We are still here, but not still, hear? Time might not be a puzzle, we might just like being puzzlers.

Thank you sir, you've made my Friday evening. While I'm slinging recommendations, Iain Banks (I'm guessing you've read him, but "The Player of Games" is not to be missed), Mark Salzman's "Iron and Silk", Robert Chalmers' "Who's Who in Hell", Eric Garcia's dinosaur detective novels, and Barry Hannah's "Airships" might also ring your bell. OF course, if you have read all those, then on a baseball note, Doris Kearns Goodwin's "Wait Till Next Year" is in my top five books about the perfect diamond, right next to Roth's "The Great American Novel." And if you have read all of those, then you'll want to read "Ex Libris" by Anne Fadiman. If you're still batting 1.000, well then, I dig deeper into the library to recommend the superb "Historians' Fallacies" by David Fischer. Hope you find something in there that has escaped your notice thus far.

Thanks, Wonko. I'll print this and keep it next to my library card. I've been meaning to read Iron and Silk for years and Iain Banks has been in my "should I?" gueue for a while, but the other suggestions are all new to me—and very welcome.

Just for grins, two from my recent reading:
Old Twentieth by Joe Haldeman, a meditation ofn immortatlity and what it means to be human.
Untrodden Grapes by Ralph Steadman, a series of illustarted articles on winde-growing regions—it don't seem fair that he writes as strikingly as he draws.