A personal tangent. In the spirit of the OP, I guess. I read Justine (1st book of the Alexandria Quartet) back in my early 20s, circa 1993. The way I found i

A personal tangent. In the spirit of the OP, I guess. I read Justine (1st book of the Alexandria Quartet) back in my early 20s, circa 1993. The way I found it was utterly weird. I was helping my dad sort out his old stuff my mom wanted him to throw away, mostly lots of yellow late 50s early 60s notebooks from his college. And some old English books. And Justine. My dad said he couldn't remember where he got this book, and said somebody must have given it to him back in the 60s, and he never read it. I've never heard of it or Lawrence Durrel, but I knew about Gerald Durrel due to My Family and Other Animals which was something that recommended for kids around the early 80s, I guess, and I think I even read it when I was much younger. I assumed Justine was a dime detective or spy novel, since I knew that's the stuff my dad likes. Or some biography. Nothing too literary for him, thank you very much. He asked if I wanted to read it or he'd throw it away. I looked at the blurb, which didn't tell me much, shrugged and said ok. I was between books. The book was a 60s printing, yellow pages, somewhat disintegrating, but all pages were intact. So I read it. It was tough. But I persevered. And I liked it. Very much. Well, the sex scenes were kinda shocking but by that time I've read more explicit ones. And to my surprise I discovered that the science fiction novel Icehenge, by Kim Stanley Robinson, which I read and re-read and re-read 7 years prior at even a more impressionable age, was very much a tribute to Justine. At least its middle part. It even includes a science-fiction in-universe pastiche of Cavafy's The City. Icehenge and Justine remain sort of embedded in my brain. As Cavafy's "The City" in Durrel's translation (attributed to one of the fictitious characters in the novel itself) , which in my opinion is the best translation. I'm able to recite it by heart to this day, and there are days when I'm highly tempted to print it and hang above my desk at work. But I wouldn't like the questions. I think. I've wanted for 20 years now to read the rest of the Alexandrian Quartet, but I've never gotten around to it. Swamped by school and then by work and then by family. Maybe someday. And maybe I'll be disappointed. As for His Dark Materials. I read it too, but didn't like it, something didn't click. Except The Golden Compass which was good.