Memoirs Found in a Bathtub

[Zoombie]

Oh jeeze oh man, I need to stop making posts at 4 in the morning...

Rioght.


Yes, Dunes goes nucking futs. Shoot me if I am wrong...but when the main character turns into a giant worm and kills multiple clones of Duncan Idaho multiple times whenever they annoy him, then starts reminiscing about Duncan Idaho number 231, cause he always told that joke juuuust right...

Yeah. Crazy. Coo-koo. The Brain Herbert books are fun...thinner, not nearly as amazing as the originals, but fun. I personally liked the prequels...sorta. Not the best books I had ever read, but still not the worst. The worst book I ever read goes to this little gem:



The Zardoz...book. Yes. Someone was insane enough to make a novelization of a movie that stars Sean Connery (post Bond) in a red diaper. And a wedding dress at one point.

Funnily enough, the guy who wrote the novelization was also the guy who funded, marketed, wrote, casted and filmed Zardoz: John Boorman.

Now he's nucking futs too.


As for the "great classics are great if you read them by yourselves" argument...bunk, I say! Bunk! I tried reading three different classics completely voluntarily: The Grapes of Wrath, the Great Gatsby aaand Atlas Shrugged.

Er...maybe Atlas Shrugged was a bad idea from the get go. But, I was inspired by Bioshock.

Well, anyway, I got three chapters in the Grapes of Wrath, then went back to reading "The Center Cannot Hold", which is basically the Grapes of Wrath...but better. Because it has Confederates Nazis.



Then I tried the Great Gatsby and I finished reading it...but I didn't like it much. It was just...dull. Maybe I've been spoiled by space aliens and cyborgs...but I like stuff to...you know, actually happen in my books.

Okay, that was mean. Lots of things happened in the Great Gatsby. They were just things that...bored me. Maybe I have a short attention span. I don't know.

Or, maybe, there is a different...stranger...more bizarre explanation:

Different People Like Different Things

I know it's strange, but...bear with me...see, I think the idea is that everyone is differnt. My hair is blond. The girl I currently obsess over's hair is purple with some black in it. My friend Sam's hair is brown with natural coppery red highlights that look REALLY cool when he has a strong light behind his head.

And, just as our hair is different, our tastes are different too...I like sci-fi, Sam likes literature, GICO (Not the Lizard) likes a hodgepodge of books ranging from Ray Bradbury to some people I've never heard of.

So...maybe 80% of things don't stuck. Maybe, everything is AWESOME...to someone. Just 80% of that is not awesome to YOU because you are unique.

Also...

[Argh]

I agree, the last Dune novels get weirder and weirder. I think that Herbert was trying to explore what happens to an all-powerful, not-quite-omniscient, and virtually immortal being, and went into some very strange territory- unfortunately, the writing feels a bit stale, as if he'd just run out of ideas, and unlike Steven King, he never really recovered and started writing well again.

Herbert's constant themes about the corruptions of power are interesting, and his take on the practical problems of immortality were pretty cool.

The Brian Herbert books are fun...thinner, not nearly as amazing as the originals, but fun.

I think they're far more tawdry and cheap than Jeff Sharaa's inheritance of his father's legacy (Micheal Sharaa wrote The Killer Angels, which is by far the best novel about war I've ever read, period- it's even better than Solzhenitsyn's August 1914, which I highly recommend). Jeff Sharaa attempts, with some success, to use his father's voice and pacing, when writing about the Civil War- slow, a bit sad in tone, very observant, with internal dialogue aplenty, men saying a lot less than they're thinking, little chat.

Brian Herbert and his co-author don't even bother- their style feels breezy and sloppy, and they're obviously so interested in milking Frank Herbert's sprawling backstory and get paid that they can't be bothered to slow down and polish their work very much- they've turned out about a book a year, if not faster, which is, imo, too fast to deliver a really good novel, unless you're an incredible writer on an absolute tear.

[tombom]

Atlas Shrugged is not a classic by any stretch of the imagination. Turgid dialog, cliched plot rife with awful stereotypes and ultimately a vehicle for her sickeningly ridiculous philosophy. The Great Gatsby is also apparently kind of boring for everybody. I dunno, you're probably right, but I liked pretty much every book I read in English but the classwork kind of annoyed me.

Philip K Dick is pretty good the last book I read was one of his short story compilations and at the end of every oen i was like FUCK

[Zoombie]

Yeah...thin, tawdry, rushed...


But still fun. At least, fun the first time. I haven't read them again. The really good books, the ones with Confederate Nazis, are the ones I re-read.

Well...I keep hearing one of two things about Atlas Shrugged.

Camp1: Atlas Shrugged is a work of genius.

Camp2: Atlas Shrugged is a work of the bowels.

I fall under Camp2, thank you very much.

And, the only Stephen King book I've read is Cell, but that's probably a HUGE disservice to Mr. King. I think I might get the Dark Tower thingy.