Quote:
Originally Posted by charleski
I tried a couple of books by Heinlein and despised them, despite the fact that I'm fairly tolerant of bad writing. The only reason I finished 'Stranger in a Strange Land' was because I was still in the phase where I felt obliged to finish books and read the whole think before judging them. But many years on I can still remember how much it made me want to vomit in disgust at its infantile attempts to shock.
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Wash your mouth out with soap! How can you talk about the Grandmaster that way?
Sometimes I think whether people like RAH or not depends on where in his career they started reading. Readers who started with the juveniles or short stories seem to become fans while his longer novels which start exploring unconventional family structures are hit and miss.
Even so, while RAH had his writing ticks, as most writers do, I don't recall ever reading any book and thinking that it was bad writing. I think he was fairly accomplished at the mechanics of story telling. Its at the ideas and themes level that some people have trouble with him as far as I can tell.