Literary Glance: Dune by Frank Herbert

There’s not much new to say about the novel Dune by Frank Herbert, but having nothing new to say never stops anybody, so here we go.

Since Dune was published in 1965, the year that I was born, I didn’t read it right away when it came out.  I tried reading Dune right away, but it was a little above my age level.  When the first movie was released in 1984, every science fiction nerd was excited about it because all of them had read the book (or had claimed to), and sci-fi nerds were usually still optimistic about science fiction movies because of the success of the Star Wars trilogy (at the time).

Most fans, however, were disappointed in Dune the movie.  In fact, the popular opinion was that it outright sucked.  It wasn’t like Star Wars: The Phantom Menace over a decade later where fans initially liked it (or maybe they felt like they had to like it) but then slowly realized it wasn’t that good.  Almost everybody I knew didn’t like Dune at its release.  I almost felt sorry for it.

It made me, however, feel vindicated for not finishing the book when it was published in 1965.  The 1984 movie also kept me from trying to read the book again.

Dune?  Why would I want to read Dune? The movie sucked.

Looking back, the movie had little/nothing to do with me not reading the book.  I was in my first year of college, and I was temporarily through with my science fiction phase of reading.

A few months ago, I watched the first 30 minutes of the most recent Dune movie (part 1) and didn’t fully understand what was going on, so I found a cheap used paperback copy (image at the top of the blog post), and after reading it, I’m confident that if I ever get around to watching the Dune movies again, I’ll fully understand what’s going on.

DUNE BOOK REVIEW

It’s pretty good.  I finished it.  I lost interest in the chapters that focused on the main character Paul in the second half of the book, but all of the other characters were interesting.  I won’t read the other books, though. It’s kind of weird when the main character of a book is the least interesting (but that’s probably just me). That’s a possible blog topic in itself, books where the protagonist is the least interesting character.

Even though some parts of Dune bored me, other parts were great! To me, if a book has a bunch of great scenes connected by scenes that are a little dull (just my opinion), then that’s at least a pretty good book.

Dune ends abruptly, however.  When I finished reading Dune, I thought for sure that somebody had ripped the last few pages out of my used copy, but no… that’s how Dune ended.  The ending wasn’t bad.  It was just