Kindred spirits are not so scarce as I used to think. It's splendid to find out there are so many of them in the world.

Anne of Green Gables by Lucy Maud Montgomery

Spoiler Alert: Plot Summary
Anne of Green Gables is a tale of acceptance, family, imagination, and the pleasures of a simple life. It begins with the (accidental - they were planning to adopt a boy) adoption of Anne (with an e) Shirley by middle-aged sister and brother Marilla and Matthew Cuthbert on Prince Edward Island, and chronicles Anne's time with the Cuthberts through adolescence and into maturity. [NB: This is the first of a series of books, but I have opted to just read the first one for now. I would imagine Anne is quite a bit more grown up by the end of the series - she is eighteen at the end of this one, I think, or thereabouts.] Anne is an ardent romantic and has an active imagination, while Marilla is of a more somber and sensible disposition. Green Gables is a lovely farm full of lush natural beauty, and as Anne falls in love with Green Gables and its surrounding town, Avonlea, Marilla and Matthew fall head over heels for Anne. Anne's path to adulthood, like any teenager's, is full of stops and starts, and plenty of mini-catastrophes and hijinx ensue along the journey. But, nurtured by the love and affection of the Cuthberts and the rest of the Avonlea community, the erstwhile orphan eventually finds her way.
Spoiler Over: Continue Here

While I don't think I've ever read Anne of Green Gables, the Canadian-produced TV movie was a staple in our house growing up, and, like any good video that takes up two whole VCR tapes (hehehe THROWBACK), it stayed quite true to the novel, so I felt like I'd already read it when I dove in. Reading this book was like coming back to an old friend - Anne Shirley occupies the same place in my heart as Josephine March, Elizabeth Bennet, Scarlett O'Hara, or the Pevensie children. Some characters are so familiar to me that I can't remember a time in my life when I wasn't aware of them. They feel like intimate friends, and I know their habits, trials and tribulations, and what makes them tick almost instinctively. Reading about them is less about discovery and more about remembrance of things past (AHGHAGHAG get it? PROUST JOKE. #iknowimawesomeright)
Who are these characters for you? Who feels so familiar to you that you can barely remember a time in your life when they weren't a part of your imagination?


A Quick Character Study:
- As in any great series of books, Anne of Green Gables builds a rich and familiar cast of characters from the Cuthberts, to Mrs. Rachel Lynde, to Josie Pye, Diana Barry, Miss Stacy, and Gilbert Blythe. Here are a few snapshots that capture the leading ladies and gents...

Mrs. Rachel Lynde (the Cuthbert's neighbor, town gossip, and friend of Marilla and Matthew)

• "She thought in exclamation points." (ex: after she finds out the Cuthberts are adopting a child: "Well the world was certainly turning upside down! She would be surprised at nothing after this! Nothing!") heh heh heh. 

Marilla Cuthbert (Anne's adopted parent and Matthew's sister)

• "[Marilla was] always slightly distrustful of sunshine, which seemed to her too dancing and irresponsible a thing for a world which was meant to be taken seriously." hear that, sunshine? stop your pesky dancing! I mean it!

Matthew Cuthbert (Anne's adopted parent and Marilla's brother)

• "Matthew dreaded all women except Marilla and Mrs. Rachel; he had an uncomfortable feeling that the mysterious creatures were secretly laughing at him." Matthew is such a soft, sweet soul. When I think of the word 'avuncular' I see Matthew in my head.

Anne (with an e) Shirley

• "I didn't mean to be wicked. It's so easy to be wicked without knowing it, isn't it?"
• To Marilla: "You'd find it easier to be bad than good if you had red hair."
• "Isn't it splendid there are so many things to like in this world?"
• To Marilla, on spelling Anne with an 'e': "Oh, it makes such a difference. It looks so much nicer. When you hear a name pronounced can't you always see it in your mind, just as if it was printed out? I can; and A-n-n looks dreadful, but A-n-n-e looks so much more distinguished. If you'll only call me Anne spelled with an e I shall try to reconcile myself to not being called Cordelia." Anne tries to get Marilla to call her Cordelia, but Marilla stolidly refuses. What would you pick as a new name if you could switch yours? I think I might like to be called Katerina - it's my middle name, so it's not really cheating... right?

Gilbert Blythe (Anne's schoolmate, frenemy, crush, etc. etc.)

