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Yeah, The Cat Who Walks Through Walls was his next-to-last. I don't think I've seen a single positive appraisal of it besides, "OK, it's not great, but I loved it when I was 12," or, "It's for the fans; if you don't like it, it's your fault for not having read every other Heinlein novel." Edit: I was surprised just now to see it rated 3.7 on Goodreads, but it turned out that there's a lot of people who fit those two types. Sham bam bamina! has a new favorite as of 19:07 on Dec 3, 2016 |
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Dec 3, 2016 18:57
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Heinlein was never good.
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Dec 3, 2016 19:15
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He's the definition of "cool ideas, poor execution". I still really like Double Star though.
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Dec 3, 2016 19:27
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A Pinball Wizard posted:Heinlein was never good. I liked Starship Troopers.
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Dec 3, 2016 20:11
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Stranger in a Strange Land would've been a good but dated romp if it'd kept to the whole sci-fi/legal thriller angle it had at the beginning instead of turning into free love religious cult bullshit halfway through.
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Dec 3, 2016 20:32
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A friend of mine kept trying to get me into Heinlein and I read a few. Stranger in a Strange Land was probably my favourite, but then there was the book with the super strong super amazing lady android clone who went on in her narration about how it's so important for women to submit to men in all things because man have an inherent need for it, and how some foolish real women never understand that this is their role. I quit Heinlein after that one, I think.
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Dec 3, 2016 22:45
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Tunnel in the Sky was pretty baller, in my humble opinion.
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Dec 3, 2016 23:34
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Sham bam bamina! posted:I was surprised just now to see it rated 3.7 on Goodreads, but it turned out that there's a lot of people who fit those two types.
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Dec 4, 2016 02:27
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Tiggum posted:I don't think I've seen anything on Goodreads rated less than about 3.5. I don't know if it's their rating system or the people who use it, but it seems to result in a score range of about 3.5 to 4.5 for everything. Their scale is super-weird, too. Technically only 1 star mans you didn't like the book.
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Dec 4, 2016 02:45
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Heinlein is poo poo all the way through, and only fails to be recognized as such because sci-fi suffers from genre fiction trash disease.
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Dec 4, 2016 02:49
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Tiggum posted:I don't know if it's their rating system or the people who use it, but it seems to result in a score range of about 3.5 to 4.5 for everything. It's the rating system, it's weighed towards 3-5 stars. 1 star - Didn't like the book 2 stars - It was okay. 3 stars - Liked it 4 stars - Really liked it. 5 stars - It was amazing. And of course everyone has different definitions of what makes a book "okay", "liked" or "really liked".
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Dec 4, 2016 03:35
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Leavemywife posted:I liked Starship Troopers. I liked when the weird uncle history teacher started a lecture, and then it never stopped for the rest of the book
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Dec 4, 2016 04:43
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mania posted:It's the rating system, it's weighed towards 3-5 stars. I guess I'm weird then, because I give most things 1-3 stars under that system. 
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Dec 4, 2016 05:07
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Re terrible books and Mormonism, everyone knows Twilight is completely irredeemable, but did you know it's also Mormon as gently caress? Another exegesis on this subject, which I'm not linking to because it's 2008 Livejournal to an embarrassing degree, points out that Edward Cullen is described as looking exactly like Joseph Smith did according to Mormon doctrine. Maybe a little sparklier. I don't think Stephenie Meyer did it on purpose, quite, but she doesn't strike me as a woman overburdened with self-awareness.
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Dec 4, 2016 05:57
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The thing that always shocked me about Stephanie Meyer was that The Host was legitimately decent.
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Dec 4, 2016 06:19
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Cat Army 
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The Iron Rose posted:The thing that always shocked me about Stephanie Meyer was that The Host was legitimately decent. Is it really? I mean, I liked the concept, but considering the coworker who got me to read Twilight in the first place could not get through the Host, I figured it was a neat concept tackled by a lovely author and I shouldn't look too hard.
