs of Atuan", "The Farthest Shore": LeGuin, Ursula K., "The Lathe of Heaven" (reread first & last chapters, at least, for sf&fant, 2000): enjoyed it much more than I'd remembered. I'm convinced it's all a parable about urban planning in PDX.... Lem, Stanislaw, "His Master's Voice": Lewis, C. S., "That Hideous Strength" (sf&fant, 2000): 3rd in space trilogy, but stands well on its own. Didn't know quite what to think of it. The philosophy bothered me quite a bit, but then I'm not sure I understood it. Something about the ending reminded me of the kind of smug dialog I hate about late Heinlein. Levy, Stephen, "Hackers": Mark, Jan, "Zeno was Here": Maxx, Barry, "Jennifer Government": May, Julian, "The Many Colored Land": McManus, Patrick F., "A Fine and Pleasant Misery", "They Shoot Canoes Now, Don't They?", "Never Sniff a Gift Fish", "The Grasshoper Trap", "Rubber Legs and White Tail-Hairs", "Into the Twilight, Endlessly Grousing": Mieville, China, "Perdido Street Station" (f&sf/t, 2003): I'm not sure I liked the novel as a whole, but it was full of interesting inventions. Miller, Arthur, "The Crucible", "Death of a Salesman": Miller, Walter M., "A Canticle for Leibowitz": Moliére, "L'Ecole des Femmes": Modiano, Patrick, "Un Cirque Passe" (2003): boy meets girl under mysterious circumstances, with no discussion of their pasts, and a relationship develops. They have an odd dalliance with organized crime, and she's killed in the last paragraph just as they prepare to escape Paris for Rome. Mosely, Walter, "Futureland": a series of linked short stories featuring an interesting collection of characters in a dystopian future. Neill, A. S., "Summerhill: A Radical Approach to Child Rearing" Neville, Katherine, "The Eight": Niederhoffer, Galt, "A taxonomy of Barnacles": Nimier, Marie, "L'hypnotisme à la Portée de tous": Story of a child whose life is changed by her encounter with a book of the same title. Very funny. Nimier, Marie, "La Girafe": read this on the strength of "L'hypnotisme à la Portée de tous", but got nothing out of it. Maybe I wasn't trying hard enough. Niven, Larry, "Ringworld", "The Ringworld Engineers", "The Integral Trees", with Jerry Pournelle: "The Mote in Gods Eye", "Oath of Fealty", "Lucifer's Hammer", "Footfall": Orwell, "1984", "Animal Farm", "Keep the Aspidistra Flying": Pagnol, Marcel, "La Gloire de Mon Pére", "La Maison de ma Mere": stories from the author's childhood; very enjoyable. Palmer, David R., "Emergence", "Threshhold": Perec, Georges, "W ou Le Souvenir d'Enfance": alternates history of the relatively uneventful life of an orphan with a retelling of a juvenile fantasy of an island dedicated entirely to Sport. Very interesting. Perec, Georges, "Les Choses": the story of a couple's search for happiness, told in a very un-story-like way; Perec rarely describes a single event if he could instead describe a class of typical events, and as a result this reads more like some sort of sociological tract than a novel. Persig, Robert, "Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Repair" Pournelle, Jerry, with Niven, Larry: "The Mote in Gods Eye", "Oath of Fealty", "Lucifer's Hammer", "Footfall": Powers, Tim, Last Call, ?1999?: Tarot, card-playing, Las Vegas, in a modern-day fantasy. Good stuff. Powers, Tim, "Expiration Date", (2000): Ghosts this time. Also good. Powers, Tim, "Earthquake Weather": Powers, Tim, "Declare": An odd sort of alternate history or historical romance--all the historical details appear to be accurate, but it places a radically different interpretation on events--a fantastic one, which would have us believe that everything had to do with Djinns. I didn't really enjoy it as much as I'd expected. It might be more fun if I'd been familiar with the relevant history. Pratchett, Terry: darn it, I think he's very clever, but I can't for the life of me remember which I've read and which I hadn't. Pratchett, Terry and Gaiman, Neil, "Good Omens": Priest, Christopher, "The Prestige" (2002): The story of two rival magicians at the