Well, I finally finished reading Dune. And, honestly, I'm still not sure how I feel about the book. It does get more absorbing as you go along, particularly once past those initial 200 pages of exposition that I mentioned earlier. Indeed, it develops into quite an interesting story, full of intrigue, violence, and mystical freakiness. And the world-building is absolutely top-notch. Not only is Arrakis (aka Dune) a well-rendered and very believable place, but there are a zillion little details that attest to the existence of an entire galactic history, vast and complex.

Yet, somehow, I'm still inclined to think that this book is a little overrated. Part of that may be due to the fact that it is a rather slow read, particularly at the beginning. A lot of it probably has to do with the writing style. It's got an odd, repetetive, almost dreamlike quality that works really, really well for the mystical-freakiness scenes, but not necessarily quite so well elsewhere. It may just be me, but there were places where I found it downright annoying, not least of all due to the fact that Herbert seems to like to pick one particular phrase to describe something, and then to use it over and over and over. By the end, I think if I'd heard about Paul's "terrible purpose" or Gurney's "inkvine scar" one more time, I would've screamed.

I remember being a lot more impressed by this book when I read it the first time, but then, I was a lot more easily impressed at the age of 14. I suspect the fact is that I found it mildly difficult to read at that point, and took this for a sign that it was, in fact, Great Literature. Well, I don't think it is. It's an interesting book. It's a worthwhile book. But, no, I'm not gonna vote for it as the Best Science Fiction Novel of All Time. Go ahead, call me a philistine. See if I care.

Next off the To-Read Pile is The Scientist in the Crib: Minds, Brains, and How Children Learn by Alison Gopnik, Andrew N. Meltzoff & Patricia K. Kuhl. I've got a ten-month-old nephew (who, much to my frustration, I haven't seen since he was two months), and I'm curious about what's going on in that tiny little brain of his.