January – DaneCobain.com

Frank Herbert – Dune | Review

January 9, 2018 danecobain

Authors F-J (By Surname)Fiction

Title: Dune

Author: Frank Herbert

Type: Fiction

Page Count/Review Word Count: 608

Rating: 4*/5

Frank Herbert – Dune

Well this is exciting. I’ve been meaning to get to Dune for a while now and it’s actually been sitting on my shelves since 2014. Then I was chatting to a few reader friends on YouTube and we realised we’ve all been meaning to start reading Dune and so we decided it was just the excuse that we all needed to go ahead and do it. That’s where Duneuary came from – a bunch of us all reading Dune in the month of January. I’m glad we read it.

Sure, it can start to feel kind of tedious at times if you spend too long on it, but if you gobble it up a half dozen chapters at a time it works pretty well. I’ve seen the movie adaptation as well, and I found that it helped me to understand how some of the different words were pronounced. I think I got the balance just right because it’s been so long since I saw the movie that I couldn’t really remember it anyway.

A few different things jumped out at me about this book. The first was the character development, because Paul Atreides basically goes from being the posh son of an influential Duke to being the head of a rebel army and their equivalent of a messiah. I can’t think of the last time that a character developed so much in a single book, and I thought Herbert handled it perfectly.

Frank Herbert

The second thing that’s really stuck with me is the world-building, and in particular the way that Herbert was able to evoke the sense of dryness on Arrakis. I liked how in their culture it was considered to be a big deal if you cried over a death because water was such a precious commodity that the act itself became symbolic. Likewise, it was interesting to read about how the Fremen reclaim the moisture of their dead by harvesting their blood. Herbert clearly put a lot of thought into how exactly his world would work.

Of course, there are times when it all becomes a little bit overwhelming and as a reader, I was struggling to follow exactly what was happening. But if anything, I thought it was kind of cool because it means you could re-read the book and pick up new things each time as you understood more and more about how the world works and how the different religions interact with each other.

Dune put me in mind of Game of Thrones in space, a bit like Star Wars because they both follow the same classic story arcs and a battle between good against evil. It’s a sci-fi novel, but it’s also a fantasy novel and in many ways a political thriller. There’s something for everyone, but I’ll also admit that it’s a challenging read that needs a certain amount of dedication if you want to get through it.

Dune

My edition also came with four appendices and a glossary of terms, and while I don’t think you necessarily need them if you want to just read the novel, they certainly help you to understand a little bit more about the world. It’s certainly a epic and a very good read, but I didn’t get five stars worth of enjoyment from it.

I’m glad I read it, and I’m glad I read it with the people that I read it with, but I’m not going to continue the series. I think I should quit while I’m ahead. But I’m still pretty happy about my decision to read this one.

Frank Herbert Quote

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William Carlos Williams – Collected Poems I: 1909-1939 | Review

May 11, 2016 danecobain

Authors U-Z (By Surname)Poetry

Title: Collected Poems I: 1909-1939

Author: William Carlos Williams

Type: Poetry

Page Count/Review Word Count: 580

Rating: 8/10

William Carlos Williams – Collected Poems I: 1909-1939

Wow, this is a pretty gargantuan task for me. Not only do I have to write a 580 word review of a collection of William Carlos Williams poems, but also, I have to do the exact same thing with the second part of the collection. Oh, and these are the last two books that I have left to review for SocialBookshelves.com, so no pressure – once these are reviewed, I’ve reviewed every book that I’ve ever read, or at least that I ever remember reading.

I suppose that the best place to start is with what was happening in Williams’ life at the time. He’s an interesting character, because he practised as a doctor, as well as writing prolific amounts of poetry. He graduated from medical school in 1906, and his first book of poetry came out in 1909, where this collection begins. In the following years, he had a son and became friends with Ezra Pound, another celebrated poet with an impressive reputation.

Williams’ work is associated with modernism and realism, according to Wikipedia, but I’m not a fan of labels. For me, I just found it to be easy to read and entertaining, two key qualities that I look for. Look, let me flip to a random page and find something awesome: “January! The beginning of all things! Sprung from the old burning nest upward in the flame! I was married at thirteen, my parents had nine kids and we were on the street, that’s why that old bugger – he was twenty-six and I hadn’t even had my changes yet. Now look at me!”

William Carlos Williams

This particular collection spans the early part of his life, up to the outbreak of the Second World War. In this period, the author released eleven collections of poetry, and his style evolved over time – it’s interesting to watch it develop through the pages of the book, and there’s always his second book of collected poems to look forward to reading afterwards.

Really, one of the only problems for me is that there are often longer passages of prose that separate the poems, and I’m a big fan of simplicity – Williams was great at describing simple ideas and creating strong mental imagery in a small number of words, and so it feels like a shame to see him expand upon this. That said, it’s still worth reading, and I wouldn’t recommend skipping over it – it’s just that it’ll slow your progress, and in a book as long as this, you need all of the help that you can get to make sure that you keep on going until the end.

One final thing to note here is that you get your money’s worth – this book could keep you going for months, especially if you ration it or read it over time. My copy cost £12.95, which is just under $20. Easily worth it, when you consider how many poems are included in the collection. It also serves as an essential reference if you’re a student who needs to know more about the great poet, in his early years.

There’s not much more for me to say, so all I can think of is to quote another poem from 1938, called ‘At the Bar‘: “Hi, open up a dozen. Wha’cha tryin’ ta do – charge ya batteries? Make it two. Easy girl! You’ll blow a fuse if ya keep that up.”