Bookish Thoughts

My mom gave me Robert Heinlein's Time Enough for Love for Christmas a year and a half ago. Yeah, it took me a while to work up to this one. See, I'd read Stranger in a Strange Land at that point, and I really struggled with that book. I'm deeply, deeply ambivalent about Heinlein, and I was sure this book would be a similar roller coaster of emotion. It's not something you can just jump into lightly. But my stack of books was dwindling, and I couldn't start Treasure Island until June, so I figured it was finally time to give this one a shot. The book has a good frame, the sort of thing that draws me right in. Laxarus Long is the oldest living person with more than 2000 years under his belt. He's finally ready to die but one of his great^n grandchildren convinces him to live long enough to pass on his wisdom. So Long agrees to tell stories of his life so long as he has a willing audience. This results in a bunch of short stories, strung together b...

Stranger in a Strange Land  by Robert Heinlein is one of those books I always felt like I ought to have read. It's an important piece of classic sci-fi that almost any fan of the genre knows about. Even before opening the book I was aware of the word "grok" and everything it means. Thankfully, I was also prepared for the incredible amount of sexism in this book. It's implicit, as in the opening chapters when all the doctors are men and all the women are nurses. Or in the fact that pretty much every man has a wife or female assisstant who does all those little domestic things for him. Or in the fact that, although there are plenty of strong, kick-ass women in this book, every single one of them is defined by her relationship to one of the men. The sexism is also explicit in some areas. Women aren't allowed at the press conference or in the serious men's meeting to discuss the finances and future of the Man from Mars. They're allowed to bri...