turn-of-the-century, their two big illusions, both instant self-teleportations, but with extremely different secrets, and their modern descendents sorting through the still-simmering family feud. Pullman, Philip, "His Dark Material": "The Golden Compass", "The Subtle Knife", "The Amber Spyglass": Pullman, Philip, "I Was a Rat!": the cinderella story from an unusual perspective Pullman, Philip, Sally Lockhark Trilogy, "The Ruby in the Smoke", "The Shadow in the North", "The Tiger in the Well": Pullman, Philip, "Count Karlstein" Pym, Barbara, "Excellent Women" Pynchon, Thomas, "The Crying of Lot 49": Queneau, Raymond, "Zazie dans le Metro": zany characters, great fun. Queneau, Raymond, "Les Derniers Jours": Queneau, Raymond, "Pierrot Mon Ami": Raskin, Ellen, "The Westing Game" (reread 2002): Clever puzzle-mystery about the will of one Sam Westing. Read first as a kid, but still seems great now. Rawlings, "The Yearling": Roberts, Keith, "Pavane": Roubaud, Jacques, "Hortense is Abducted", "Hortense in Exile": I think these are hilarious. Maybe some would find his mathematician's sense of humor tedious. Roubaud, "La Belle Hortense": I finally got around to reading the first of the three Hortense books. Still very funny, and interesting. I need to reread it sometime as I know there are a ton of odd unexplained things going on here. Rowan, Carl T., "Dream Makers, Dream Breakers: The World of Justice Thurgood Marshall": Ruff, Matt, "Sewer, Gas & Electric: The Public Works Trilogy": Read this for the f&sf/t book group in 2005, on Sara's recommendation. Packed with ideas, very funny. The discussion made me think there were things I missed, from small jokes to major themes. So maybe I should give it another go some day. I'm not so sure I will, though.... Russell, Mary Doria, "The Sparrow", "Children of God", 2000 (f&sf/t book group): Starts out with the interesting premise of a jesuit making first contact on a planet with two intelligent species, one predator, the other prey. Doesn't go as far with that as I might have liked, but still a good read. Sagan, Carl, "Brocca's Brain", "Cosmos", "Contact": Sagan, Françoise, "Bonjour Tristesse": story of a young woman who, faced with the prospect of her easy-going, womanazing father finally settling down with a wife they both love, acts to preserve their former lifestyle, with tragic consequences. Sagan, Françoise, "Avec Mon Meillure Souvenir" (2003): autobiographical collection. I think my favorite was the description of her pilgrimage to New York to see Billy Holiday sing. Saint-Exupéry, Antoine de, "Le Petit Prince": Salinger, J. D., "Catcher in the Rye": Salzman, Mark, "Iron and Silk": Sartre, Jean-Paul, "Huis Clos": Shakespeare, William, "Hamlet", "Macbeth", "Julius Caeser", "The Comedy of Errors": Sheckley, Robert, "Crompton Divided": Shriver, Lionel, "Game Control": The main character is a woman who falls in love with a demographer who wants to "cull" humans to save the human species. Shirer, William Lawrence, "Gandhi, a memoir": Silverberg, Robert, "Lord Valentine's Castle", "The Majipour Chronicles", "Gilgamesh the King", "Valentine Pontifex", "Tom O'Bedlam", "The Man in the Maze", "Nightwings" Simenon, Georges, "Maigret et L'Homme du Banc": Simenon, Georges, "Maigret et le Clochard": The Maigret stories sometimes have endings in which less happens than you'd expect, but it's more amusing. Simenon, georges, "Un Noël de Maigret": includes "Un Noël de Maigret", "Sept Petites Croix Dans un Carnet", "Le Petit Restaurant des Ternes"; all take place on christmas. The second, taking place entirely in a single office around the police switchboard, may have been my favorite. Smiley, Jane, "Moo", 1999: Amusing satire on university life. The setting is a financially troubled midwestern university. Characters include a hot-shot economics professor ("Lionel Gift"), a secretary who holds all the real power in the university, .... Sophocles, "Oedipus Rex", "Oedipus at Colonnus": I may have also tried to read Antigone at some point, but if so