• To Anne, after she's been punished in front of the class for smashing a slate over Gil's head when he called her 'Carrots': "I'm awful sorry I made fun of your hair, Anne. Honest I am. Don't be mad for keeps, now." Oh, but Anne IS mad for keeps. It takes her a LONG time to get over that. 

- Anne-isms (aka her penchant for hyperbole):
Part of Anne's charm is her dramatic sensibility - here are a few of my favorite exchanges:

--When Anne thinks she won't be allowed to stay at Green Gables because Marilla plans to return her for a boy:

Marilla - "You're not eating anything."
Anne - "I can't. I'm in the depths of despair. Can you eat when you are in the depths of despair?"
Marilla  - "I've never been in the depths of despair, so I can't say." Welcome to the pit of.. Excuse me. (clears throat) Welcome... to the Pit of Despair.

Marilla - "Good night."
Anne - "How can you call it a good night when you know it must be the very worst night I've ever had?" Poor Anne - it is really a very sad moment, but she's so adorably dramatic about it that it becomes comical. I also found it amusing because I knew already that Anne would get to stay. ;)

--On not being a part of the newest town fashion:
"Anne felt that life was really not worth living without puffed sleeves." Ah yes. What IS life without puffed sleeves?

--Anne, on an upcoming event:
"I don't feel that I could endure the disappointment if anything happened to prevent me from getting to the picnic. I suppose I'd live through it, but I'm certain it would be a lifelong sorrow."

--Anne, on the new dresses Marilla has made:

Marilla - "Well, how do you like them?"
Anne - "I'll imagine that I like them." haghaghahghaghag. Nice, Anne. Reallll subtle. ;)

--Anne, on why she likes the new teacher Miss Stacy:
"When she pronounces my name I feel instinctively that she's spelling it with an e."

--Anne, apologizing to Diana's Aunt Josephine after they've jumped on her by accident when she was sleeping in the spare room bed:
"Miss Marilla Cuthbert is a very kind lady who has taken me to bring up properly. She is doing her best, but it is very discouraging work. You must not blame here because I jumped on the bed."

--Anne, via note, to Diana, after Diana ignores her at school at her mother's behest:
"Of course I am not cross at you because you have to obey your mother. Our spirits can commune."
                          --- Yours until death us do part,
                                             Anne OR CORDELIA Shirley haghahghaghaghaghag. XOXO, ANNA

--Anne, on praying:
"Why must people kneel down to pray? If I really wanted to pray I'll tell you what I'd do. I'd go out into a great big field all alone or into the deep, deep woods, and I'd look up into the sky - up - up - up - into that lovely blue sky that looks as if there was no end to its blueness. And then I'd just feel a prayer." I couldn't agree more, Anne. I like to look up when I pray and think of the heavens and nature expanding wide open above me to accept my thoughts.

- Anne's first view of Green Gables:
"Below them was a pond, looking almost like a river so long and winding was it. A bridge spanned it midway and from there to its lower end, where an amber-hued belt of sand hills shut it in from the dark blue gulf beyond, the water was a glory of many shifting hues - the most spiritual shadings of crocus and rose and ethereal green, with other elusive tintings for which no name has ever been found. Above the bridge the pond ran up into fringing groves of fir and maple and lay all darkly translucent in their wavering shadows. Here and there a wild plum leaned out from the bank like a white-clad girl tiptoeing to her own reflection. From the marsh at the head of the pond came the clear, mournfully-sweet chorus of the frogs. There was a little gray house peering around a white apple orchard on a slope beyond and, although it was not yet quite dark, a light was shining from one of its windows."
I think if I could live in any fictional place, Green Gables might just be it. It reminds me of everything I loved about growing up in Lebanon (cooking with 4-H, learning to quilt and cross-stitch, running past cows and cornfields, and knowing everyone tangentially from the grocer to the movie store clerk) and simultaneously stimulates my nostalgia for Rosehaven, the family farm my mother and aunts and uncles grew up on, riding horses, skating on the pond in winters, and making jams and canning vegetables in the summers. My grandmother had to sell Rosehaven when I was only three, so I have almost no recollection of it, but my adult life has been pervaded by a deep longing to recreate the atmosphere and magic of Rosehaven by finding a farm of my own to inhabit. Maybe one day I'll find my own Green Gables. Where would you choose to live if you could pick your own fictional home?

