OS Book Club Pt II

[DieHardYankee26]

Re: OS Book Club Pt II

And again, right after finishing a book I had to come here. These are spoilers but also not really for the point I'm trying...In this book,

Spoiler

the chosen one struggles with the idea of what his power truly amounts to and with visions of his wife dying while giving childbirth to twins, and the main character's swashbuckling companion ends up in a relationship with his sister.

No, I was not reading a novelization of Star Wars, this is Dune Messiah. This is borderline outrageous, that man George Lucas is a THIEF lol. The crazy desire people have had to make a movie out of this series for decades is wild because Lucas already took half of the ideas, even now I'm looking at the sarlacc different like did this man just snatch the sandworm too?

Anyway, much shorter than the first and like Johnny said pretty much an epilogue to the first, Paul trying to come to terms with the religious nature of his reign and how it's basically grown past him. Atrocities are being committed in his name across the universe and there's nothing he can do about it. I actually thought it was just as interesting as the first mostly because of that kind of reflection. There's an intro by Herbert's son where he mentions that his dad intended for the series to be a reflection on the dangers of what it means to be a "hero" to some, and I think he nailed it. He also mentions in the intro that there were people to whom Duncan Idaho was their favorite character from the first book which was odd to me because I feel like he's barely in it...but then I love Boba Fett so what can ya do? There's a plot to take down the Atreides from the throne, that stuff wasn't the best to me, but I did appreciate the way Paul was always a step ahead because of his visions but also just kinda resigns himself to following the path anyway. I have to rethink things now lol. Dune was not my favorite book, but Empire is definitely one of my favorite movies and the Star Wars Universe as a whole is just everything to me, so now I'm like wait is Dune my favorite book?! I had always heard about the influence Japanese movies had on Lucas, but mostly because I really was not aware of Dune had no idea how much had come from this.

[Fresh Tendrils]

Re: OS Book Club Pt II

Reading Dune and I keep thinking about how many of these chosen one/messiah narratives have an outsider come swooping in to save the day.

I'm sure there are some stories where the Messiah is homegrown, but haven't run into many myself.

Anyway, Herbert really paces the political intrigue exceptionally well. The handholding is barely noticable. Almost like a hand hovering behind your back to keep your from falling rather than outright holding and carrying you through. Typically all the world building, character introductions, and exposition is a slog at the beginning, but there's been enough mystery and intrigue sprinkled in to keep the first part going and be interesting.

[Fresh Tendrils]

Re: OS Book Club Pt II

Lucas pulled a lot of common narratives and character types together for his space soap opera saga. Kurosawa films would be a good place to look into, too.

[JohnnytheSkin]

Re: OS Book Club Pt II

I'm sure there are some stories where the Messiah is homegrown, but haven't run into many myself.

*cough* Wheel of Time *cough*

Also classic SNES Final Fantasys...at least those come to mind immediately. I'd wager it's a 50/50 split (if not leaning to more homegrown urchin Messiahs) but modern fiction has leaned into the nuance and gray which is great, but gets away from the tropes of chosen ones and zeroes to heroes.

[Fresh Tendrils]

Re: OS Book Club Pt II

The Broken Earth trilogy did well with that, too, though it still had some classic character types. To it's credit it subverted them pretty well by the end of the series.

Is Wheel of Time worth the time investment?

[JohnnytheSkin]

Re: OS Book Club Pt II

The Broken Earth trilogy did well with that, too, though it still had some classic character types. To it's credit it subverted them pretty well by the end of the series.

Is Wheel of Time worth the time investment?

I wouldn't know! I've started it multiple times and read a couple of the books, but always get distracted. My gut says the classic fantasy tropes are what probably doom it for me, and the negative reception in the middle titles as boring, slow, and plot pointless (the last Jordan books before Sanderson swooped in) scares me off. But, I have enjoyed what I've read and swear I'll finish it one day.

Then there's Malazan by Steven Erickson, ten books, and apparently the exact opposite as it's chaotic, dense, and you don't know what's happening for like three books.

[Fresh Tendrils]

Re: OS Book Club Pt II

From what I've read about WoT and even some of Sanderson's books, I have the same resignations.

[DieHardYankee26]

Re: OS Book Club Pt II

Foundation by Isaac Asimov: Started watching the show and of course reading the discourse online you see a bunch of disgruntled book readers so I figured I'd give the book a shot. I thought it was just OK. Basically a set of short stories tied together by the idea of psychohistory and the predictions of Hari Seldon. There's just no way to have legitimately turned this into a tv series without either creating a bunch of story that doesn't exist or making an anthology where each episode is an hour and a half and there's only 4 of them. I want to read the other two in the trilogy because I assume the story is stronger with all of them together, but nothing in this really made me want to continue outside of just knowing how legendary the series is.