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Dec 4, 2016 06:28
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I couldn't get through more than the first 100 or so pages of The Host because it was just dull. Not really good or bad. Just boring as hell. Maybe it got better after that though.
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Dec 4, 2016 06:39
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Read It and Weep had an episode about The Host; they said that it's more or less what you'd expect from science fiction by Stephenie Meyer. She apparently treats its premise vaguely and superficially, owing to her inexperience with the genre, and there's even more teenage mopiness than Twilight had. I haven't read it myself, but I'm inclined to trust them on this. Speaking of that podcast, two of the hosts just wrote a terrible book. The timing could be better (!), but given that the idea started as an offhand podcast joke, it's understandable that it took this long to actually be written.
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Dec 4, 2016 07:33
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I think a large part of why Twilight got such a large hate following was a mix of homophobic/sexist internet culture being outraged and threatened by it and the idea of vampires being made "lame". I'm not saying there isn't plenty of dumb, hosed up terrible bullshit in Twilight, but it's all stuff that I doubt anyone would have gave a poo poo to closely examine about over any other teen girl fad of the moment if not for some very specific stuff triggering a superficial counterculture. Thus, it was inevitable that whatever Meyer did next wouldn't reach the same comical lows for people looking for ironic enjoyment out of something by THE CREATOR OF TWILIGHT and just find it as boring and mediocre as Twilight would be stripped of it's big "gimmick"(sparkling vampires!!!!!1!).
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Dec 4, 2016 07:56
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Arcsquad12 posted:He's the definition of "cool ideas, poor execution". I still really like Double Star though. Nah, that's Phillip K. Dick. Heinlein's biggest contribution to the genre has to be space marines, right? I guess he's a good time capsule for his era of science fiction as well, but mostly because even at his worst, he's more readable than a lot of his contemporaries.
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Dec 4, 2016 07:58
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WickedHate posted:I think a large part of why Twilight got such a large hate following was a mix of homophobic/sexist internet culture being outraged and threatened by it and the idea of vampires being made "lame". I'm not saying there isn't plenty of dumb, hosed up terrible bullshit in Twilight, but it's all stuff that I doubt anyone would have gave a poo poo to closely examine about over any other teen girl fad of the moment if not for some very specific stuff triggering a superficial counterculture.
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Dec 4, 2016 08:24
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I reached critical levels of apathy on how inherently dumb sparkly diamond skin may or may not actually be several years ago.
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Dec 4, 2016 08:26
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WickedHate posted:I reached critical levels of apathy on how inherently dumb sparkly diamond skin may or may not actually be several years ago.
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Dec 4, 2016 08:27
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Exactly! Either way if you take the social justice perspective on it or not, people ragging on Twilight weren't doing it for the really creepy awful poo poo, that was all just cherries on top, little extra bits smugly justifying the hate that already existed.
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Dec 4, 2016 08:31
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What? Sparkling vampires was the number-one thing people talked about, but number two was, "He's a hundred years old and watches her sleep." People loved to hate Edward's creepiness.
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Dec 4, 2016 08:36
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Sham bam bamina! posted:Yeah, The Cat Who Walks Through Walls was his next-to-last. I don't think I've seen a single positive appraisal of it besides, "OK, it's not great, but I loved it when I was 12," or, "It's for the fans; if you don't like it, it's your fault for not having read every other Heinlein novel." The "hero" of the book has sex with a 13 year old girl while the "bad guy" is someone who thinks socialized healthcare is a good idea.
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Dec 4, 2016 09:18
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Sham bam bamina! posted:What? Sparkling vampires was the number-one thing people talked about, but number two was, "He's a hundred years old and watches her sleep." People loved to hate Edward's creepiness. Honestly, why do you think Twilight got torn apart as hard as it did? It's not the only think teenager's lovely taste has carried to a ridiculous level of popularity.
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Dec 4, 2016 09:30
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I definitely saw a lot of hate towards Twilight from people that couldn't identify any of its many and egregious flaws, just that it happened to be a major media craze whose primary demo was girls so it was for some reason a "threat" to entertainment for boys in some indefinable way.
