OK: my suggestion is that you really should, if you have a taste for history, suspense, adventure, foreign culture, and raw (both black AND bawdy...though bawdy just ISN'T the word) humor, and you're not a prig or prude, read a Flashman novel. Read them in chronological or publication order--Wikipedia will easily reveal either--I'm doing the latter. FLASHMAN AT THE CHARGE (the Charge of The Light Brigade) is the best I've read so far, barely nosing out FLASH FOR FREEDOM (which takes place largely in America).