Mixed Pickles - the Book log 2012

The yellow, black and purple of the Gollancz covers were the first things I learned to loook for when I moved up to the adult library. That, and the PG Wodehouse "Signature" edition jackets from Jenkins.
So I was delighted when I saw a bunch of them in a bookshop, all wrapped aropund ten classic SF novels, and I decided to reintroduce myself to an old favourite; "Dune". I last read this in 1974, just after I started work - it got me through quite a few Tube journeys, books weren't usually that thick in those days.   It bears re-reading nowadays, for the grand scale and the dashing (and sometimes slapdash) plotting.  The writing is surprisingly old-fashioned - the omniscient narrator who can tell you wahat every character in the room is thinking has long fallen out of fashion, but once re-accustomed to it, it becomes bearable if not over-used.  I am left, as I was many years ago, with the impression that Herbert started out with a swashbuckling story of interplanetary fueding, and ten found his story taking over - it becomes more psychedelic the further you get into it, and more portentous and (occasionally) more pretentious.