One weekend when I had a cold, I read Dead Until Dark. It was described as a more adult version of Twilight. It actually reminded me more of Buffy the Vampire Slayer. In fact, it reminded me a little too much of it. As in, "this idea was developed so much better in Buffy." Not horrible, but I won't seek out the sequels.
Then I read The Time Traveler's Wife, a love story with an intriguing premise. The writing is beautiful and the story touching.
I took Dune with me on vacation. Michael said there are two kinds of people who read Dune. Those who think it is the best book ever (or right up there) and those who don't see what all the fuss is about. I don't know that I agree, as I'm in the middle. This was not one of my top 10 reading experiences, but I did find myself wanting to reread it almost as soon as I finished it. Interesting ideas about politics and religion and the interaction between the two. I can see how it could be someone's favorite book, even though it isn't mine.
Michael brought Duma Key home from Mexico and suggested I read it, so I tossed it in the suitcase when we headed to Virginia. I already had a book to read after Dune, but it's always nice to have a book in reserve. As it turned out, EM inhaled his books and was all out of reading material with five days left in the vacation. So he read the book I'd planned to read, and I read Duma Key. It's 771 pages of can't-put-it-down story. Not too scary by Stephen King' standards, although I did a little nervous walking back to our cabin in the dark by myself.
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I'm in the "right up there" category for Dune. Of course, it helped that I read it very very young, because there are certain kinds of books that do well when you imprint on them, and Dune falls into that category.
As an adult I still love it, but recently, I did a breakdown analysis of Dune. I counted the appearances of characters, and the number of main characters per chapter, and one of the things that astonished me was that some of the characters don't appear as often as I thought they did. But that means that Herbert's characterisations and exposition were such that I did not notice this until actually sitting down and counting it out. Paul's life seems a lot more dense than the book actually is.
The ecology background and mythology and history of the different galactic groups (Bene Gesserit, Fremen, etc) is also implied a lot between the lines. Which is a neat trick, as the book reads fairly quickly but still feels relatively idea-heavy.
But the whole act of deconstruction did have the weird side effect of lessening the overall impact on me, of making the book feel slighter than when I was younger.
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