I didn't take much away from it. It's "Oedipus at Colonnus" that's really my favorite, though. Solzhenitsyn, Alexander, "One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich" (2002): Fictional account of one day in the life of a man living in Stalinist work camp. Miserable and hopeful at the same time. I loved it. Spencer, William Browning, "Resume with Monsters" (2002, f&sf/t): Our protaganist is convinced that the employees at his series of terrible jobs are all pawns of Lovecraft's monsters. Steinbeck, John, "The Grapes of Wrath", "The Red Pony", "The Pearl": Stephenson, Neal, "Quicksilver", "The Confusion", "System of the World": Stephenson, Neal, "Cryptonomicon", 1999: Lots of funny characterizations of mathematicians: my favorites are the use of a cartesian plane to divide up an estate, and the explanation of modular arithmetic using Turing's bicycle. Stephenson, Neal, "Snow Crash": Stephenson, Neal, "Zodiac": Stephenson, Neal, "The Diamond Age", reread 2000 for bookgroup: Stephenson is always full of little jokes and funny ideas, but some people find it doesn't hang together. Our token english professor rolls his eyes at it, the rest of us mostly enjoy it. Stephenson, Neal, "The Big U": wonderfully silly Stoppard, Tom, "Rosencrantz and Guildenstern are Dead": Takagi, Akimitsu, "The Informer" (trans. Sadako Mizuguchi), 2000: Straightforward whodunit about a man down on his luck who's mysteriously hired by a (supposed) industrial espionage firm. Tevis, Walter, "Mockingbird": Tiptree, James, "Up the Walls of the World" Tolkein, J.R.R., "The Hobbit", "The Fellowship of the Ring", "The Two Towers", "The Return of the King", "The Silmarillion": Toole, John Kennedy, "A Confederacy of Dunces" Twain, Mark, "Tom Sawyer", "A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur's Court": Verne, Jules, "Jules Verne: A Biography": Jeez, I don't remember this one at all.... Virgil, "The Aeneid": this is a case where my eyes passed over all the words, but I can't honestly say I took in that much. Oh well. Voigt, "Homecoming", "Dicey's Song": Vonnegut, Kurt, "Cat's Cradle", "God Bless You, Mr. Rosewater", "The Sirens of Titan", "Galapagos", "Wampeters, Foma, and Granfalloons", "Slaughterhouse 5", "Player Piano": Wilhelm, Kate, "Where Late the Sweet Birds Sang": A family struggles to survive in the aftermath of society's collapse by cloning themselves. Generations later the clones are reluctant to return to the old-fashioned reproductive techniques of their elders. Nice atmosphere, good description of the family. Melancholy. Willis, Connie, "Remake": Amusing love story, about a young dancer determined to dance in the movies in a future during which movie makers are more concerned with computer graphics and litigation over the rights to pieces of classic movies. Lots of classic movie references. Willis, Connie, "To say nothing of the dog, or, How we found the bishop's bird stump at last": Winkler, Anthony, "The Duppy": The title character (and narrator), a Jamaican shopkeeper, dies and goes to heaven, which he must enter, to his indignation, through a culvert in a sugar cane field, lead there by his guide-to-the-afterlife, who is, to add insult to injury, a "shot thief". The hilarity ensues. Wodehouse, P.G., "Jeeves in the Offing": Wolfe, Gene, "The Shadow of the Torturer", "The Claw of the Conciliator", "The Sword of the Lictor", "The Citidel of the Autarch": Wolfe, Gene, "Live Free": an odd cast of characters, united by their all having lived together briefly with the mysterious "Ben Free" shortly before his house was destroyed, cooperate reluctantly to uncover Free's secret; turns out in the end to be a byzantine time-travel story. Wouk, Herman, "The Caine Mutiny": Zamyatin, Yevgeny, "We": A distopia, but a very bright, sunny sort of distopia. Interesting. Zelazny, Roger, "Nine Princes in Amber", "The Guns of Avalon", "The Sign of the Unicorn", "The Hand of Oberon", "The Courts of Chaos", "The Trumps of Doom", "Blood of Amber", "Sign of Chaos", "Doorways in the Sand":