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Comment by mzaccari | Hacker News Reader

I had tried to get into Dune many years ago, but found it hard to keep track of all that was going on. I wish I had pushed through, because I'm now enthralled by the Dune universe. I can say that the movie helped lay a foundation for me that has made the book far more enjoyable - to the point where I'm almost finished with the audiobook after only starting it last week!

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One thing that helped me with Dune is using the glossary at the back of the book. It's a bit odd and some might say due to bad writing, but he will just start using a word without ever letting you know what it means. The only way to know is from the glossary. Also, don't be afraid to consult a dictionary in some cases. I remember the word "qanat" appears a lot in some of the later books and I just ploughed through without even know what it was. Just look things up and you'll get more out of it.

> some might say due to bad writing

Anybody can come up with a new language that happily condenses the concepts you need to have in your new world, but forcing the reader to read an encyclopedia to decipher it is just lazy. You are meant to weave the explanations in your narrative, so the reader picks them up seamlessly.

It's a bit like building a UI that is unusable without reading a boring manual.

> You are meant to

There are no rules except "be good". I've thoroughly enjoyed Dune every time I've read it and it had quite a profound effect on me as a youngster. There are countless thousands just like me and you can't argue with that really.

> It's a bit like building a UI that is unusable without reading a boring manual.

Well, I think the purpose of a UI is slightly different to that of a novel. One exists to be useful while other exists to be enjoyable. If it's useful it's useful. Doesn't matter if it requires a manual or not.

McDonald's is also enjoyable and enjoyed by millions, it's still not "good food"; as I always say, that sort of reasoning leads to us eating shit because billions of flies cannot be wrong (cit).

The best part of Dune is clearly the worldbuilding rather than the prose. Yes it can be used, and the software is great when you get to know how it works, but there is a learning curve that similar software does not have.

Your reasoning contains the same assumptions, just in the other direction. You seem to be saying that if masses of people enjoy something it must be “bad” on some level.

Nope, not said that anywhere above; just that popularity is not necessarily the be-all and end-all of literary quality.

> I always say, that sort of reasoning leads to us eating shit because billions of flies cannot be wrong (cit).

You didn't make the distinction "is not necessarily" in your first comment. That changes the connotation.

There's plenty of exposition in Dune. I never used the glossary once. People familiar with fantasy and SciFi have no problems absorbing weird names and such at face value with the idea that context will be added as exposition continues. Looking up each term you don't know in the glossary is actually the wrong way to read these types of books. Youll be presented with information that you shouldn't know yet.

If you read foreign literature, every single novel is like that anyway. Except that there is no convenient glossary at the back explaining the unfamiliar words.

> some might say due to bad writing

My favorite part of "A Clockwork Orange" (book) was that very thing: the narrator just talking naturally and leaving the reader to figure out the slang (Nadsat).

There too was a glossary in the back of the book but I soon dispensed with it and found I could get the gist of the slang well enough to just roll with it.

This. You get the hang of the Clockwork Orange slang after a few pages, because the author is so slick with it.

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