- Anne, to Marilla, on bosom friends:
"Do you think I shall ever have a bosom friend in Avonlea? An intimate friend, you know - a really kindred spirit to whom I can confide my inmost soul." Anne finds a bosom friend in Diana Barry, her next door neighbor. I have been lucky to find many a bosom friend in my time, from my very own next door neighbors the Light ladies, to my roomie Laura Beth 'Longfur' Ryals, to my fellow cellist Margalit Monroe, to my work bestie Michelle Staack, to my longest friend and French buddy, Deanna Blouch Gamon, to my quartet mates Dennis Earl Norris and Halley Jean Cody, to my nearest and dearest darlings, my very own sisters Lexie and Diana. These and many others have filled a space in my heart, and I hope that the future holds more bosom friends for me (and you!) to find. I wish love, hugs, and happiness to all of my bosom friends out there in the world.

- It will not rain! You always Say that, and it oolWays Does!
Anne is terrified it will rain on the day Mrs. Allan (the minister's wife) invites her to tea.
"The rustle of the poplar leaves about the house worried her, it sounded so like pattering rain drops, and the dull, faraway roar of the gulf, to which she listened delightedly at other times, loving its strange, sonorous, haunting rhythm, now seemed like a prophecy of storm and disaster to a small maiden who particularly wanted a fine day."

This line reminded me of To the Lighthouse, when Mr. Ramsay claims that the clouds ominously portend rain for the coming day, and Mrs. Ramsay says to her son James, who desperately wants to visit the lighthouse tomorrow, "Perhaps you will wake up and find the sun shining and the birds singing."

- Who needs city life when you can have the country expanding before you?
Anne: "I wasn't born for city life and I am glad of it. It's nice to be eating ice cream at brilliant restaurants at eleven o'clock once in awhile, but as a regular thing I'd rather be in the east gable at eleven, sound asleep, but kind of knowing even in my sleep that the stars were shining outside and that the wind was blowing in the firs across the brook." I couldn't agree more, Anne. I've found myself living in cities for the last few years, but more and more I ache for country living with crickets and trains sounding in the night.

Passages I parTicularly Liked:

• "Marilla was not given to subjective analysis of her thoughts and feelings. She probably imagined that she was thinking about the Aids and their missionary box and the new carpet for the vestry room, but under these reflections was a harmonious consciousness of red fields smoking into pale purply mists in the declining sun, of long, sharp-pointed fir shadows falling over the meadow beyond the brook, of still, crimson-budded maples around a mirror-like wood pool, of awakening in the world and a stir of hidden pulses under the gray sod. The spring was abroad in the land and Marilla's sober, middle-aged step was lighter and swifter because of its deep, primal gladness." Spring is on the horizon! Get excited!

• "A cool wind was blowing down over the long harvest fields from the rims of firry western hills and whistling through the poplars. One clear star hung above the orchard and the fireflies were flitting over in Lovers' Lane, in and out among the ferns and rustling boughs. Anne watched them as she talked and somehow felt that wind and stars and fireflies were all tangled up together into something unutterably sweet and enchanting."

• "The night was clear and frosty, all ebony of shadow and silver of snowy slope; big stars were shining over the silent fields; here and there the dark pointed firs stood up with snow powdering their branches and the wind whistling through them."

• On Anne's room at Green Gables - "It was full of a new vital, pulsing personality that seemed to pervade it and to be quite independent of schoolgirl books and dresses and ribbons, and even of the cracked blue jug full of apple blossoms on the table. It was as if all the dreams, sleeping and waking, of its vivid occupant had taken a visible although immaterial form and had tapestried the bare room with splendid filmy tissues of rainbow and moonshine."

• On the Barry's garden: "It was a bowery wilderness of flowers which would have delighted Anne's heart at any time less fraught with destiny. It was encircled by huge old willows and tall firs, beneath which flourished flowers that loved the shade. Prim, right-angled paths neatly bordered with clamshells, intersected it like moist red ribbons and in the beds between old-fashioned flowers ran riot. There were rosy bleeding-hearts and great splendid crimson peonies; white, fragrant narcissi and thorny, sweet Scotch roses; pink and blue and white columbines and lilac-tinted Bouncing Bets; clumps of southernwood and ribbon grass and mint; purple Adam-and-Eve, daffodils, and masses of sweet clover white with its delicate, fragrant, feathery sprays; scarlet lightning that shot its fiery lances over prim white musk-flowers; a garden it was where sunshine lingered and bees hummed, and winds, beguiled into loitering, purred and rustled."

