Heinlein book club would go through a lot of wine

My god I forgot how Heinlein gets up my nose. I have a first date with someone who loves Number of the Beast so I said I would read it... 200 pages in I'm wondering if I should cancel the date.

( technically i guess these are spoilers, though they don't really address plot, such as it is )

I sort of wish someone would do to Heinlein what papersky did to Trollope in Tooth & Claw... take his crazy-ass prescriptivism and turn it into literal biological fact. Maybe that would take the sting out of it... or maybe it would make it worse, but at least it would only be playing havoc with my emotions, not my suspension of disbelief.

Number of the Beast, pt. 2: wine isn't strong enough

Okay, that actually got halfway decent for a bit in the middle there. And then it overshot its ending worse than A.I., which is a thing I frankly did not think was possible until now. Except where A.I. had three endings in a row, Number-of-the-I-can't-believe-you-got-paid-for-this doesn't really have any. It has an extra middle instead, and ends on the beginning of something else altogether....

( The ranty bit. This time with serious spoilers. )