We all fight over our favorite books, but I find the more interesting question to be: what are your most frequent books?

WHY DO WE RETURN TO BOOKS?

With no conscious decision, there are some books I’ve read dozens and dozens of times, and in contrast, there are some books I love so much or that are so life-changing, I know repeated exposure will never match the feeling, so I’ve never gone near them again. WHAT distinguishes them? I don’t know.

This isn’t a definitive list of the best books or anything like that, but just a peek into the weirdness and deeply personal experience of reading. I’ve covered my favorite libraries in fiction before, some other books I’ve read again and again.

BOOKS I’VE READ DOZENS OF TIMES

Pride and Prejudice, Jane Austen

Mostly because I needed something slightly engaging to fall asleep to and a British accent reading Jane Austen was perfect. I can quote large chunks of this book. Like full chapters at a time by now…

Animal Dreams, Barbara Kingsolver

It’s set in New Mexico, and I was living in Europe when I was reading this on repeat. I love the message, but I mostly read it for this quintessential Western American story, so familiar to where I grew up.

Treachery in Death, JD Robb

This is one of her endless futuristic mysteries. This one focused on leadership, and I picked it up just as I jumped into management and was definitely feeling the crunch. It was so idealized and perfect that I just kept returning to it.

Ghost Mountain Shifters, Audrey Faye

This group of werewolves live collectively in the woods and the community support and healing were completely addictive during the pandemic isolation.

Starship Mage, Glynn Stewart

This is like Star Wars, only woke (in the best way), with a hero with huge integrity and a fascinating world. It’s just…entertaining. I go searching for cool new books and just find myself redownloading these when I need to turn off my brain.

BOOKS I’VE LOVED BEYOND REASON AND NEVER TOUCHED AGAIN

Jane Eyre, Charlotte Brontë

I read this in middle school, one of the first “adult” books I picked up, and I remember being so shocked and rocked at every turn that I knew I would never feel that shocked again and would rather have a perfect memory.

Stranger in a Strange Land, Robert A Heinlein

The origin of the slang “grok,” this alien comes to earth story is one of the first Sci-Fi books I read, and the contrast between this and Dicken’s endless wordsmithing was…marked.

Lord of the Rings, JRR Tolkien

I think I haven’t revisited this one simply due to the size. I have a friend who can tell you what is happening on any day of our calendar year in the book, and I’ve felt so inadequate in comparison.

A Prayer for Owen Meany, John Irving

During the climactic scene of this book, I remember dropping the book, running out the door of my house, and about three blocks before I slowed down, it was that shocking, in the best way. And knew I could never return to it.

What are the books you’ve read a thousand times and what are the books you’ve read once? I realize this says so much more about who I was as a person and where I was than about the books.

The post What Books Do You Read Again and Again? first appeared on Postcards from Pluto.

“Deep in the human unconscious is a pervasive need for a logical universe that makes sense. But the real universe is always one step beyond logic.” ― Frank Herbert, Dune

I listened on audiobook to all of the Dune books written by Frank Herbert. (There are over 30 now completed by his son Brian after his death, but I had to draw a line in the sand somewhere!)

WHAT DID I LEARN? WHAT DID I NOTICE? WAS IT WORTH IT?

WARNING: SPOILERS FOLLOW

Herbert started the first book, Dune, in 1959 (published in ’65) and published the last book Chapterhouse: Dune, in 1985. Those were pretty important decades in our history, and the change from the unrest and idealism of the 60s to the stability and disillusionment of the 80s drenches the text.

WHO WAS FRANK?

During my English major, we always debated how much of the author you could really find in a work of fiction. And whether it was useful or appropriate to play a game of Author Gotcha as literary critique.

So now I’m going to do just that…

Because this was by far my most shocking takeaway. Dune, like Lord of the Rings, is historical fiction now.

This old article from NK Jemison has the best take on Lord of the Rings, I think. Tolkien was progressive for his time, which matters! But given that he was a man of his time, he still seems pretty racist to us.

Which to me means: don’t cancel Tolkien or his work based on today’s morality. But definitely cancel anyone wanting to use Tolkien’s morality today. In other words: more fantasy characters for everyone!

Like Tolkien, Herbert’s beliefs and morals and those of the original readers are so changed from now that they are becoming inscrutable.

He was officially conservative in life, but his death was over 20 years ago, and his birth was over 100 years ago, and that kind of conservative doesn’t exist anymore. And we’re so much more than our political party, but it’s a useful shorthand for a drastically different worldview.

The morals of these made-up people and the critiques of government, ecology, religion, sex, gender, and sexuality else do not feel current anymore. Not any less genius or fun to read or important in the canon of Science Fiction! But they are a social commentary on a world that’s gone. And it’s completely fascinating.

HOW IT STARTED: 1959

MASTERY OF MIND AND BODY = MASTERY OF THE WORLD. AT FIRST.

The fifties and sixties saw an explosion of hippies and Eastern practices become The Way to deal with the suffering of modern life. It’s very much apparent in the first few books how deeply that interested Herbert.

One of the central myths: we can train ourselves out of our weaknesses. That’s the joy of fiction, in Dune, they succeed!