I know this was a long post, but Anne deserves her fair share of my time, being such a bosom friend and all. I'll leave you with this bit on Anne not wanting any life but her own, in the end:

"'Well, I don't want to be anyone but myself, even if I go uncomforted by diamonds all my life. I'm quite content to be Anne of Green Gables.' Anne's horizons had closed in since the night she had sat there after coming home from Queen's; but if the path set before her feet was to be narrow she knew that flowers of quiet happiness would bloom along it. The joy of sincere work and worthy aspiration and congenial friendship were to be hers; nothing could rob her of her birthright of fancy or her ideal world of dreams. And there was always the bend in the road!"

May you find the joy of sincere work and worthy aspiration and congenial friendship, and if you find yourself stagnating, look once more to your ideal world of dreams. As Anne would say, isn't it nice to think that tomorrow is a new day with no mistakes in it yet?

Onwards, to days without mistakes yet and Of Alien Servitude. 

Was it the trial that cast him about so, and kept him from distinguishing his friends from his enemies?

The Trial by Franz Kafka

Spoiler Alert: Plot Summary
The Trial is an introspective journey that delves into the depths of bureaucracy and totalitarianism, chronicling the capricious and arbitrary arrest and trial of Josef K., a German bank officer. Though he is placed under arrest, Josef K. is able to continue living his life, and maintains his job at the bank while attempting to sift through the many layers of the quagmire that is his court case. He enlists the aid of a lawyer, assembles a network of supporters, and does his best to make sense of the absurd proceedings. His attempts are in vain in the end, however, and rather than being placed in jail, Josef K. is taken to a quarry at night by guards and stabbed in the heart.  Josef K. never discovers the reason behind his trial, and we are left wondering at the seeming senselessness of it all.
Spoiler Over: Continue Here

I found this to be a very strange read. I haven't read any other Kafka, so I don't have anything to compare it to. The psychological analysis of it reminded me of Russian lit, particularly Crime and Punishment and The Brothers Karamazov, which is a genre I respect, but can't say I really enjoy.

Rather than comment at random on this one, I've chosen to present a microcosm of the trial of Josef K. Heads up, if you're dead set on reading it, you might want to wait to read this blog - the whole thing is sort of a spoiler. Sorry!

- It Begins. 
"What sort of men were they? What office did they represent? Who dared assault him in his own lodgings? He'd always tended to take things lightly, to believe the worst only when it arrived, making no provision for the future, even when things looked bad." The arrest is bizarre, not only because it seems to have no driving force behind it, but also because Josef K. is not led off to prison or taken away to be interrogated. Rather, he resumes his life in a mostly normal fashion, which makes the arrest all the more jarring.

- My social security number? Ah, yes. It's 1. 2. 3. A. B... I knew you were too good to be true! You're an alien! No. We come from France!
Josef K. looks for some form of ID to show the guards who come to arrest him, and at first all he can find is his bicycle license. I thought this was adorable, and it also made me wonder why we don't have bicycle licenses now if we used to in the past. Perhaps you still have to get a bicycle license in some countries? I'll have to look into it.

- Josef K.'s response to being arrested.
"At the same time he asked himself from his own perspective what possible reason he could have for killing himself. Because those two were sitting next door and had taken away his breakfast? Committing suicide would be so irrational that even had he wished to, the irrationality of the act would have prevented him." The absurdity of the arrest is juxtaposed with the seeming severity of the event. When Josef K. considers the prospect of suicide as an escape, it doesn't seem like a proportionate response. Had he known the way the trial would unfold, however, Josef K. might have felt differently. (NB: Not condoning suicide, obvi, just pointing out the disproportionality of it in the beginning vs. his violent end.)

- The guards, to Josef, on wearing his pajamas upon his arrest:
"If you assault me in bed, you can hardly expect to find me in formal attire." The weirdest part of this book was that it was highly humorous in certain moments. I suppose it was to give some levity to things, but also to point out the ridiculous quality to some of the events. In any case, this was one of my favorite lines. 

