Books in March

There were five of them and they were all Heinlein (I've since finished him off. Still don't really know who I'm going to plunge into next, so I'm just grabbing some random things that have been sitting around for a while. But that's next month's book report...)

All right, so namely it was The Number of the Beast, Friday, Job: A Comedy of Justice, The Cat Who Walks Through Walls, and To Sail Beyond the Sunset. I liked them all save Friday, which didn't really do it for me. From a writing stand point, it seemed to start out telling one story and ended telling another, which left me wondering how the first story ended, and what exactly was the point of the second one? Truthfully, the book never would have recovered from the early scene where our heroine gets gang-raped and one of the guys kinda turns her on (I had almost decided I could let that go when the guy in question turned up again. Blech.).

But the other four I liked. The world as myth was a cool idea, and the mixing of characters from all over the Heinlein universe was fun. I particularly enjoyed The Number of the Beast, when Hilda locked Lazarus Long in the bathroom (an act long overdue). And then there was this exchange, when the four characters realize they are traveling to fictional universes that all of them had read:

“Did Heinlein get his name in the hat?”
“Four votes, split. Two for his ‘Future History’ and two for ‘Stranger in a Strange Land’. So I left him out.”
“I didn’t vote for ‘Stranger’ and I’ll refrain from embarrassing anyone by asking who did. My God, the things some writers will do for money!”

(And I recently read that Heinlein wrote Glory Road in 28 days. Which explains a lot. I would have to do some serious debating to pick my favorite Heinlein, but on the subject of my least favorite there is no doubt that is the one.)