From the Heart of Europe

5) Time Flies (1944)

I acquired this as part of one of my current Speshul Prodgekts; also because my father occasionally reminisced about seeing it as a teenager when it first came out. It is a very early example of an explicitly sfnal British film; I have seen it claimed as the first ever commercial movie featuring time travel a time machine - my cursory researches so far haven't turned up any earlier example, but I'm sure someone will put me right.

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Quotes from the film (courtesy of IMDB)

13) The Sword of Shannara, by Terry Brooks

Got this as one of the few remaining books on this list, and gave up after page 100. It's basically a Tolkien knock-off, with nothing much original or interesting that I could detect.

14) Richard II, by William Shakespeare

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Henry VI, Part I | Henry VI, Part II | Henry VI, Part III | Richard III | Comedy of Errors | Titus Andronicus | Taming of the Shrew | Two Gentlemen of Verona | Love's Labour's Lost | Romeo and Juliet | Richard II | A Midsummer Night's Dream | King John | The Merchant of Venice | Henry IV, Part I | Henry IV, Part II | Henry V | Julius Caesar | Much Ado About Nothing | As You Like It | Merry Wives of Windsor | Hamlet | Twelfth Night | Troilus and Cressida | All's Well That Ends Well | Measure for Measure | Othello | King Lear | Macbeth | Antony and Cleopatra | Coriolanus | Timon of Athens | Pericles | Cymbeline | The Winter's Tale | The Tempest | Henry VIII | The Two Noble Kinsmen | Edward III | Sir Thomas More (fragment)

15) The Duke and I, by Julia Quinn

Gosh, two books cast aside in one day! This was one of the freebie e-books I got with my Palm T|X years ago (in fact I have read all the others, and enjoyed them). But two chapters of this is enough; it is romantic tosh, and insultingly inferior to Vanity Fair which I guess is one of its distant literary ancestors.