Monday, June 09, 2008

Novel Mondays: Amsterdam and Dune

Poor Molly, the book hasn't even started and she's already dead. I have to be honest, one of my pet peeves is the use of the death of a character as a mere plot device. I'm just a chapter into the book and already author Ian McEwan has pushed one of my buttons. This could even turn out worse if the whole premise of the book is built off her death. But for Now I'll give McEwan the benefit of the doubt. After all, he wrote Atonement, one of the most powerful books I've read in a good while. And I've also picked up on McEwan's excellent language in the first chapter, leaving me hungry for more.

But what I've been spending most of my time reading is Dune, the classic Sci-fi,/Fantasy novel by luminary Frank Herbert. I've read it before but this time I'm trying to dissect more of the details that make Dune great. The biggest thing I'm picking up is the political overtones. Unlike American politics I find the politics in Arrakis interesting because each word can mean the difference between life or death. Yes, I do think that most of the charactesr are a little to hypersensitive to mere words but in the Frank Herbert's universe words carry weight, unlike the American system of politics where words mean practically nothing.

I also picked up Dune Messiah and Children of Dune for practically nothing at a local resale bookstore downsizing their inventory so I'm going to be reading through the trilogy for the first time. I've actually read the trilogy before, but out of order. I started with Dune Messiah, then read Dune and then jumped ahead to Children of Dune. So I'm counting this as my first "proper" read through of the trilogy. For any interested in picking up the series I'd say that at least read the first two books and if you are still interested go for the third novel. After that I think the political intrigue becomes lost and the novels are basically reduced to bickering women (no, I'm not kidding).

After I get through the Dune Trilogy (which at this rate will probably take me a couple of weeks) and wrap up Amsterdam I'm not sure what I'll read next. I've got a hefty stack of books I haven't finished but they all seem rather dull at the moment (that and they're all nonfiction and after school I have no desire to read heavy intellectual diatribes). I might try my hand at Great Expectations or work my way through a compilation of Robert Louis Stevenson novels I bought about a year ago and haven't gotten past the first few pages. If you haven't guessed I'm notorious for reading the first chapter of books and then not touching them again for extended periods of time. I'm hoping to change that trend but seeing as I'm taking a full semester of school this summer it's not likely to happen any time in the next few months. Until then those books will be collecting a fine layer of dust till fall rolls around and I get back into the flow of regular paced education.

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