- Don't worry - this isn't that kind of an arrest.
"Oh, I see," said the inspector. "You've misunderstood me; you're under arrest, certainly, but that's not meant to keep you from carrying on your profession. Nor are you to be hindered in the course of your ordinary life." I guess Josef K.'s arrest isn't so different from the house arrest a current CFO might be placed under for a business trial, but in that case, the trial would take a back burner, at least in some respect, and the CFO would continue to go about his life. Here, Josef K. is expected to go about his life, but it is anything but normal, which makes his daily routine rather tortured in the end.

- Excuse me, but do you know a carpenter named Lanz?
When Josef K. first tries to attend his court proceedings on a weekend, he feels out of place in the apartment building, so he makes up a carpenter named Lanz and starts knocking on doors to see if anyone knows him. 
"Several people believed K. badly needed to find the carpenter Lanz, thought long and hard, recalled a carpenter, but not one named Lanz, remembered a name that bore some faint similarity to Lanz, asked their neighbors, or accompanied K. to some far distant door, where they fancied such a man might possibly be subletting an apartment, or where there was someone who could provide him with better information than they could." The most absurd part is that when Josef K. knocks on the last door, the person who answers says, "Right this way", and it turns out to be the court. 

- It's only real if I think it's real.
"They are only proceedings if I recognize them as such." I know, right? Soooo meta.

- Sign for APPLAUSE.
Josef K, at part of his trial: "The examining magistrate here beside me has just given one of you a secret signal. So there are those among you who are being directed from up here. I don't know if the signal is meant to elicit hisses or applause, and I deliberately waive my opportunity to learn what the signal means by having revealed the matter prematurely. It's a matter of complete indifference to me, and I publicly authorize His Honor the examining magistrate to command his paid employees below out loud, rather than by secret signals, and to say something like: 'Now hiss' and the next time: 'Now clap.'" Again, there's a duality to this moment - it's simultaneously amusing and deeply disturbing in revealing the inner workings of the court.

- B is for Bureaucracy.
The nebulous quality of bureaucracy is in fine form in this novel. Here's a snippet:
"The proceedings in the courts of law are generally a mystery to the lower officials as well; therefore they can almost never follow the progress of the cases they are working on throughout their course; the case enters their field of vision, often they know not whence, and continues on, they know not where."

 It reminded me of this scene from The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy:
Arthur's house is about to get knocked down to build a bypass. When Arthur complains that he had no idea it was happening, the contractor responds with the following:
"But the plans were on display..."
"On display? I eventually had to go down to the cellar to find them."
"That's the display department."
"With a flashlight."
"Ah, well, the lights had probably gone."
"So had the stairs."
"But look, you found the notice, didn't you?"
"Yes, yes I did. It was on display in the bottom of a locked filing cabinet stuck in a disused lavatory with a sign on the door saying 'Beware of the Leopard.'"

- Trials, and a bit wiv a painter named Titorelli.
One of the many people Josef K. seeks out to consult on his case is a bizarre court painter named Titorelli. Titorelli explains the possible outcomes of Josef's trial as follows:

"There are three possibilities: actual acquittal, apparent acquittal, and protraction."

Door #1:
Actual acquittal - Titorelli cannot help with this one. It is very rare, and relies on factors outside his control. Tant pis!

Door #2:
Apparent acquittal - "It means the charge against you is dropped for the moment but continues to hover over you, and can be reinstated the moment an order comes from above. The files remain in circulation; following the law court's normal routine they are passed on to the higher courts, come back to the lower ones, swinging back and forth with larger or smaller oscillations, longer or shorter interruptions. These paths are unpredictable. Externally it may sometimes appear that everything has been long since forgotten, the file has been lost, and the acquittal is absolute... No file is ever lost, and the court never forgets." I know, sounds pretty Great, right? 

Aand, Door #3:
Protraction - "Protraction is when the trial is constantly kept at the lowest stage. This doesn't require the same effort it takes to secure an apparent acquittal, but it does require a much higher level of vigilance. You can't let the trial out of your sight; you have to visit the relevant judge at regular intervals, and any extra chance you get as well, and try to keep him as well disposed as possible in all ways; if you don't know the judge personally, you have to try to influence him through judges you do know, although you still don't dare dispense with the direct conferences. If nothing is omitted in this respect, you can be sufficiently assured that the trial will never progress beyond its initial stage. The trial doesn't end of course, but the defendant is almost as safe from a conviction as he would be a free man." Hrm... Is this really my best option? Why does this not seem like a good thing?

