Dune

Amidst a busy time in work and life (our boss just left the organization! zoinks!) I managed to finish my rereading of Dune and make a trip to see my best, doublegknits, out in Michigan. Both were fantastic. I have met numerous people who never touch a book again once they have read it, but I am very much not one of these people. I'll read books many times and always enjoy. I think that this was my third reading of Dune, in prep for reading the rest of the series which I have only managed to get through once quite a few years ago. Now that I am reading the series again with a much older viewpoint, I'm getting a lot more out of it and catching/remembering things that I've forgotten. For example, I didn't remember the part in Dune about the Bene Gesserit sisterhood wanting to create the Kwisatz Haderach in part to create Jihad across the universe which would mix stagnant bloodlines. I guess I missed that in the greater storyline. For those of you to whom that sentence was gobbledygook, sorry, but do consider reading the book. It's a fascinating mix of politics, religion, technology (and anti-technology), addiction, and culture. If you are willing to get totally geeked up on the Dune universe, you now have the option of reading all six originals, two three-book prequels, and a seventh to the original series. Maybe a few more, I'm not entierly sure. If you make it through all (the new stuff is quite excellent) you'll have such a fuller understanding of the universe and the storylines. Learn why the Harkonnen family and the Atreides family are at odds, how the Fremen originated on Arrakis, what happened to the Earth, why thinking machines are so hated...

Anyway, a few favorite quotes from Dune:

"If you rely only on your eyes, your other senses weaken"

"A leader, you see, is one of the things that distinguishes a mob from a people. He maintains the level of individuals. Too few individuals and a people reverts to a mob."

"When religion and politics travel in the same cart, the riders believe nothing can stand in their way. Their movement becomes headlong - faster and faster and faster. They put aside all thought of obstacles and forget that a precipice does not show itself to the man in a blind rush until it's too late."

"Worry saps the strength"

"The Guild navigators, gifted with limited prescience, had made the fatal decision: they'd chosen always the clear, safe course that leads ever downward into stagnation."

"The power to destroy a thing is the absolute control over it."