Books take a long-butt time to read: Stranger in a Strange Land halfway point review thread

So as some of you may remember I decided to start reading books again and I asked you guys for recommendations and the first recommendation I got was Stranger in a Strange Land so I started reading that.

And well I forgot how fricking long it takes to read books, I've been reading this thing off and on for two whole days and I'm only halfway through it, so I thought I'd take a break to review the book so far.

So the premise is that mankind in the future as envisioned by 1950 sends an expedition to Mars that (as far as they know) dies. Later they send another expedition that finds out that Mars is inhabited and the first expedition left one baby, which the Martians raised. The orphan comes back to Earth, now apparently (by Earth legal doctrine) the owner of Mars (and several valuable Earth patents and companies through his parents).

I thought the book was interesting when the orphan, named Valentine Michael Smith or just the Man from Mars, just arrived and was struggling to adapt. I find the book is the most interesting when it's focusing on the Man from Mars and how different he is from humans just having been raised by the Martians. He has all sorts of strange abilities that are justified by his Martian upbringing plus the way he thinks is uniquely alien in an interesting way.

I'm less thrilled with all the political wrangling of the characters around Mike, that stuff is OKAY but not really great if I'm totally honest and can get to be a chore to read. A lot of the characters in this book aren't very deep or vividly realized so it's kind of a drag to spend time with them, like the doctor/lawyer/rich guy who becomes Mike's guardian, he's kind of a generic character where the best thing you can say about him is he keeps the plot moving.

Occasionally the book relates what's going on in Martian civilization and casually relates that there used to be a civilization on Jupiter until the Martians killed them all. I wish the book would get around to doing something with that lingering threat of something similar happening to humanity. They've had Mike show he's a really dangerous threat under the right circumstances, he can basically wish anything that's a threat to him or his friends out of existence. So far they aren't doing much with that though, I wish they'd do more.

Anyway so far I'd say I'm enjoying the book, at least enough to keep reading and find out what happens. We'll see what I say when I get to the end.