- Fin.
In the end, the conclusion of Josef K.'s trial is as arbitrary as the beginning. 

A priest, to Josef K: "The judgment isn't simply delivered at some point; the proceedings gradually merge into the judgment."

Josef K., on the guards who come to take him away: 

• "He was nauseated by the cleanliness of their faces."
• "Why did they send you of all people?"
• "There would be nothing heroic in resistance."
• "Moonlight lay everywhere [in the quarry] with the naturalness and serenity no other light is granted."

Josef K., on his inability to take his own life:
"He could not rise entirely to the occasion, he could not relieve the authorities of all their work; the responsibility for this final failure lay with whoever had denied him the remnant of strength necessary to do so."

One last flicker of hope before the climax:
"Like a light flicking on, the casements of a window flew open, a human figure, faint and insubstantial at that distance and height, leaned far out abruptly, and stretched both arms out even further. Who was it? A friend? A good person? Someone who cared? Someone who wanted to help? Was it just one person? Was it everyone? Was there still help?"

Josef, to himself, after the knife has been plunged in his heart:
"Where was the judge he'd never seen? Where was the high court he'd never reached?"

I know, rather a dark way to spend this beauteous Sunday. No more Kafka now, I mean it. Anybody wanna peanut? Onwards to Anne of Yellow Canopies and Canadians, hey? Vous pouvez me joindre, si vous en voulez.

Go, Usul, and ride the maker, travel the sand as a leader of men.

Dune by Frank Herbert

Spoiler Alert: Plot Summary
Dune is a tale of adventure, loyalty, death, and destiny. The Atreides family is sent from their home planet, Caladan, to the desert planet Arrakis (also known as Dune) to rule. The Duke Atreides, Leto, suspects he is being lured into a trap by the rival ruling family, the Harkonnens, and it turns out his suspicions were correct. Leto is murdered by one of his own men, and his son Paul and pregnant concubine/de facto wife (let's just say their Facebook status is "It's Complicated") the Lady Jessica are captured. The Baron Harkonnen underestimates Paul and Jessica, however, and they escape to find sanctuary with the native Fremen, a desert people who have learned not only how to survive on Arrakis, but how to thrive. The Fremen ride enormous worms (also known as makers, because the worms create the spice mined on Arrakis) that can swallow entire spaceships whole, and have made an art form out of the preservation of water, the scarcest resource on the planet. Paul and his mother rise to leadership roles in the Fremen tribe, both due to Paul's status as a prophet to the Fremen and their identity as the rightful ruling family of Arrakis. Paul, semi-prescient due both to his genetic makeup and the influence of the omnipresent spice, tries to navigate the many possible avenues of the future, hoping to avert the Fremen jihad which seems inevitable. Paul succeeds in taking Dune back from the Harkonnens, but not without losses of his own. In the end, we are left to wonder if the violent climax is but the beginning of a larger war.
Spoiler Over: Continue Here

I greatly enjoyed reading this book. My whole family has read it or seen the movie (or, in some cases, both), and my sister Lexie did a read-along, so at some point in the future I'll post her thoughts as well. I'm not sure sci-fi is my favorite, but I think this is an excellent example of the genre, and Herbert is a very gifted writer. Dune is apparently part of a larger series - perhaps some day I'll dive into more of the novels and find out the outcome of the jihad - but I think I will keep it to just the first one for the purposes of this blog. (Same goes for Anne of Green Gables, which is coming up after The Trial!)

A few of my ponderings, in no particular chronology:

- What's in a name?
As in any great fantasy novel, Dune has some fantastic names. You need the majesty and the multicultural, almost mythical sense to ring out of them, and Herbert nails it. Here are a few of my favorites:
- Arrakis - the name of the planet, Dune
- Atreides - the ruling family from Caladan (and later Dune)
- Harkonnen - the Atreides' arch-nemesis family
- Muad'dib - alternate name for Paul - definitely a strong Arabic feel to a lot of Herbert's naming - in today's culture, that might be more contentious, but given that it's a desert planet, I don't think it's too charged in his case. I personally enjoyed the styling of it.
- Thufir Hawat - One of Leto's right-hand men
- Gurney Halleck - killer, smuggler, and baliset player (aka troubadour - jack of all trades!)
- Stilgar - A leader of the Fremen - reminded me of an elf name from LOTR :)

- On spice
Spice plays a huge role on Dune, and I found the depiction of it to be truly fascinating. It reminded me a bit of the role of 'dust' in the His Dark Materials saga. 