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Dec 4, 2016 10:00
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I wrote a paper in college for a literature criticism class that was a teardown of Twilight. Got a good grade, too.
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Dec 4, 2016 10:07
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I think there's some validity to the notion that the reason Twilight's flaws were so notorious was because it was so popular among teenage girls. There's a lot of hugely popular books that are just as bad that don't get nearly so much attention for their badness. I mean, Twilight's still horrible, and it deserves the poo poo it gets. But boy howdy do other lovely books not nearly get taken down enough.
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Dec 4, 2016 11:58
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" 'vampires who sparkle' is really dumb" "this is homophobia" ok
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Dec 4, 2016 12:24
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Part of it is that Twilight is incredibly popular. Not every popular book gets made into a series of movies and has a promotional deal with a fast food company.
Konstantin has a new favorite as of 12:56 on Dec 4, 2016 |
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Dec 4, 2016 12:54
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The Patrick Rothfuss thread over in TBB has convinced me that Name of the Wind is basically just Twilight for boys. Twilight is awful but the fact that it's 'for girls' definitely attracted some more vitriol. Oh and The Host is okay but ends with a chick who is repeatedly described as tiny and childlike getting together with a much bigger man and it feels a bit weird.
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Dec 4, 2016 13:04
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WickedHate posted:homophobic/sexist internet culture You don't say? I mean it's not like we don't still have people saying things like spite house posted:it's 2008 Livejournal to an embarrassing degree Xarbala posted:it was for some reason a "threat" to entertainment for boys in some indefinable way. Now think about bronies and Gamergate
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Dec 4, 2016 15:06
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Arcsquad12 posted:I still really like Double Star though. Double Star is tight. It's exactly as sexist as you would expect a sci-fi novel from the '50s to be, but other than that it's really good.
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Dec 4, 2016 15:28
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I've read all the Twilight Saga, and they're mostly just boring rather than offensive. That second book is literally just Bella moping around and building a motorcycle the entire time. I do genuinely like when Bella finally gets transformed into a vampire. After 4 books of moping and navel gazing, she finally just goes balls out and enjoys what the rest of the vamps just moan about. "Hell yeah, I can wrestle mountain lions, and bust up boulders, and gently caress for hours, and explore underwater forever, and buy islands, and I'm super hot and sparkly and immortal. This is tight." It's ironically the most human she ever acts.
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Dec 4, 2016 15:47
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I did like that the most interesting thing she has done caused her baby to try to murder her in the womb. And after that it gets soul bonded to a teen wolf.
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Dec 4, 2016 15:57
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Who cares at that point? Bella doesn't. She pretty much abandons the baby to be raised by Teen Wolf and the Cullens so she can bang Edward forever in Thomas Kinkade's gently caress Cabin.
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Dec 4, 2016 16:01
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😍😍😍true romance😍😍😍
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Dec 4, 2016 16:02
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HopperUK posted:The Patrick Rothfuss thread over in TBB has convinced me that Name of the Wind is basically just Twilight for boys. Twilight is awful but the fact that it's 'for girls' definitely attracted some more vitriol. Ferretbrain posted:For the record, at the start of the book Kvothe is one of the greatest musicians the world has ever seen, fluent in several languages, a precocious magician, able to call upon magic of a kind few even believe exists, able to climb walls and pick locks, a master artificer, skilled in both arts and sciences, endlessly resourceful and never ever meets a woman who doesn't fancy him. By the end of the book he's all of that, plus he's even better at magic, has learned secret martial arts techniques that make him better at fighting than anybody he will ever meet except for the people who taught him, has gained the ear of several powerful people, and has been taught secret sex skills by a hot older woman who never the less thought that he was pretty amazing at doing sex even before she taught him to be more amazing at doing sex (I will come back to this a lot because I think it's probably the most stupid and juvenile part of what I now am convinced is a fundamentally stupid and juvenile text).
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Dec 4, 2016 16:06
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