I need to read Dune. Villneauve’s film is forcing me to make a move on this gap in my library.
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I have my final pathology exam next week, so I’ve mostly been reading by reference card pile of DOOM
Although I’ve also been reading Derren Brown’s Tricks of the Mind, which is genuinely very interesting. I like his style if writing (although I can imagine it grating with others) and contains fascinating descriptions of how magic, how it works and what it means. It also has a genuinely useful section of memory techniques, and interesting stuff about hypnosis (quick summary: it’s probably not actually real, but it still works because humans are strange and complicated).
It also contains this gem:
…a successful hypnotist was having problems one night with his subjects. To remedy the situation, he whispered off-mic to the most extrovert guy on the stage, ‘Play along and I’ll give you fifty quid after the show’. The subject decided to act the part for the cash, and soon became a spectacular fool on stage, accepting anything the hypnotist said and lifting the show immensely. At the end of the act, the hypnotist sent him back to his seat, then pretended to rehypnotise him as he sat back with his friends. He clicked his fingers and the stooge dutifully acted as if he’d fallen asleep. ‘When you wake up’, the hypnotist declared into the stage mic, ‘you will act as if I owe you fifty pounds. And the more they tell you that you don’t, the more annoyed and insistent you’ll become…’
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Dune is on my list of re-reads. I admit I was considering buying it (my original copy I gave to a friend back in Spain and she is reading it now before the movie comes out) but I do not like much the new design cover. I must admit I am a bit snobbish about having movie-inspired covers of books. But I have an eye out for the second hand book store. If I see an old copy, I will grab it.
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I think my brother has an old physical copy somewhere. My Kindle copy hasn’t been updated fortunately.
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It’s not judging a book by it’s cover but if you can have a pretty cover why wouldn’t you. I like the deluxe one that was out a few years ago.
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That’s nice!
It is just that having a movie themed cover makes it like I jumped on the hype-wagon? And I read Dune nearly a decade after David Lynch movie came out! 
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The book that got me into Asimov had Will Smith on the cover. I rectified that some time later.
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I loved asimovs I will smith.
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1 minute too late for my “Fresh Prince of Terminus” joke
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I spent big on Dune 
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The illustrations in that book are something.
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Please tell me you didn’t draw horns and a moustache on him…
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Only what someone growing up in the 1950s-60s in Manchester would know. It was a very different place back then and a lot less pleasant to live in. I believe the influx of workers from the countryside had begun to make the city very crowded and very rich but the Reform Acts had yet to make the great changes in politics and the Corporation was a long way from bringing parks, public baths, libraries and galleries.
I would have to do research…
I’ve enjoyed all his writing. I’ve read his ‘kind of’ autobiography Confessions of a Conjuror and his book about (mainly) Stoicism Happy as well as Tricks of the Mind
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I’ve read Confessions although I enjoyed it less than Tricks. I might treat myself to Happy after the exam.
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Finished up the last two Battletech Warrior books (Riposte and Coupe, with an accent on the “e” on that last one) today. Took me about a month to finish Riposte, and then about… 10 hours to finish Coupe.
It was… good! They were good. The female characters were… problematically portrayed (sexy spies almost exclusively, a handful of sexy 'Mech pilots as tertiary characters), but the action scenes were pretty good. Also, I learned that the “Stakepole Effect” is a thing, and I thought that was clever (Fusion reactors exploding like fission reactors would). Solid 4/5 rating from me, with a conclusion that was sudden but inevitable.
Also really, really made me want to play Battletech. Which, ya know… kinda the point! So mission accomplished on that front too.
Next up: John Scalzi’s Head On (the sequel to Lock In). I love Scalzi’s work, so I am going to relish this one… and probably finish it by Saturday. Oh, and then to write my final exam essay for my Brit Lit course (compare and contrast the role of fathers in Silas Marner and The Playboy of the Western World… bleh…).
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I read Head On first and still enjoyed it even though I probably missed some things from not having read Lock In. I should get around to reading that at some point.
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Well, of course the female characters are sexy, women are sexy, right? Ahem.
Um…?
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The Playboy of the Western World is written by J.M. Synge, an Irish writer.
That counts, apparently. A fair number of our British writers and poet this semester were Irish.
Well, it was before independence, but I can think of plenty of places where calling Synge British would get you punched in the face.
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