I read Dune in a book club, and honestly for the majority in the club even the first book was near incomprehensible. The group absolutely hated not understanding any of the nomenclature it throws at you from the start, and there’s was a lot of discussion that started “stick with it you’ll get used to it.”
I fucking love dune but took a few attempts to buy in and get through it. Glad I did though.
Sometimes, a piece of fiction does not want you to understand every part of the fictional world from the get go. It’s part of the art. For Dune in particular, it’s a hard vs. soft world building distinction. Some fiction, harry potter comes to mind, builds up the world slowly and eases you into it, explaining every little thing that makes it different from our own. Some just dumps you into it and lets you experience it as an outsider slowly gaining understanding.
From what I gather, most people nowadays are much more used to the first method, to the point of expecting it and thinking they’re missing something when the second method is used. I think stuff like that, including Dune, would be more enjoyable to many if they realised they aren’t, in fact, missing anything and that’s how the experience of consuming that piece of media was intended to be like.
I read Dune in a book club, and honestly for the majority in the club even the first book was near incomprehensible. The group absolutely hated not understanding any of the nomenclature it throws at you from the start, and there’s was a lot of discussion that started “stick with it you’ll get used to it.”
I fucking love dune but took a few attempts to buy in and get through it. Glad I did though.
Sometimes, a piece of fiction does not want you to understand every part of the fictional world from the get go. It’s part of the art. For Dune in particular, it’s a hard vs. soft world building distinction. Some fiction, harry potter comes to mind, builds up the world slowly and eases you into it, explaining every little thing that makes it different from our own. Some just dumps you into it and lets you experience it as an outsider slowly gaining understanding.
From what I gather, most people nowadays are much more used to the first method, to the point of expecting it and thinking they’re missing something when the second method is used. I think stuff like that, including Dune, would be more enjoyable to many if they realised they aren’t, in fact, missing anything and that’s how the experience of consuming that piece of media was intended to be like.
i forced myself through dune. i never got used to it. it all felt like a waste of time right through the end.