I'm not a big fan of Harlan Ellison, but I did read a graphic novel adaptation of his sort story "A Boy and His Dog" that was so good I was looking for a sequel.

I liked "Huckleberry Finn", but preferred "Tom Sawyer" and "Puddinhead Wilson" (a story of dealing with prejudice in the post-Civil War era) among Twain's novels, and also the shorts "The Ransom of Red Chief" and "The Incredible[?] Jumping Frog of Calaveras County". Red Chief was another 'can't breath' story.

I'm a huge fan of Asimov, but for his histories, Mysteries and science essays (which are the most comprehensible for a layman that I've ever read). His comedy relied too heavily on puns to be truly punny...er...funny, and his science-fiction was very solidly Golden Age and seems quite dated now, with the exceptions of one third of "The Gods Themselves" (a collection of three connected novellas) which was told from the point of view of an alien, and a longish short story (novellete?) that I think was called "The Ugly Child", that was later liscenced by his wife to another writer to be expanded to a novel. "The Ugly Child" is about an anthropology researcher who becomes too close to her subject (a Neandertal child) and does something drastic about the child's situation. I've often wondered if the researcher was based on Jane Goodall.

I'll have to give some thought to plays and movies.