Stranger in a Strange Land by Robert Heinlein. A boy raised on Mars by Martians is returned to earth as a young man without any understanding of human ways.

Cheradenine Zakalwy from The Use of Weapons.

There should be qualifications with this. Some villains are cartoon villains without depth. Also assuming fictional characters. Let me suggest Lilionthel, the Chairmaker, from Use of Weapons.

Use of Weapons seems to get great marks and it was excellent.

Louise Penny changed narrators during her Three Pines series, using English narrators. They were generally good but there were some mispronounciations from not having Canadians doing the reading. Two glaring ones: 1 Maurice the Rocket Richard may have been the greatest French Canadian hockey player of all time. His last name, being French, is pronounced something like Risharrd. The narrator missed this pronounced it as we would in English. 2 CSIS is short for the Canadian Security and Intelligence Service. It is pronounced in short form as see-sis. However, Penny’s narrator spelled each letter repeatedly C-S-I-S. No Canadian would ever say it that way and it was jarring as Penny had numerous repeated mentions.

I started it in a book club put on by our local library. I pulled the plug after 30 pages.

Tom Lake by Ann Patchett. Unbelievably boring.

Tom Lake by Ann Patchett. Unbelievably boring.

Consider Phlebas- absolutely brilliant.

Consider Phlebas- absolutely brilliant.

Hillary Clinton cowriting with Louise Penny. Penny is a fantastic writer whose 3 Pines series has been made into a TV series. But Hillary?

Hillary Clinton cowriting with Louise Penny. Penny is a fantastic writer whose 3 Pines series has been made into a TV series. But Hillary?

Nobody has mentioned the Odyssey. I don’t know about loving it but it’s a great and timeless story.

The dexter series is darkly humorous while the TV series was deadly serious. The books were fun, at least the first few I read. The concept of an ethical serial killer who only kills guilty people is ridiculous. Lindsay knows it and had fun with it. You won’t get emotionally attached to the characters in the books.

The Culture series of Iain Banks. Consider Phlebas is the first entry in which the protagonist slowly begins to realize he’s on the wrong side of an interstellar war. He’s actually fighting against the values he believes in. One of the entries deals with hell and how the concept of hell is used to control people. Banks’ hells are computer generated to accept the consciousness of people who have resisted the system. I can’t recommend this series enough.

John Carter of Mars series beginning with a Princess of Mars. Actually I did read the Hardy Boys and Tom Swift before that.

The antisocial cop who has to fight bad bosses and is the only one who knows how to solve a crime. He’s often a jerk and has to work outside the system. The opposite would be the police procedurals of Ed McBain where the cops worked together as a team.

Poul Andersen’s Time Patrol series.

Why do you care what people think? Read what you like.

Margaret Atwood for The Handmaid’s Tale alone.