A gripping and thoughtful book which deals engagingly with serious questions. I couldn't put it down. —The Rev. Dr. Paul Burgess, author, Let The Finder Beware
It is a truly original work by experienced wordsmiths who never forget to engage the reader. —Trudy W. Schuett, editor, Des7ert Light Journal
"This is a fantastic yet completely believable science-fiction book with a very modern twist. From philosophical standpoint, there is nothing that will spark the debate over interminable longevity like Methuselah's Daughter. That's an issue that society needs to tackle before science fiction becomes science fact."--Danielle D. Emery, MD, Billings MT
What does it mean to love? How much of what we call love-- and experience of love-- is social convention? How much is tied intrinsically into the human condition? This excellent, exuberant, exhilarating book does its level best to answer the most important questions humanity can ask.—Andrew Cory, editor, The Punning Pundit
“It’s great!!” —Anthony Parisi, bookseller
"I loved this novel! Not only could I not put it down, to the point of neglecting my own writing, but I was deeply intrigued by the heroine, and when I finished reading her tale, I almost went into a post-partum depression!" —Kristina O'Donnelly, author, Lands of the Morning series.
It is my favorite genre, scifi...but it is also deeply and profoundly about love. And the human condition and sorrow and pain and loss. And hope…. A year and half ago I read a book called The Time Traveler's Wife, also a scifi love story. Although the plotlines are nothing alike, the same sense of wonder, of reading something entirely new, imbues Methuselah's Daughter. I fully expect Daughter to top the charts too. Oh, hope you love it as much as I did. –Matoko Kusanagi, author, Quantum Ghosts
R.I.P. Steven Malcolm Anderson
Oh yes, and anyone is welcome to joing my little blogging bookclub. There is NO joining fee, initiantion ritual or need to be presently sane. :)
As it happens, that's the first time I've ever read a Heinlein, though I must say it's a good book...Once I got past the broken language usage. :)
By the way, aside from the Claudius series, Graves also wrote a memoir of his experiences in the trenches of WW I that's pretty good, Goodbye to All That. Be warned, he's a pacifist (although a pacifist who volunteered for service).
He also wrote a great book on myth called The White Goddess, but it's controversial because he made a lot of it up.
I assume they'd be much like "A Farewell to Arms" among others. I have no issues with pacifists, I respect their adherence to their own morality (Quakers mainly) I just despise those that try to force their morality on me, which most pacifists don't attempt. Those that do really aren't pacifist, they just choose less violent ways to force their will...
In college, we did Beowolf in Old English. The instructor could speak it, so he would read and translate for us. Very like German, but of course not Hoch Deutsch.
Regarding Heinlein -- when I read it whan I was younger, I was able to pick up the obvious slang and terms from the more obvious original languages of the transportees, like Australian and Russian, but on my last reading, I noticed a lot of Cantonese as well, which has no conjugation, definite articles, gender, or even much tense. So the choppiness of the slang may have been a concious decision, or it might simply be that Heinlein isn't a great writer in a literary sense.
Anthony Burgess does something similar in A Clockwork Orange, but he only derives from Russian.
Chinese is outside my language skills sadly (though it and Arabic/Aramaic and Hebrew are all languages I hope to study in the future), so I will defer to your knowledge of it's tenses and verb forms. Russian is honstly not that hard if I see it in "western" charecters versus Cirillic. I love language, and can usually grasp it's usage the first time around but Heinlein took a bit of myself diassociating with the modern world ("suspending belief" as it were) to get past my writing issues. Once I did, I greatly enjoyed the book.
I have the advantage of being in a North American city with a huge Cantonese-speaking (and cooking, thankfully) population, as well as Cantonese-speaking family members, so there's an unnatural advantage.
Although I also took a course. Which made me increase my admiration for the Chinese who have learned our language. Theirs is so much simpler and logical, and ours so Baroque and random in comparison.