Ryan Amor

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What are you reading? Dune by Frank Herbert

I make stories up a lot which I think of as being part and parcel of being a writer. But then I haven’t published anything; spent the last 20 years of my career being more of a graphic-designer-project manager type where copy was only a small part; and some have actually called me out that this story-telling is actually lying. Well.

Anyhow…I always claimed that I had read Dune. And I have read so many books that some I have actually forgotten until I’ve come across them again, and the 1st page is immediately familiar. And I have come across multiple copies of Dune when I was younger so in my mind, the probability was high that I had read it. The new movie version by the gifted Denis Villeneuve prompted me to try and re-read the book again so I bought a Kindle copy.

After the first page I was shocked to discover, that no, I actually have not read the book. None of it was familiar, even as I was equally shocked at how easy Frank Herbert’s prose is. In my mind, even the false memory of having read it, had within it, a false memory of what his prose was like.