Red Harvest by Dashiell Hammett: I watched Yojimbo and A Fistful of Dollars a couple weeks ago and found out this is supposedly the book that inspired Yojimbo so figured I'd give it a shot. A detective is called in from San Francisco to investigate something in a town called Personville but when he gets there the guy who called him has been killed and he goes about solving that and answering a bunch of other questions in the city. I could see the movies being inspired by this, the only real connection is stranger comes into town and bodies start dropping. That being said, I thought it was a solid read. A lot of shooting which is hard for me to follow in book form, just knowing who is doing what but the way the detective goes about taking down the figures in the city I thought was pretty cool. He starts out trying to solve the murder of the guy who hired him and ends up involved in a completely different murder mystery. I really didn't know where it was going at first but it's kinda like a Scooby Doo story in book form.

And Then There Were None by Agatha Christie: Heard about this book since I was a kid and figured I'd give it a shot. It didn't disappoint, I was actually surprised at how interested I was in following the disappearances and finding out the killer. It immediately made me go look up whether this came out before the board game Clue, I don't know if there's actually any connection there but it absolutely put me in that kinda mode. I was constantly like "was it Dr. Armstrong on the beach with a hammer?!?" Fun book.

Slaughterhouse-Five by Kurt Vonnegut Jr.: So it goes...Short book that made me think a lot. A writer is telling a story of a guy who went to war and was present in the firebombing of Dresden only to later be abducted by aliens and given the ability to see all time at once, ping ponging between the past, present, and future. It is amazing how much the anti-war themes and the way he viewed America are still relevant today. I'm not really sure what the significance of the time traveling was supposed to mean but I took it as he saw such horror and was traumatized by the firebombing in such a way that basically his body kept moving forward but his mind was always stuck in Dresden, so he could see both at the same time. I really like Vonnegut's writing, he gets so much across in such small books. I remember reading The Sirens of Titan and liking it but I feel like I should probably re-read it now. There were a lot of quotes that stuck with me, which I'll post in spoilers, but one short one was "It was very exciting for her, taking his dignity away in the name of love". Just the idea that for our elders, they grew up in a different time where expectations and just what we know about things were different, and how painful it must be for your kids and grandkids to be dragging you into a future (present really) that you were never prepared to come. Really great book I thought.

Spoiler

“You know what I say to people when I hear they’re writing anti-war books?” “No. What do you say, Harrison Starr?” “I say, ‘Why don’t you write an anti-glacier book instead?’” What he meant, of course, was that there would always be wars, that they were as easy to stop as glaciers. I believe that, too. And even if wars didn’t keep coming like glaciers, there would still be plain old death.

We went to the New York World’s Fair, saw what the past had been like, according to the Ford Motor Car Company and Walt Disney, saw what the future would be like, according to General Motors. And I asked myself about the present: how wide it was, how deep it was, how much was mine to keep.

Like so many Americans, she was trying to construct a life that made sense from things she found in gift shops.

Billy was guided by dread and the lack of dread. Dread told him when to stop. Lack of it told him when to move again.

Billy watching a movie about the war backwards: It was a movie about American bombers in the Second World War and the gallant men who flew them. Seen backwards by Billy, the story went like this: American planes, full of holes and wounded men and corpses took off backwards from an airfield in England. Over France, a few German fighter planes flew at them backwards, sucked bullets and shell fragments from some of the planes and crewmen. They did the same for wrecked American bombers on the ground, and those planes flew up backwards to join the formation. The formation flew backwards over a German city that was in flames. The bombers opened their bomb bay doors, exerted a miraculous magnetism which shrunk the fires, gathered them into cylindrical steel containers, and lifted the containers into the bellies of the planes. The containers were stored neatly in racks. The Germans below had miraculous devices of their own, which were long steel tubes. They used them to suck more fragments from the crewmen and planes. But there were still a few wounded Americans, though, and some of the bombers were in bad repair. Over France, though, German fighters came up again, made everything and everybody as good as new. *** When the bombers got back to their base, the steel cylinders were taken from the racks and shipped back to the United States of America, where factories were operating night and day, dismantling the cylinders, separating the dangerous contents into minerals. Touchingly, it was mainly women who did this work. The minerals were then shipped to specialists in remote areas. It was their business to put them into the ground, to hide them cleverly, so they would never hurt anybody ever again.

The flaw in the Christ stories, said the visitor from outer space, was that Christ, who didn’t look like much, was actually the Son of the Most Powerful Being in the Universe. Readers understood that, so, when they came to the crucifixion, they naturally thought, and Rosewater read out loud again: Oh, boy—they sure picked the wrong guy to lynch that time! And that thought had a brother: “There are right people to lynch.” Who? People not well connected. So it goes.