"The taste is never twice the same. It's like life - it presents a different face each time you take it. Some hold that the spice produces a learned-flavor reaction. The body, learning a thing is good for it, interprets the flavor as pleasurable - slightly euphoric. And, like life, never to be truly synthesized." This line also reminded me (for some reason - I know, tangential at best) of the movie Michael with John Travolta and Andie MacDowell. Michael is an angel in the movie, and at one point, the women debate what they think Michael smells like. Andie's character says he smells like fresh baked chocolate chip cookies, but others argue it's more like apple pie, or fresh-cut grass. What do you think an angel would smell like? I think it would be something like cloves and cinnamon, or maybe freshly-baked bread. 

- On learning
Each chapter starts out with a line from future writings, mostly about Paul. I loved this line about learning:
"Muad'Dib learned rapidly because his first training was in how to learn. And the first lesson of all was the basic trust that he could learn. It is shocking to find how many people do not believe they can learn, and how many more believe learning to be difficult." I thank my parents, teachers in both the literal and parental way, for endowing me with the basic trust that I could learn. It is the greatest gift anyone has ever given me.

- Heavy foreshadowing - Not of the tiptoe, but the CLOMP CLOMP CLOMP variety
Much like Mr. Dickens and Mr. Irving, Herbert seems to be a big fan of the smack you over the head kind of foreshadowing. I like to be curious about what's to come, and in my opinion, a little goes a long way, gentlemen. So maybe you should consider DIALING IT BACk a bit, hey? 

- (Guess Whaaaat?) I. am. a. Robot. My. Name. is. Paul. 
I had a bit of a hard time connecting with Paul, namely because once he comes into his future-seeing abilities (yes, I agree, there is definitely a better word for this but I can't think of it) he sort of loses his capacity for emotion. Jessica had a bit more humanity to her, but having the two of them as the main characters made it hard for me to feel moved by the events happening to them. 

- I'm sorry, is this Dune, or Tremors?
Admittedly, the worms were one of my favorite parts. They definitely reminded me of Tremors (and yes, I've seen it for some reason) but the descriptions were awesome. Here are a few snippets to give you a picture:

• "The others heard it then - an abrasive slithering, distant and growing louder."Anyone else reminded of the basilisk from the Chamber of Secrets?
• "It came from their right with an uncaring majesty that could not be ignored." 
• "Where the dunes began, perhaps fifty meters away at the foot of a rock beach, a silver-gray curve broached from the desert, sending rivers of sand and dust cascading all around. It lifted higher, resolved into a giant, questing mouth. It was a round, black hole with edges glistening in the moonlight."

The title of this blog is a line from Stilgar to Paul (he's Usul as well - Herbert's as bad as the Russians with the multiple names thing!) when he rides his first worm (not a euphemism people, minds out of the gutter!) and becomes a man in the eyes of the Fremen.

- Tick Tock, Tick Tock, Who's afraid of the Big, Bad Clock?
The descriptions of time were fantastic. Definitely one of my favorite pieces of Herbert's writing. I loved the way he envisioned time, and the delicate fragility of Paul's actions on future events. Here are a few of my favorite bits:

• "Paul's mind had gone on its chilling precision. He saw the avenues ahead of them on this hostile planet. Without even the safety valve of dreaming, he focused his prescient awareness, seeing it as a computation of most probable futures, but with something more, an edge of mystery - as though his mind dipped into some timeless stratum and sampled the winds of the future."

• "He fell silent as memory of that seeing filled him. No prescient dream, no experience of his life had quite prepared him for the totality with which the veils had been ripped away to reveal naked time."

• "Muad'Dib could indeed see the Future, but you must understand the limits of this power. Think of sight. You have eyes, yet cannot see without light. If you are on the floor of a valley, you cannot see beyond your valley. Just so, Muad'Dib could not always choose to look across the mysterious terrain. He tells us that a single obscure decision of prophecy, perhaps the choice of one word over another, could change the entire aspect of the future. He tells us "The vision of time is broad, but when you pass through it, time becomes a narrow door." And always, he fought the temptation to choose a clear, safe course, warning "That path leads ever down into stagnation."

