Star Wars: The High Republic - Race to Crashpoint Tower by Daniel José Older

 Another Star Wars book to check off the list. It was okay for a kids book, but I'm curious for kids that read it and haven't read Star Wars: The Rising Storm if it makes total sense. B

Sci-Fi Book # 23 - Stranger in a Strange Land by Robert A. Heinlein

Have you ever revisited something you'd read and enjoyed as a youth and and on a second reading just totally hated it? Well that was my experience with Stranger in a Strange Land. How did I like this book so much when I was 19? And I wasn't all that surprised either. I had placed the very same copy I read nearly 30 years ago on my "to read" shelf probably three years ago and just never felt motivated to read it. It was "next" for quite some time. Maybe I thought the whole free love and free your mind aspect of it was subversive or something back then. But the thing is that it is actually kind of sexist and homophobic. And for being a book about a man raised on Mars way too much of the book is taken up by a supporting character (that is somehow a super rich author, doctor AND laywer) spouting the opinions that are very obviously Heinlein's. Ugghh.. I had this as 5 stars on Goodreads before.... how embarrassing. 

And one other thing bugged me. And this is something I remember thinking as odd from when I first read it and this time just could not get over it - no one in the book seems to be the slightest bit interested in the fact that an entire alien civilization was discovered on Mars at the beginning of the book. There's some discussion if the Man from Mars has some type of ownership of the planet in a legal sense but that's it. And there's another Heinlein book still on this list! arhhh! C