My August Book Report

So I'll start with the only book I read this month that wasn't written by Robert Heinlein, Eighth Grade Bites by Heather Brewer. It's some indication of how much I was looking forward to reading this that I interrupted my Heinlein marathon the day it came in the mail to read it right away (whereas Spook Country is waiting on the TBR stack until I'm done with the Heinlein, although I've been picking it up and paging through it; my willpower might break on that score too). EGB didn't disappoint. It's a YA vampire tale that manages to pay homage to all the vampire tales that have come before without being derivative itself. No mean feat, that. Vlad may be a vampire, but he's also a thoroughly modern boy and an outsider at his school. It reminded me a bit of Peter Parker in Sam Raimi's Spider-Man movie; having superpowers isn't much help when you're the weird kid no one wants to talk to, and you're hopelessly crushing on the prettiest girl in school. I only wished it had been longer, but then there's always ninth grade (and tenth, and eleventh, and twelfth, and dare I say college?).

The rest of what I read this month was all Heinlein, as I mentioned. I've read a few of his later novels, but never the YA I've been told again and again I simply must read. Being anal, I always read in chronological order (one of the many handy uses for Wikipedia, it has such nice and complete lists).

The first two I read, Beyond This Horizon and For Us, The Living were both written in the 40s but not published until much later. BTH had some interesting ideas, but it seemed to start out being one story and ending as something else and it didn't really hang together. FUTL is not really a story at all, more a collection of Heinlein's ideas told in an almost Socratic way through dialogue. It sounds dry; I actually found it dead interesting. Everything that is quintessentially Heinlein is touched on in this book; it's amazing that he wrote it before all the others. It's probably not the Heinlein you'd want to start with, but I would recommend it to anyone who's read more than a few of his other novels. I would especially recommend it to writers who write primarily to put forth ideas. It makes an excellent study tool; observe how Heinlein already knew what he wanted to say, but set it aside to master straight-up storytelling first and then started slipping the ideas back in. I'm pretty sure that's why he was a Grandmaster.

The next two I didn't like as well: Rocketship Galileo and Space Cadet. The two shortest of his books, but they took me the longest to get through. After I finished RG I admitted to Quin that the little science lectures sprinkled throughout I mostly skimmed over, but Nazis on the moon were cool. Which was pretty much exactly the opposite of how he feels about that book (and I'm probably lucky he didn't throw something at me for being such a heathen). SC reminded me a lot of Old Man's War. I realize I have that exactly backwards, that Scalzi was modeling after Heinlein, but honestly I liked Scalzi better. (Perhaps because there were also women involved in his military.)

The last two I tackled in August I really liked, or my marathon would have come to a grinding halt (I'm not a masochist, after all; I prefer to read books I like). Red Planet I liked well enough to make a little space in Aidan's history book reading schedule for him to read it next. I may have a difference of opinion with Heinlein on the "we should all be naked" thing, but I'm right there with on the libertarian front, and this is a very libertarian book. Plus I loved Willis, who even though she has laid a nest of eggs still insists that "Willis is a good boy". (Of course the actual women in the novel contribute to the effort by making sandwiches and coffee. A boy becomes a man when he takes up a gun to defend his own, but a girl is a woman when she cooks.)

The last one I finished in August was The Sixth Column, which I also liked. I see little hints of Stranger in a Strange Land in it, with the way he portrays religion. (And here women contribute to the war effort by doing clerical work.) (And if you think I'm harping on the woman thing here, be glad you're not my husband. Actually, most of what he's had to endure has been on behalf of The Puppetmasters, but as I didn't finish that one until September you'll have to wait a month for me to lay into that one).