#17, #31, & #34 all by Robert Heinlein

#17 Stranger in a Strange Land.
This was good-but-not-great I thought. I borrowed all of the Heinlein books from my dad and read them all back to back to back.  SSL got stuck inside the middle of all of those other books that run together when I was reading it.  Perhaps I was looking for a continuation of the larger Heinlein story and found this one was not attached to anything else and therefore didn't enjoy it as much.

#31 Starship Troopers
Loved the movie, was warned that the book differed from it quite significantly, liked the book.  They just don't have much in common except for the title. The movie is more about the society of soldiers ( and big booms, bugs, and boobs.. who am I kidding..) .  The book is more about the experience of an individual soldier.

#34 The Moon is a Harsh Mistress
This is my favorite of the three Heinlein books on the list.  This ties in (slightly) to the Lazarus Long books (a character in many other novels) and perhaps that is responsible for my bias toward it. I really loved the depiction of the main character bounding over the surface of the moon.  It is so desolate and desperate.

That being said, my personal favorite Heinlein books are not here.

-All you Zombies-  (the dashes are part of the title)
This is a total mind f***.  If you are not already a somewhat depraved individual, skip this book.  It is WEIRD in the weirdest of ways.   DO NOT try to read anything about it before you actually pick up the book.  It would really easy to find a major spoiler (don't wikipedia it).  It is in a collection of other (fantastic) short sorties titled 6 X H (Six by Heinlein).  It captures the essence of Heinlein and distills it down to one short story.

My other personal favorite is:
Have Spacesuit, Will Travel.  
The main character is - in my mind - Frank Germann.  My dad.  It is about a 16 or 17 year old kid that wins a used space suit in a contest.  The kid is a genius and wants to be a "spacer".  He fixes up the suit and is then abducted / rescued by an alien.  Everything he does, thinks and says I totally picture a 16 or 17 year old version of my father doing.   This is a rare PG rated book by the usually very perverted Mr Heinlein.  Suitable for pretty much anyone. .. space-suitable ;~)