Loving this so, so much

This is my first one! And it’s Player of Games, if you can’t tell. About halfway in, I’m smitten.
First one? You’re a lucky boy.
But you knew that, right?
(Consider Phlebas is another dandy).
Tags, if you need 'em: STRONG, A, BLOCKQUOTE, and CODE.
All you see before you is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial 3.0 US License.
The background image is based on this CC-licensed photo by Flickr user Diluted.
This Wordpress theme is my mod of Modern Clix by Rodrigo Galindez. Nice work, Rodrigo!
Here is my favorite haiku:
Lighting one candle
with another candle—
spring evening.
Yosa Buson (1716-1783)
Have you read them all? My first was The Player of Games, and I found the whole Culture gestalt — all play, no work; how do we make lives worth living? — immensely creative.
As a body, they’re spotty I think, some much more on focus than others. I suppose that’s always true, and probably my list of winners wouldn’t be the same as yours.