Unseen Academicals is the only one in a LONG time that I actually enjoyed. GO FIGURE.

I'm not sure what "allowed" means in this context. We don't retroactively decide that his entire career is crap? Sure. We don't criticize the bad stuff because he used to write good stuff? Not so much.

I'm a big reader, but for the life of me I can't understand how me reading Henry Fielding (as I'm doing now) is actually any less "useless" than people pretending to shoot aliens. They're both just ways of amusing ourselves and distracting ourselves from the inevitability of death.

Gravity's Rainbow.

My dictionary lists "trepidatious." It doesn't say anything about "trepid," though.

I believe "whillikers" is the word you were groping for.

You may have lost your favorite black sweater. Be content with your life—it may not get any better.

I liked the first Dying Earth book, but then everyone in Eyes of the Overworld, and the protagonist in particular, were just so utterly, unrelentingly vile that the book was absolute TORTURE to read, and I never finished the series.