Yes, I have heard of the Flashman books, I might like those I think. I read one Casteneda, it freaked me out. Your warning should be heeded!
I have Mencken’s “The American Language” which I inherited when my brother died, but I haven’t read that either!
The American Language is basically an annotated dictionary. While Mencken is well known for it, his other stuff is so much better.
He did something of a trilogy, of Happy Days, 1880–1892 (1940); Newspaper Days, 1899–1906 (1941); and Heathen Days, 1890–1936 (1943). The first were his reminiscences of childhood in Baltimore, and he includes a lot of color, both good and bad. The second volume was when he was a newspaperman, and he goes into detail about the perfidy of those times, how newspapermen are scoundrels, and life covering the crime beat.