I have not read Heinlein but am curious about him due to his right-wingerish tendencies and should probably read some of his stuff someday. I like Starship Troopers the movie, but that’s of course a satire. Not sure where I will be able to fit that into my reading schedule for 2026 as I plan on re-reading a lot of stuff from twenty years ago; 2006 was when I began routinely reading loads of books, and there’s a lot of things that I want to re-read.

Bear in mind that I am only a passing fan of Dylan’s and am listening to all these albums just to see if I missed anything (and hey, in some cases, I did, so it’s justified) and because so much of his stuff is a huge gap in my musical knowledge (prior to 2024, I knew, and liked, Highway 61 Revisited, Bringing It All Back Home, Blonde On Blonde, John Wesley Harding and Blood On The Tracks…but those are the obvious starting places with him). I’m reading articles and reviews to glean what all these songs are about, but the knowledge will pass, and I doubt I’m going to find a flat-out Dylan masterpiece if I haven’t already (I think H61R is a really good album, but I wouldn’t personally hand any Dylan album five stars out of five in terms of listening pleasure). What I’m getting at here is that learning what all these Dylan songs are actually about isn’t going to stick with me for very long.

What I will say, though, is that hearing Dylan write a song defending “Joey” only to be ripped apart for doing so, reminds me of Norman Mailer notoriously helping to pardon that murderer guy that he befriended, only to have the guy immediately commit another murder. I wonder if that was some sort of bullshit celebrity trend back then or something, like “Save Mumia!”
I guess there’s a lot of people who think Rubin Carter is still guilty, too.