What should I post about?

[hafital]

So after some deliberation, I think I've figured out how to spend my tax return. :D :D Some of it is earmarked to go into savings to pay me back for a new mattress I bought in December, and some of it is earmarked to pay down a credit card, but the rest is up for grabs -- sort of. There is, in reality, not that much but whatever.

I have some dental work coming up I should probably save more for, and I want to buy some of Cheri Huber's books, not to mention 2 big trips coming up in the summer (well, one big trip to europe, hopefully, and another horseback riding 4 day adventure) but the real debate is whether to get an iPhone, or an iPad, or BOTH. hah.

There is also a ton of horseback riding gear that I want...

Sadly, my refund does not have a magical extension charm. It can't really cover all that, but I think the iPhone is definite, since its supposed to be finally available for verizon and all that. I can't upgrade (if I want my discount) until the end of Feb. so the timing works out unless verizon explodes or something.

I REALLY want an iPad, but it's gonna have to wait.

~~~

In other news, I'm almost to the end of The Wire, season 2, and I'm getting really into it! I really like everyone, even the criminals have a certain charm. I'm eager to see where these characters go, how they change over the course of the life of the show. I'm spoiled for one or two things, but mostly am watching blind. I love that! lol. I love watching a TV show and knowing you're in for "stuff" and having no clue what that will be.

~~~

For reasons that frankly I can't entirely remember, I started listening to the ENTIRE Dune series cycle on audio books. After some debate I decided to include the last two books written by Herbert's son and Kevin Anderson.

It's been... interesting? Dune remains pretty incredible as a stand alone book. I had read it several times as a teenager and again in college but haven't reread it in years, certainly not since I started writing, and I was pretty astonished to realize how influential it has been on so much of my writing.

The rest of the series is on some pretty heavy (spicy?) crack. And just gets more so as you continue. I don't know how to feel about much of it, particularly the role of women in the entire series. He keeps to pretty rigid gender roles but then by the end makes women essentially the rulers of the known (crazycakes) universe. Of course they're basically homicidal sex-crazed maniacs... they're either "whores" or "witches." So, I guess nothing new there! lol. And let's not get into the whole axlotl tanks business...

Also, this might be a petty peeve in light of all there is to discuss about the Dune series, but I find it *so* aggravating when an author is not true to the internal logic of the universe they're creating.

But it's still been an interesting ride, and I look forward to finishing one day before I'm as old as Duke Leto II. hah. (and I was rather amused to realize that Methos is STILL older. :D)

Comments

[ariestess]

That is so kewl that you're being all grown-up about savings and such for your tax returns! we're planning to help with some bills, and then have some fun money. We're making lists of what we want to do [fun and bills], then working our way through everything from there...

[klia]

I loved Dune initially, but gave up on the series after the third book. What you said about the female characters started getting to me, so I thought I'd take a break and read The White Plague, which had just come out. But, alas, I didn't get very far into it because the idea that the guy deliberately engineered a plague to kill only women -- because his wife and kids had been killed by an IRA bomb? WTF? -- made me so angry, I tossed it, and never went back to the Dune books.

Huh. I hadn't thought about that in almost 30 years. *g*

[hafital]

haha, I never made it through White Plague, either! I did thoroughly enjoy his Jesus Incident, Ascension Factor, Lazarus Effect trilogy, however. It's possibly even more cracktastic than the Dune series, but in away much more cohesive. He had a co-writer for those books, though. They're difficult to find these days.

As a teenager, I loved the first 3 or 4 books of the Dune series, but he lost me with the others. Now older, I have very mixed feelings about all of them, and think the entire series is so opaque it's hard to understand what his point is. Dune is still an amazing book, however.

[klia]

Honestly, I don't know how I'd feel about the original book now. I have so many more issues with stuff like gender roles than I used to. :P

I remember driving on the expressway way back then and feeling kind of like a Guild Navigator because I always found it pretty easy to look ahead and see a path through the traffic. Hee.

[gattagrigia]

Back in high school, I'd been the first person check Dune out when it came into the school library. I was an SF geek, and this was SF and beyond. After college, it became one of the books I took with me to Peace Corps (along with LOTR, Stranger in a Strange Land, and The Little Prince - wow, that looks like a weird collection now!) One of those 'formative' books, I guess. I really didn't like the various sequels, altho I remember trying most of them. Sometime in the last couple of years I found a used copy of the same paperback edition I'd had in the '70s, and was very surprised at how my tastes have changed. ;) He needed an editor, IMHO!

[slb44.livejournal.com]

In my experience Methos is always older. ;-)

[hafital.livejournal.com]

heee. Old man.

[slb44.livejournal.com]

Indeed!