as a pulp writer, Heinlein’s prose doesn’t warrant deep attention, so no damage is done by consuming his books by ear instead of eye. Bob’s focus is on the story and most of his books are heavy on dialogue, anyway.

He’s not someone you’d read for beautiful prose but he was a good writer given what he was going for. But based on the rest of your post I think we basically agree on that. I’d point to some of the better passages in the training sequences in Starship Troopers as some of the better examples of his writing.
Only a few of the “Campbellian Golden Age” writers, like Sturgeon and C.L. Moore, were really better writers than he was.

Speak of, have you read this book?

All You Zombies: A collection of five early stories which aren’t his strongest.

I like the three I remember: And He Built a Crooked House, All You Zombie, and They. All you Zombies is one of his most famous short stories, and is basically a tighter, more disturbing version of By His Boostraps. I think it’s 1959 publication was his last real work of original short fiction that wasn’t just an excerpt of a novel or something he published in a collection of his own works years after he wrote it.

The Green Hills of Earth - I like this collection more than you do, but it’s not his best and not the best of his “future history” collections. The title story is one of his most famous, but it’s not really one of my favorites. It’s notable that it appeared in Colliers though, rather than Astounding or one of its peers.
I agree that The Logic of Empire is the best, that’s the one that would have come to mind if you asked me to name some of his better short stories.

The stuff about colonizing the moon might be dated now, but those Future History stories were really influential at the time. Heinlein/editor John W. Campbell wanted to make stories that showed an science fiction future as every day life. I retrospect to many of the stories in this collection feel too low-key, but I can appreciate what he was doing with them.

I have the Future History in an omnibus called The Past Through Tomorrow. Maybe I’m forgetting something, but the other original, smaller collections which are probably all better than The Green Hills of Earth are:

Revolt in 2100

https://www.isfdb.org/cgi-bin/pl.cgi?28087

This has the novella If This Goes On, about a revolution against an American dictatorship/theocracy where everyone has to worship the head of state as a god. The title story is one of his best loved pre-war stories.

The Man Who Sold the Moon - https://www.isfdb.org/cgi-bin/pl.cgi?43803

most of these stories are pretty famous. The Roads Must Roll is in The Science Fiction Hall of Fame, one of the most important sci-fi anthologies, but I think the ending of that story leans into some of the worst characteristics of John W. Campbell.

My copy of The Past Through Tomorrow does not include Universe and it’s sequel story Common Sense, but some editions do. Those were later printed together in one book and presented as a novel, Orphans of the Sky. Universe, at least, is some of the best early Heinlein. There’s some jaw dropping sexism there (even for the era) that seems like it’s going to go somewhere or somehow get subverted and then doesn’t. But otherwise it’s great. Universe is deservedly in the second volume of The Science Fiction Hall of Fame, devoted to longer stories.

Methuselah’s Children is a short novel about people who live forever and then escape Earth to try and find another place to live. It introduces Lazarus Long, who apparently appears in alot of the later and more self-indulgent books that alot of people hate. I mostly just like the part of this book where they go to other planets that all turn out to suck.

I’m glad to hear you like those three stories from Assignment in Eternity because I haven’t read them yet, but I have them in a bigger collection. Jerry Was a Man was adapted in the only Masters of Science Fiction episode that wasn’t streaming for free last I checked, so I haven’t watched it. I read the story thinking I could watch the episode without having to pay extra, so I’ve read that one.

Double Star is one of his better novels, no argument here. Although I think it is one of his more popular books when you get below stuff like Starship Troops and Stranger in a Strange Land that nearly everybody has hear of. It won a Hugo, appeared in the public voted Modern Library top 100, and has been published in a Library of American collection.

I liked The Door into Summer more than you did, apart from the grooming, but I don’t remember it that well. It was also in the Moder Library 100. It’s not a juvenile, btw.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Heinlein_juveniles

I have not read Time of the Stars or Citizen of the Galaxy (which is supposed to be one of his best books) but the two juveniles I have read are probably my two favorite things by him:

Tunnel In the Sky - The world is overpopulated, but we’ve found a solution! A certain percentage of the population (I think it’s a mix of draftees and volunteers, but I don’t remember for sure) are sent through a one-way stargate to an inhabitable planet and left there. It’s up to them to build their own new civilization. If they can get far enough to build their own stargate and re-contact Earth then they can trade with the homeworld and travel back and forth again, otherwise they’re on their own. In context of the story this isn’t supposed to look that grim, they’re sent through without modern technology but they have training and the planets have available resources.
They prepare for this by taking “Pioneering” in high school, where the final exam requires them to spend a short time roughing it on a distant planet. But something has gone wrong, and the class is stranded there! It’s an anti-Lord of the Flies, where they pull together and make it work. This is BY FAR the most appealing presentation of Heinleins politics, probably because the juvenile market required him to cut out all the uckiest stuff.

Have Spacesuit Will Travel - All American Boy wins an old Space Suit when he comes in second place trying to win a vacation to the moon. He fixes it up, and then gets ubducated by aliens! Like Tunnel in the Sky, I regret that I didn’t actually read this as a kid. It’s a ton of fun, has at least one genuinely chilling moment, and clearly had a big influence, ranging from the first episode of Star Trek TNG to My Teacher Flunked the Planet (which I read when I should really have been reading Heinlein juveniles). If you’re at all in the market for old boys’ adventure sci-fi, read this!

Starship Troopers - Engaging, if ideologically repellent. I kind of think of the first half as Heinlein’s equivalent of The Prince: it’s not his manifesto for the ideal political reformation, but it might be the one we need (according to him). I do think there are strong suggestions here that this world is more hypocritical than Johnny Rico is smart enough to notice, which makes me think that he sees his hero, and a large chunk of his readership, as useful idiots. Some of his other books reinforce this impression.
The third quarter sucks and is boring. For such a beloved book, alot of people seem to agreed with that assessment. I guess it’s easy to forgive because it’s short.
The fourth quarter is an exciting combat mission.

Has anybody seen the 1980s animae series? It’s boring, and mostly less like the book than the 1999 movie (which contains some scenes taken from the animae version).

Stranger in a Strange Land - This is where he really starts to go off the rails. Would be better at 3/5 the length and without the awful author insert character. But it is an important book.
There a LONGER version out there. It came out after Heinlein died and apparently the original published version was his preferred version, so it probably only exists because they knew his cult of fans would by anything they published by him.

The Moon Is a Harsh Mistress - Often considered his best book, but I didn’t enjoy it that much so I’m always gratified when someone else who likes any significant portion of his work doesn’t like it. There are enough ideas there that I’d give credit to, and maybe we wouldn’t have HAL 9000 without this book, so I get it, but too much of what I don’t like about Heinlein is on full display here. I don’t think it originated the phrase “There’s no such thing as a free lunch,” but it certainly popularized it. But the quote I always remember is

an explosive bullet hit between her lovely, little-girl breasts.

RIP, 14 year old that the narrator was in a group marriage with.

Farnham’s Freehold - I haven’t read this, but it’s pretty notorious, and has famously been described as “an anti-racist book that only a Klansman could love.” If any burn ever made me want to read something out of morbid curiosity, it’s that one!

I was hoping you’d have read Time Enough For Love. I’ll probably end up reading everything he wrote through that one, but I don’t plan on slogging through all the later stuff.

The most popular non-juvenile that I haven’t read and you didn’t mention is The Puppet Masters. I saw the movie and it was dumb, but I expect to like the book.