I liked The Cat Who Walked Through Walls well enough, but didn't care for NotB at all.

I seem to recall a lot of stuff [in NoTB] was discarded midway through. Ha, ha, "quest for fertilisation" - that sounds about right.

ETA and my reasons for liking it are becoming less and less defensible. OK, put it this way, despite its' many flaws, I still enjoyed it at age 15. Whether or not I'd still like it now, I dunno. [Makes note to reread Heinlein for the sole purpose of arguing about it with Buffistas.]

When I read Stranger in a Strange Land at age 13 or thereabouts, it changed my whole way of thinking. It was utterly different than anything I'd read in my sheltered life, and the ideas it introduced me to (including the weird sex) lead me on to more advanced philosophical concepts I might not otherwise have discovered. When I read SiaSL now, I cringe and say, dear Lord, this is wretched.

I read other Heinlein books in my mid-teens, and was always left wondering what the hell just happened? When I grow up, is this the way intelligent men will expect an intelligent woman like me to behave? For some reason, SiaSL didn't trigger the WTF reaction. Maybe because it was first.

I am Arby and Ashtareth. Most of the RAH I read, I read as a teenager. And it was exciting stuff to me, then. To be honest, I haven't reread a single Heinlein book in probably close to 20 years. So, my memory of specifics is dim. But I looked at them as I did a lot of SF, it's fiction, presummably set in a future I'll never see. He could have populated it with talking dolphins and whales on wall street if he wanted. Not sure I would have read it, but he could have done it. The least I can say for him, once I started reading one of his books, I always finished it. I've left a lot of partly read books by the wayside over the years, so for me, the man was doing something right.

Just a general FYI to interested Buffistas...west coasters might want to check out the two hour special on CBS called "AFI's 100 years...100 songs". It's a countdown of the most influential songs from films, and it is so worth watching! Granted, I love musicals like a mad thing, so it might not be everyone's cuppa, but...had to recommend! I've had it on in the background while I've been grading, and I've been singing most of the time.

X-post in a couple of threads...

Not a Heinlein fan - I read "Stranger in a Strange Land" when I was a kid, tried a couple of his other books and didn't finish them. Didn't like Asimov or Clarke either. I tend to prefer sci-fi written by women: Anne McCaffrey, Elisabeth Moon, Margaret Weis. Less of the dry science / big idea part, more of the character-driven stuff.

Big thank you to whoever recommended "Dead Like Me" a while back. Picked up the DVD set, and I'm loving it. I can definitely feel a DNA link to Wonderfalls when I watch it. $62 well spent. Is there going to be a second season?

Second season starts July 25, I believe.

I bought the DVDs too, after seeing just one episode. I love them, although the episodes could have been even better if some of Bryan's really good ideas hadn't been tossed out.

Watched, uhm, most of safety canary. The CD was screwed up, but we lost the very end.

Uhm, what happens right after Jaye tells he bird lady that she's been using the birds to avoid human contact?

I'm replacing my whitefonted spoiler with a link to the script, which explains things better than I did anyway.

Ahem. Spoilers.