The best book I have ever read. For a long time, it was The Jungle, but Steinbeck paints such a full landscape of characters, scenery and overarching themes that I had to bump Sinclair one down on the list. This book puts choice back into the hands of "fate" and "destiny" with the theme of "timshel" (thou mayest). I love the character of Cathy/Kate: she is a richly illustrated villian but a child at heart longing for acceptance. I really think everyone on the planet should be required to read this book.

I read parts of this book en Francais as part of an extra credit project in my second year french class. Great book! Appropriate for almost all ages. Whimsical, fun, lighthearted.

Drug culture! What can I say? I haven't seen the movie of this book yet but I thought there were good characters and good themes. I liked Neely, she was a good sidekick friend.

I felt this book required a lot of fore-knowledge about physics and science in general. His writing isn't dense, but there is a lot of technicality to it.