America is the wealthiest nation on Earth, but its people are mainly poor, and poor Americans are urged to hate themselves. To quote the American humorist Kin Hubbard, “It ain’t no disgrace to be poor, but it might as well be.” It is in fact a crime for an American to be poor, even though America is a nation of poor. Every other nation has folk traditions of men who were poor but extremely wise and virtuous, and therefore more estimable than anyone with power and gold. No such tales are told by the American poor. They mock themselves and glorify their betters. The meanest eating or drinking establishment, owned by a man who is himself poor, is very likely to have a sign on its wall asking this cruel question: “If you’re so smart, why ain’t you rich?” There will also be an American flag no larger than a child’s hand—glued to a lollipop stick and flying from the cash register.

Hit my goal of 20 books for the year and figure it's time to finally do the LOTR trilogy. Haven't started yet, been binging tv and Yakuza games, but one thing I saw when getting ready was that Tolkienn wanted to create a British mythology. So I immediately asked, who is doing that for us? And of course, the "American Tolkienn" (bro even copied his naming convention, I'm surprised he doesn't go by GRR) is supposedly George RR Martin but I'm not going to bother with those books as they aren't finished, and I don't think they're particularly "American" to begin with. One suggestion I saw was The Dark Tower series, because so much of our history and "mythology" would take place in the old West, so I might get into that series eventually. Then again I just got finished reading 2 books about an outsider savior to a desert planet, so maybe what I'm looking for is Dune lol.

[Fresh Tendrils]

Re: OS Book Club Pt II

I finished up the narrative part of Dune and hope to work through the appendices this week.

I feel like this is basically THE template for much of the science fiction genre and even aspects of fantasy. The world building in the first part is expertly crafted and balanced with political intrigue to set the stage. Part two focuses more on the characters and is really compelling considering there's multiple Chosen Ones and prophecies throughout.

The first two parts are definitely 5/5 to me and if it was written today would probably be two completely separate books. Part three stumbles a bit in the rush towards the resolution, because it really does feel rushed. The time jump and the forward motion from the Emperor seem really blatant to me and I would have preferred more build up to Paul's insane chess move at the end.

Overall a great book. I'm hesitant to call it a favorite right now because that third part really pushes heavy to get things finished by the end which was off putting to me. I understand Paul is basically surfing timelines at the end and could possibly explain the checkmate gambit on the Emperor, but it is not really satisfying to me.

[DieHardYankee26]

Re: OS Book Club Pt II

I gave it a 4 but I’m tempted to push it to a 5 while I’m slogging through Fellowship of the Ring. I should be finished with it today, but it really made me appreciate Dune just for the simple fact that every chapter doesn’t have a song/poem in it.

[Fresh Tendrils]

Re: OS Book Club Pt II

I always heard that as a grievance with Tolkien, but I loved those parts and Tom in the woods.

[Beantown]

Re: OS Book Club Pt II

I’m pumped to see y’all’s reactions to the new Dune movie. As someone that had never read the book nor even read a summary or anything the movie was breathtaking for me. Can’t wait to see what you guys think.


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[Fresh Tendrils]

Re: OS Book Club Pt II

I think we're going tomorrow night. I still want to see the original movie and apparently mini series, but we'll see how that goes.

I have SK's Different Seasons on deck, but I might run through Something Wicked This Way Comes first as a reread. Perfect time of year for Bradbury's effortless masterpiece.

After those I'm not sure what's left for the year. I have a stack of new books I never got to that are mostly newer fantasy novels.

[DieHardYankee26]

Re: OS Book Club Pt II

I was gonna see it tonight, but then they moved up the HBO Max release so I’ll just watch it at home tonight and then try to see it in IMAX this weekend, I figure trying to go the other way will be disappointing. Also trying to figure out when I’m gonna watch Fellowship Extended Edition.

Side note, there’s a good 10 seconds every time I see a mention of Frodo’s sword Sting where I think “wait isn’t it called Needle” before I remember that’s the name of Arya’s sword 🤦🏾*♂️.

[DieHardYankee26]

Re: OS Book Club Pt II

Cool little Amazon cheat for anyone cheap like me: all 3 of the Lord of the Rings books are on Kindle Unlimited so you can grab them with a month (and you get a free trial I think if you haven’t used it before). But wait, there’s more: the audiobook for Fellowship is on Unlimited as well. Not only that, but claiming the books gets you discounts on the other two so if you don’t want to use Audible credits (which I try not to if the audiobook isn’t at least the price of a credit), they give you the Whispersync discount for owning the books just from claiming them on Unlimited. So now I got the new Andy Serkis recorded Two Towers audiobook for $7.50. Pretty decent deal when they’re trying to sell them for $28+ on their own.