Books (Read 1585 times)

The movie is horrible, and completely misses the point of the book.  The book is far better, definitely.

 

 

The movie was no doubt intended as satire. Can't remember the book although I suspect that I read it in the dim and distant past.

The Lost City of Z:  A Tale of Deadly Obsession in the Amazon.

Very good.

The last 4 books I read are all books I enjoyed.

Genome

The Blind Side of the Heart <<<------really good fiction

The Blank Slate

World War Z    <<<----- probably not as good unless you are into zombies to begin with

The movie was no doubt intended as satire. Can't remember the book although I suspect that I read it in the dim and distant past.

I thought so, too, although it took me a minute to figure it out!

Another Heinlein fan, here.

Just finished "The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks" and enjoyed it quite a lot.

I got hooked on Heinlein when I was 12 thanks to Avalon Hill's Starship Troopers boardgame. Which led me to the book.  And much like the movie's relationship with the book, the game and the book?  Yeah.  Different.  I have to say, at 12, I could only marginally get into all the classroom flashback philosophical discussions.  I just wanted to shoot some damn bugs.  Which may explain ST's famous history.  To that point, much of Heinlein's work... the "juvenile novels"... were aimed at a younger crowd. ST seemed a little too "grown up" to the publisher and he had to take it elsewhere.  Lots of people these days hear that and go into deep dark debates about whether the themes of ST are too adult or not.  Screw that... it wasn't the themes per se, I think, it was the "few pages of action followed by 30 pages of blah blah blah whatever flashback talky talk" that I suspect the publisher didn't think kids would dig.  Which probably explains the dumb downed movie and the action game.  Which was a pretty fun game.

That led me to Rocket Ship Galileo (Nazis! On the moon!) and the actual juvenile series.  Except at the time, I didn't know what was "juvenile" and what wasn't.  So somehow The Moon Is a Harsh Mistress (nice themes, kind of boring, taught me about revolution) and Stranger got mixed in.  And Puppet Masters and Double Star - both pretty fun. 

Stranger in a Strange Land.  Or: hey, I screw you, you screw her, let's screw, everyone should have sex with each other.

His later books really really frustrate me.  Number of the Beast is the only book EVER that I have shut and thrown against the wall.

Have you ever noticed that the first 5 minutes of a Simpsons episode have no relation whatsoever to the plot of the rest of the episode? Lots of Heinlein's books kind of do that.  The first 2/3rds are build up... to a very big left turn and a different book.  Glory Road kind of did that, but it holds together well for me.  ST is different because it slaloms back and forth throughout.  Stranger TOTALLY does this.  Number does this.  My least favorite example, which I re-read (sigh) recently - Cat Who Walks Through Walls.  2/3rds of that book is a set up for something and then he goes all "world as myth" and while the set up holds together and some stuff happens, not much stuff happens, and the last 1/3rd just seems to putter around. Plus the requisite "I had sex with her, and I had sex with her, and I woke up with him so I guess we had sex, and then we kissed, and..." Dude. What's the deal?

Heh.

I'll shut up about Heinlein.  I do not really believe that everyone should have sex with everyone else.

I am about to re-read Farnham's Freehold.  I think I read it as a kid right before Stranger... and it has some weird incest sex sex sex stuff in it too.  Should have warned me.  I was young.  Why am I re-reading it?

Just finished The Affair (Lee Child)

I'm reading The Hundred Thousand Kingdoms right now.  It was recommended by a friend but I'm not entirely sure about how I feel about it yet.  We'll have to see how it develops.  The beginning of it is incredibly generic, so that turned me off immediately, but I'm trusting the recommendation.

I also don't think I'm capable of stopping part-way through a book, even if I hate it.

My favorite books of all time are probably The Sound and the Fury by William Faulkner, American Gods by Neil Gaiman, Slaughterhouse-Five by Kurt Vonnegut, A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man by James Joyce, and Time Enough for Love by Robert Heinlein. Seamus Heaney's translation of Beowulf is also pretty excellent.

Beyond those, my tastes tend to swing all over the place.  I find that I go through mostly-genre-based phases where I will, say, read nothing but sci-fi for a month, then burn out on the genre and not read anything from it for year or more.

On the note of Heinlein, I also do not think that everyone should have sex with everyone else.  I'm an open minded guy, but sometimes I really feel like his exploration of sexual taboo threatens the rest of his work's message at times (but doesn't stop me from reading it all). Haven't read Farnham's Freehold yet.  Might, though.  His short story "All You Zombies" has really, REALLY the stand out for "Heinlein weird-fest" in my mind.