• "The more he resisted his terrible purpose and fought against the coming of the jihad, the greater the turmoil that wove through his prescience. His entire future was becoming like a river hurtling toward a chasm - the violent nexus beyond which all was fog and clouds."

• "The future - the gray-cloud future - with its feeling that the entire universe rolled toward a boiling nexus hung around him like a phantom world."

- On Paul killing Jamis, a Fremen who challenges him:
"He has killed a man in clear superiority of mind and muscle. He must not grow to enjoy such a victory."  This is a line from Jessica, Paul's mother. It reminded me of this line from For Whom the Bell Tolls:

Roberto, to himself: "Don't you know it is wrong to kill? Yes. But you do it? Yes. And you still believe absolutely that your cause is right? Yes. But you mustn't believe in killing. You must do it as a necessity but you must not believe in it. Because if you are not absolutely straight in your head you have no right to do the things you do for all of them are crimes and no man has a right to take another man's life unless it is to prevent something worse happening to other people."

 - The Fremen cave - or is it a sweaty gym room locker?
"The odor of the place assailed him: unwashed bodies, distillate esthers of unclaimed wastes, everywhere the sour effluvia of humanity with, over it all, a turbulence of spice and spicelike harmonics." Suffice it to say that the Fremen cave does NOT smell like fresh baked chocolate chip cookies. 

- What would you think if you saw people riding gigantic worms you spent your life running from?
"Out of the sand haze came an orderly mass of flashing shapes - great rising curves with crystal spokes that resolved into the gaping mouths of sandworms, a massed wall of them, each with troops of Fremen riding to the attack. They came in a hissing wedge, robes whipping in the wind as they cut through the melee on the plain.
   Onward toward the Emperor's hutment they came while the House Sardaukar stood awed for the first time in their history by an onslaught their minds found difficult to accept." I loved this scene - epic!

- Owen doesn't have any friends.
In the final scene of the book, a woman claims to be a friend of Paul's mother, Jessica, when in fact she is a scheming machinator. 

Gurney: "There's also a Bene Gesserit Reverend Mother who says she's a friend of your mother."
Paul: "My mother has no Bene Gesserit friends."
I loved Paul's response - it reminded me of the scene from Throw Momma From the Train when Owen's mother asks Billy Crystal, "Who're you?" and Billy Crystal replies, "I'm Owen's friend." to which Owen's mother responds, "Owen doesn't have any friends." haghaghahghaghag. [You know the unsalted crackers make me choke, Owen!]

Other lines that were in the running for title of this blog entry:
- Fear is the mind-killer.
- Parting with friends is a sadness. A place is only a place.
- He had felt something stir his terrible purpose.
- Wherever there is spice, there are worms.
- One baits an Atreides at his own risk.
- Whether a thought is spoken or not it is a real thing and it has power.
- God created Arrakis to train the faithful.
- Who can deny a Fremen the right to walk or ride where he wills?

Sentences that struck me:

• "There was pain in him - like a blister, all that was left of some lost yesterday that Time had pruned off him."

• Jessica, on Paul - "She thought of the boy's features as an exquisite distillation out of random patterns - endless queues of happenstance meeting at this nexus."

• "Straight overhead, the stars were a sequin shawl flung over blue-black."

• Dirge for Jamis: "Do you wrestle with dreams? Do you contend with shadows? Do you move in a kind of sleep?"

• "Now she saw only the circle of stars. They were like the luminous tips of weapons aimed down at her. A shower of meteors crossed her patch of night. The meteors seemed to her like a warning, like tiger stripes, like luminous grave slats clabbering her blood. And she felt the chill of the price on their heads."

• Starlight displaced just enough of the night to charge each shadow with menace.

• And above the horizon climbed the flat immensity of the storm like a wall against the stars.

• This was death hanging on an infinite number of miniscule mischances.

• A violent calamity of color spilled over the sky as the sun dipped beneath the horizon.

• on Muad'Dib: He was warrior and mystic, ogre and saint, the fox and the innocent, chivalrous, ruthless, less than a god, more than a man.

If you're getting snow, enjoy the wintry romance of it, and if you're not, then enjoy your sunshine! I'm off to stroll the streets and catch up with friends. And later, The Tribunal awaits!