What are you reading??

That is such a good novel, but I love everything McCarthy wrote.

I'm getting ready to read about the death of another Japanese legend:


I picked it up at the used book store a week or two ago.

I love both the book and movie- for largely exactly the "opposite" reasons they were written. Heinlein sometimes published under pen names- I think I have a copy of The Astounding sci-fi that has "By His Bootstraps" (Anson Macdonald) in it around somewhere. At least, I know that I did at one time. I love that short story, if you haven't read it, it's fun.

I've read several accounts (contradictory) that the movie either was or was not satire. I tend to believe it was - the book I'm less sure of.

I'm nearly 100% certain I read an interview sometime in the last several decades in which the director openly stated the movie was supposed to be satirical. Before I'd read that interview, I'd always assumed it was- the uniform worn by Neil Patrick Harris' character is impossible to mistake for anything other than what it is supposed to be. I first saw it in theater with a (perhaps not that observant) friend who was planning on enlisting and who treated the book as his own personal bible. We had radically different reactions to the movie- at that time I liked the book as much as a I liked any of Heinlein's sci-fi, for the snappy prose, but I definitely wasn't as attached to it.

My friend absolutely loved the movie. I found it violent, disturbing and thought-provoking; I tried to have a conversation with my friend about my observations about it and he angrily told me that I didn't understand the book or the movie or how things were in the real world.

It took me a few years to appreciate the fact that that was the whole point, and a few more years to appreciate that my friend really could have been a character right out of the movie itself in a lot of ways.



Regarding the book- Heinlein had incredibly complicated and somewhat interesting personal politics. Perhaps most people who have a little bit of experience with Heinlein are familiar with Stranger in a Strange Land and may assume that he was just a free-loving hippie, but that's both as correct and as inaccurate as assuming he solely believed many of the ideas Starship Troopers argued. It's difficult to outline his personal views without using contradictory descriptors and ideas. I suppose that makes sense, given that he was ultimately a progressive thinker whose ideas were shaped by two world wars and the great depression.

Nice book, nice watch, Welcome to the forum!

Arrived today, I suspect there’s a chapter devoted to how to slowly start divesting from your watch collection 🤣🤣

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Read these two over the weekend: Witch King and Fugitive Telemetry. Both were good, Witch King reminded me in some ways conceptually of Lord of Light, and I'd really like to see where the story goes from here. Wells writes amazing first chapter hooks (especially in her Murderbot novellas), and this was no exception.

Fugitive Telemetry and Network Effect have been sitting on my shelf since they came out, but I'd not gotten around to starting them. Really, really enjoy this series- snappy, fast, entertaining sci-fi written in "novella" format length of ~150 pages that was so common in sci-fi until sometime in the 1960s. Witch King reminded me I had some Murderbot books to read, so I finished this one and Network Effect is next.