'Dune': A sweeping, spectacular spice-opera — half of one, anyway
Most of us who've read Frank Herbert's 1965 novel Dune have experienced it in the form of mass-market paperbacks so thick and dense they could double as wheel chocks for a Cessna. If you've made it all the way through even once, the spine on your personal copy will have been battered into submission such that it takes on the appearance of the Bonneville salt flats — rough, faded, riddled with spidery cracks.
This has less to do with any degree of ardor you may or may not have brought to your experience of reading the book, and everything to do with the sheer number of times you found yourself shuttling back and forth and back again between your current place in the proceedings and Herbert's extensive glossary in the back.
The world of Herbert's
