Odds and Ends

Currently Reading: Dune by Frank Herbert

I'm no longer going to bother reading any of the new Dune books. I've tried the first of each series and ended up giving up on them right at about the same point. These latest two books (of which one has been released) were supposed to be based on an outline by Frank Herbert that was discovered in some safe deposit box by his son but after reading the first 150 pages or so and reading the outline of the plot, I'm finding that hard to believe.

I didn't really care that much that the son was going to do a whole set of prequel books. So long as he didn't mess with the original, fine, no problem. I didn't find them very well-written and they really weren't very complex in plot. In all I would rank them as average. Maybe if you liked that sort of book you'd want to read it but otherwise, nothing in it really jumps out at you.

Towards the end of the series though, he started messing a little bit with the original. Or rather, his version started running into consistency errors with the original. Characters that were clearly alive in the original series had already been killed off in the prequels leaving some readers scratching their heads. Oh they tried to play it off by saying that the one in the original series was a clone (of which there are many in the original series) but the problem with that is the clones weren't introduced until the second or third book. Oops.

Still, didn't really bother me because I never put much stock into the prequels. They were supposed to tell the backstory of the novels, most of which is already told in the novels themselves. These books were just fleshing things out a little.

Then this new series came out and, as I said, it was supposed to be based on a long-missing outline. I'm guessing that's a very loose term "based on." Yeah, it was based on that outline in the sense that it has chapters and characters, sure. Or maybe there really wasn't anything IN the outline at that point and the outline needed fleshing out.

What it looks like they're doing with the two new books is trying to link everything together. And while I can understand the need to do it, it's really like trying to nail the back end of a rusted out Ford onto a new Cadillac. They just don't match and I don't mean purely in style. The characters suddenly have different personalities. Minor details are over-looked. The plot, well, it doesn't move very much and when it does move it certainly doesn't take off in the direction the other novels were heading. They couldn't even keep it to one book (which would have made two trilogies linked by one bridge novel). They attempted (or were forced to) stretch everything out to make it all fit together.

So, my advice, skip Hunters of Dune and the soon to be released Sandworms of Dune. Instead, just fill in the blanks after Chapterhouse yourself. It's certainly going to be better than what Brian Herbert came up with.

Baseball's All-Star game is coming up next week. If you're a fan, you'll want to check out all the action on the MLB site. If you're not a fan, better make plans to rent some videos or take in a movie that night :-)

People spell names weird down here. There was an article in the paper about a kid in Arkansas who got killed. His name was DeAuntae. Yes, just like that. No, you're not supposed to translate it, that's supposed to be in English. He's not "Of the Aunt" or "the Aunt". That's the family's attempt to produce Dante or at least make it seem more fancy. Worse, apparently they called this kid Tae Tae. If you're from the Philippines, go ahead and laugh. Just try not to spew coffee all over your keyboard when I tell you that the headline in the paper that day was FAREWELL TAE TAE. For the rest of us who do NOT speak Tagalog, roughly translated, that headline reads FAREWELL POO POO.

Slow week in the grooming salon because of the 4th of July. Sunday I had a total of two dogs. Monday I had no appointments scheduled. Fortunately we had quite a few walk-ins, otherwise I'd have gone nuts from boredom. Things will pick up over the weekend though. It as kinda nice having a few slow days after all the heavy work we had leading up to it.

Time to get back to summer things. Enjoy!