An End-Of-The-Year Fannish Memey Thingy

[astrogirl2]

It's been ages and ages since I did this particular year-end meme. I'm not sure why. But this year, I return to it!

Comments

[jhall1]

I seem to have hardly watched any movies at all this year. Well, the most memorable one (as well as the only one I saw in the theater) was Dune, although, while visually impressive and kind of interesting, it honestly didn't excite me all that much. What can I say? I have mixed feelings about the book, too.

I managed to see two films in the cinema this year, I think, of which one was the new Bond and the other was Dune. My reaction to it was pretty much the same as yours. As for the book, the world-building is fantastic and the plot and characterisation good, but I really struggled with Frank Herbert's prose, especially in the more mystical passages. I'd read a paragraph and then go back and read it again, in the hope of understanding it this time, but usually with little success.

[astrogirl2]

Yeah, I'm with you on Herbert's prose. After I walked out of the movie, I summed up my reaction to it as: "The world-building stuff was fantastic, and there's an interestingly epic quality to it, but it's also slow and dense and expositiony and kind of pretentious, so I'd say they captured the feel of the book extremely well."

The Dune books just get worse and worse with that stuff after the first one, too. I got as far as God-Emperor and finally just completely gave up. Mind you, I was in high school at the time, but going back and re-reading the first one decades later didn't do anything to make me wonder if I'd made the wrong decision.

[jhall1]

You persisted longer than me. I only made it to Children of Dune.

[astrogirl2]

A wise choice. God-Emperor may have been literally unreadable. I think at that point I was just putting words into my eyeballs with nothing whatsoever actually penetrating into my brain.