I've read the entire Calvin and Hobbes series several times (once even in Italian!) and love them. They are smart, outrageous, hilarious, and thought-provoking. They make us remember what it was like to have an imagination, before life and conformity squashed it out of us, and the books encourage us, I think, to try to recapture that excitement. And I admire the author for stopping the series while it was still good. Charles Schulz continued with "Peanuts" decades after the strip stopped being innovative or even interesting, but Watterson knew when to stop, and that is a good thing. The books we have are gems we can always treasure.