Underground: The Tokyo Subway Gas Attack and the Japanese Psyche

By Haruki Murakami

Pride and Prejudice

by Jane Austen

Somewhat delightful after all.

Eye in the Sky

by Philip K. Dick

Knowing Philip K. Dick as I do, I wonder why I thought it would STAY a novel about a world where religion was repeatable, instead of turning into a story about hideous insect-monsters and inside-out cat monstrosities?

The Sirens Sang of Murder

by Sarah Caudwell

Two good narrators!

The Fountainhead

by Ayn Rand

I would have loved the hell out of this book as a teenager.

Far Rainbow / The 2nd Invasion from Mars

by Boris and Arkady Strugatski

Way better than "hard to be a god".  Except I think I would like to be a cookie-eating beer-drinking cow.

When you are Engulfed in Flames

by David Sedaris

This is like the opposite of once, in the sense that even the sad stories are happy.

Good Omens

by Neil Gaiman and Terry Pratchett

Man, I forgot how relentless Terry Pratchett was.

ANGLER

by Barton Gellman

A Farewell to Arms

by Ernest Hemmingway.

The style feels so simple.  It's like meditating.

Once

by Rebecca Rosenblum

Are all of these stories sad?  Even the happy ones?  Was that just me?

The No. 1 Ladies Detective Agency

By Alexander McCall Smith

Just read _anything_ by this author.  It's all great.

The Divine Invasion

by Philip K. Dick

Qualitatively different from his other books, I think - like, Shakespeare started writing romances late in his career? This is one of PKD's, uh, Godmances?

Cryptonomicon

by Neal Stephenson

I remember being around people like this. I remember learning these things.

The Turk

by Tom Standage

MUST BUILD WOODEN ROBOT

Man's Search for Meaning

by Viktor Frankl

Sounds way ahead of his time.

Honeymoon in Purdah

by Alison Wearing

Wow. I have to go to Iran.

9 Stories

by J.D. Salinger

He's always fun to read, especially if you want to be miserable.

Quartet: Four Masterpieces of Great Fiction

by W. Somerset Maugham

A cheesy package (tired of reading masterpieces of regular fiction?) for some interesting stories. I read exactly enough of R.C. Sherriff's screenplays to know that they were terrible. Namely, the final scenes, in which Maugham's secret intention for all the endings to be happy was finally realized.

The Master and Margarita

by Mikhail Bulgakov

Super cool. Try to find the translation I have: It is translated very directly from the original, which makes every sentence sound upside-down and backwards.