His Mentats (human computers) train their minds. Sardaukar, Fremen, Fish Speakers, and other warriors train their bodies. And Bene Gesserit (warrior concubines) do all of the above (mind, body, and especially, sex.) You see what I mean about the ’60s?

GOVERNMENT SUCKS

All of these were basically monkish disciplines to get better and overcome the horrors and slovenliness of the fat bureaucrats through personal asceticism at a time with inflation and stagnation and unrest were sweeping the world.

The fight between the slovenly, enslaving aristocrats and the noble Atreides is the main plot of the first books.

In Dune, power doesn’t just corrupt, it makes you fat. (And sometimes a pedophile…)

RELIGION SUCKS MORE

All throughout the books, there’s a deep antipathy towards religion. The concubines seed worlds with Messiah narratives so that later any disciple who needs to can “fulfill” a prophecy they themselves have foretold in order to be treated well. The later books are basically the evolution of Atreides from Messiah to Tyrant. And over and over again priests and prophets get mowed down for their faith.

Believing in anything except your own physical and mental discipline is a really, really bad idea in Dune.

PLANTS MATTER

How do you get oxygen on a world without plants? (Answer: you can’t, they just live deep below the desert!) It was genius at a time right after Rachel Carsen’s Silent Spring launched the modern environmental movement. The evolution of Dune from desert to water was, and very much in line with the ’70s environmental consciousness.

ESPECIALLY IF YOU SMOKE THE PLANTS

This first book obviously was also very concerned with Spice and the supernatural powers that drugs give you, which are, again, huge themes of the time!

HOW IT ENDED: 1985

Fast forward to the last book, published 25 years later, and though it’s about the same universe, the stakes change completely.

MASTERY FADES IN FAVOR OF POWER

The warrior monks continue to have supernatural powers. Still, we spend most of the time watching them jockey for political power as they use their mastery to maintain their positions. And the horrors of personal power just… go away. The main bad guys of the first book die out in favor of the supposed good guys acting A LOT like them.

This is justified because if they didn’t, all of humanity would perish. PERISH, I tell you! A journey we took as a world, not just in Dune.

PLANTS DON’T MATTER ANYMORE

(Especially big spoiler alert!)

The books end with Dune destroyed and a worm on a new planet making new spice. Which is… kind of the thing they were all trying and failing to do for most of human history and the central problem of the first books? Dune has a monopoly on spice that controls everything about the universe. And it’s suddenly done! How? I don’t know. They just do it. Ecology clearly faded from importance.

BUT IMMIGRANTS DO MATTER!

The ecology is all but ignored in favor of a panic about immigrants who have the warrior monk’s power, but none of their integrity, and so are wrecking everything as they come in from the scattering of humanity speaking a weird form of Spanish and are evil because… Yeah, that’s also never clear. And also indicative of the times.

DRUGS ARE BAD NOW

Spice’s evolution is fascinating! It’s necessary for interstellar travel, but they figure that out with the technology they used to hate more than anything. But it’s suddenly better than spice! People still use it, but hide their glowing blue eyes and become ashamed of their addiction. Sound like the ’80s?

GOVERNMENT AND RELIGION STILL SUCK

Governments get more and more corrupt and religion gets more and more gullible as the books go on. This is one thing that doesn’t change throughout all the books.

“Liberal bigots are the ones who trouble me most. I distrust the extremes. Scratch a conservative and you find someone who prefers the past over any future. Scratch a liberal and find a closet aristocrat.”  ― Frank Herbert, God Emperor of Dune

HOW IT’S GOING

THINGS I LOVED

I appreciate how the success of the book allowed him to really play as the series went on. The first novel was a fairly standard hero’s journey welded onto a Shakespearean family tragedy. By the last book, the story had taken fifty different turns exploring sex, youth, history, cloning, space travel, and so much more. 

I also loved that for all its epic scale, it stayed intimate on a few characters, still focused around an Atreides. And I also loved on the timescale that went on for thousands and thousands of years. It was clear he had a lot of fun imagining the implications of a Messiah figure ten or twenty generations down the line.

THINGS I COULD HAVE DONE WITHOUT

The central message, if there is such a thing, is that if you do not control humanity, humanity will die out. Even though, it seems to me, through the control, all of the fun parts of humanity have died out in the process, what exactly is worth saving at the end of the process?

That and the outdated gender roles and homophobia and stereotyping and the dominance and illiberalism were surprising. I feel like people see the hippie stand-ins in the first book and take them for radicals, but they are completely not. At all.

But again, that became more swallowable as I related to this as historical fiction. Important not in spite of those flaws but because of them. 

WAS IT WORTH IT?

I enjoyed them all. The world is fascinating.  The characters were bizarre and relatable. Race relations and gender relations were hard to stomach sometimes and were bloody brilliant at other times. This is seminal science fiction. It’s an important part of our canon and it’s also an amazing snapshot of this moment in time in our culture change from the 50s to the 80s. Dune is historical fiction now. Who would have thought?

So yes, 98 hours later – more than worth it.

The post Do Judge Authors by Their Time? Dune, Tolkien, and Outrage first appeared on Postcards from Pluto.