Pilgrim at Tinker Creek is a great book. I also love Annie Dillard for this quote:

"I don't do housework. Life's too short and I'm too much of a Puritan. If you want to take a year to write a book, you have to take that year, or the year will take you by the hair and pull you toward the grave. Let the grass die. I let almost all my indoor plants die from neglect while I was writing the book. There are all kinds of ways to live. You can take your choice. You can keep a tidy house, and when St. Peter asks you what you did with your life, you can say, I kept a tidy house, I made my own cheese balls."

Ginger, I have to tag that, or at least the last bit of it. That's my philosophy stated so that it sounds reasonable rather than slapdash and childish.

"You can take your choice. You can keep a tidy house, and when St. Peter asks you what you did with your life, you can say, I kept a tidy house, I made my own cheese balls."

My feelings exactly. I can vacuum up dog hair daily, or I can make the baby giggle and talk about whales with my seven-year-old. I can dust until everything sparkles, or I can attempt to figure out what's going on in my twelve-year-old's head.

More folks have read Annie Dillard than I thought.

Snow Crash and Zodiac stuck in my mind. Cryptonomicon, nsm.

I had the exact opposite take on the man. Snow Crash & Zodiac (and the execrable Diamond Age) all faded away, but I loved the hell out of Cryptonomicon. I love the hell out of Pynchon's books, too, which may be the difference.

I fell in like with Stephenson through Zodiac. Snow Crash and The Diamond Age made me glad I got them at the library. But he got me back with Cryptonomicon. It sprawls and wanders and then ends all too suddenly. But the characters were fascinating -- well, the male ones anyway -- and I liked some of the ideas he raised.

I've enjoyed all the Crusie I've read except for Strange Bedfellows and What the Lady Wants. In the former I felt, like others here, that the romance was forced. I could see the two leads having a fabulous affair, but their marriage seemed doomed. And the heroine in WtLW seemed like a spoiled brat.

Bet Me really worked for me. I thought Crusie did a good job showing two people from mildly disfunctional families catching one anothers' backs. I liked how a fair amount of the conflict came from character issues that resonated for me. And a little couch bondage sex never hurts a book in my eyes (unless you're lying on said book at the time).

I think someone on this list recommended Regencies by Loretta Chase. If so -- thanks! They've been a great escape at a kind of tense time. Going back and forth between regencies and H:LotS dvds has been a bit of a head trip, but it's still cheaper than most drugs.

The Annie Dillard quote had been my personal mission statement for about 20 years.

What The Lady Wants, Trust Me On This, Manhunting are pretty forgettable IMHO. (Trust Me hasn't been reissued yet.) A list of the early stuff is here. And I agree that the couple in Bedpersons is kinda doomed.

Somebody, somewhere, maybe at Autofocus, wrote Homicide AS a Regency...

Well, I rather like making my own cheese balls, but I couldn't agree more about the "clean house" part. Anyone who's seen the dog fur bunnies under my bed could tell you that.

I'm still on the library waiting list for Bet Me, so I'm glad to hear others liked it. Welcome to Temptation is probably my favourite Crusie, though I also loved her old category romance - the one with the older woman/younger man couple and the Basset - am blanking on the title.

That's Anyone But YOu, which I also love.