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[prabe]

I just reread Dune for the first time in about 23 years. I read it at least five times between 1987 (when I first read it for a HS English class and watched Lynch's film version - which I still love) and 2003 (when seeing some of the SyFy mini-series version and not liking it drove me back to the book). This time, it was trying the recent movies and finding Timothy Chalomet unconvincing as Paul, and Aquaman as a poorly cast Halleck, and being turned off as a result, that drove me to re-read it. Their first scene together was about as far as I got - which I admit is not far. But I dump out of movies fast. Life is too short.

I guess the intervening years of going to grad school for literary studies and being married to a poet and novelist has shaped my tastes and driven me towards thinking a lot more about craft and structure, and I found those aspects most disappointing this time around. The pacing is unsatisfying on the novel level (though some individual chapters were very well-paced). When it took until page 600-something to have some very lovely writing when Paul's consciousness is unstuck in time due to exposure to the spice. All I could think, however, was how the book needed more of this throughout, punctuated by the well-rendered moments of conflict and tension.

I still enjoyed re-reading it though. But nowadays I often wonder if this might be the last time I read this book that've engaged with so much. I mean, who knows what happens in the next 23 years?

Back in the day the opinions of others regarding the sequels is that they got "too weird" and my attempts at reading some of them in the 90s seemed to corroborate that, though my memory is fuzzy. But maybe I should try them again because my main complaint about Dune upon this reading is that it is not weird enough. It should have been weirder.

I just had the thought that what I want is Dune written by Octavia Butler. But then I realized, that her work already does explore many of the same themes.

Thank you and I hope you enjoyed this episode of "el-remmen actually read a book (and not just to his 3-year old)."

My own recent experiences with rereading things from my distant past were distinctly mixed. I read Something Wicked This Way Comes in high school or college or thereabouts, and I probably was too close to the age of the mains to put aside the "looking down on the kids" thing, and I was nowhere near old enough to appreciate the father; I enjoyed the book vastly more than I remembered doing. I read Alice in Wonderland and Through the Looking-Glass in ... middle school, and maybe again at some point a little later, and I was pretty sure I remembered enjoying them; reading them as an adult was ... not really a pleasant experience: Alice just gets dragged from thing to thing, she has like no control of anything, she manages to be a main character without ever being a protagonist; I figure her experiences are kinda like a thumbnail for childhood (possibly particularly Victorian childhood) where the child gets dragged from thing to thing with no control, and the adults spout things that are patently absurd but which they insist are relevant and real and meaningful.

Oddly, when I reread The Great Gatsby after something like twenty years, my experience was just about the same as when I read it in college--I enjoyed the heck out of it (though I might have seen more in it when I reread it).

 

[soviet]

I wonder with Dune whether it looks less idiosyncratic in retrospect because so many aspects of it have been absorbed and regurgitated in subsequent works in the genre. In the same way that e.g. Tarantino's pop culture references and inter-character small talk now seem less revolutionary than they did in 1994.

 

[Whizbang Dustyboots]

My own recent experiences with rereading things from my distant past were distinctly mixed. I read Something Wicked This Way Comes in high school or college or thereabouts, and I probably was too close to the age of the mains to put aside the "looking down on the kids" thing, and I was nowhere near old enough to appreciate the father; I enjoyed the book vastly more than I remembered doing. I read Alice in Wonderland and Through the Looking-Glass in ... middle school, and maybe again at some point a little later, and I was pretty sure I remembered enjoying them; reading them as an adult was ... not really a pleasant experience: Alice just gets dragged from thing to thing, she has like no control of anything, she manages to be a main character without ever being a protagonist; I figure her experiences are kinda like a thumbnail for childhood (possibly particularly Victorian childhood) where the child gets dragged from thing to thing with no control, and the adults spout things that are patently absurd but which they insist are relevant and real and meaningful.

Oddly, when I reread The Great Gatsby after something like twenty years, my experience was just about the same as when I read it in college--I enjoyed the heck out of it (though I might have seen more in it when I reread it).

It's wild how the dad in Something Wicked keeps going on and on about how he has one foot in the grave and he's 54 years old. Get a haircut and maybe a new car, guy; you're fine.

 

[soviet]

To modern day sensibilities some of the things in the Bible are a bit unrealistic.

 

[el-remmen]

The Great Gatsby and The Catcher in the Rye are both books I enjoyed a lot more when I read them about a decade after I had been made to read them the first time - which is to say, I thought I hated them, but then I quite liked them esp. Gatsby.

 

[el-remmen]

how he has one foot in the grave and he's 54 years old.

Man, I am literally 54 and I sooooo relate to that - and I have good haircut already!

 

[Whizbang Dustyboots]

The Great Gatsby and The Catcher in the Rye are both books I enjoyed a lot more when I read them about a decade after I had been made to read them the first time - which is to say, I thought I hated them, but then I quite liked them esp. Gatsby.

Gatsby hits like a runaway locomotive as an adult, IME.

 

[soviet]

Everything I'm saying about videogame studios applies to TTRPGs. I'm using videogame examples because I can go on MobyGames and pull up the credits for practically any videogame ever. There doesn't appear to be a comparable resource for TTRPGs. (BoardGameGeeks doesn't seem to have everything and what it does have isn't as comprehensive.)

I don't know what you mean. Most indie RPGs will have a single writer/designer, maybe two. If there is a studio full of people, unless they are producing art and layout, then it isn't indie.

 

[prabe]

The Great Gatsby and The Catcher in the Rye are both books I enjoyed a lot more when I read them about a decade after I had been made to read them the first time - which is to say, I thought I hated them, but then I quite liked them esp. Gatsby.

I was assigned Gatsby as part of a creative writing class, so the focus was probably different than in a purer literature class, and I read The Catcher in the Rye after I dropped out of college. I should reread the latter, but I enjoyed it a good deal more than I think most of the people who are assigned it tend to.

 

[el-remmen]

I wonder with Dune whether it looks less idiosyncratic in retrospect because so many aspects of it have been absorbed and regurgitated in subsequent works in the genre. In the same way that e.g. Tarantino's pop culture references and inter-character small talk now seem less revolutionary than they did in 1994.

But it is definitely idiosyncratic and the ideas are great, maybe even brilliant.

It has seeped into stuff in ways big and small. You can't tell me that the hidden religious warrior on a desert world with a new apprentice who is a moisture farmer wasn't influenced by Dune to some degree. Its fingerprints are everywhere.