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Here’s what I read in January, 2016. A good start to the year. Total page count:1713.

I read Dune because it was one of my brother’s top 5 favorite books. I always meant to read it, but the length was daunting. My husband enjoyed it & many of the sequels, but said that I “wouldn’t enjoy it” but can’t recall why he said that. It may be because of the later sequels.

I really enjoyed it. I enjoyed the message of self-control & I enjoyed the SCOPE of the universe that Frank Herbert created.

I was floored when I learned that Frank Herbert was inspired to write Dune by my very area. People think of the Pacific Northwest & they think of rain, but we have should more accurately be known for our dryland agriculture. We make the land do what we want. To an amazing extent. The Grand Coulee Dam filled HUGE dry fissures (coulees) that cut northeastern Washington’s desert with water. We then irrigated an entire half of our state with that water we were slowing down as it traveled from Canada to the Pacific Ocean. You can’t really imagine the scope of this unless you’ve seen the dam or lived through a summer in the inland Pacific Northwest.

Not 10 minutes from my house, you can be in sand dunes. A patron told me that when she was a kid, her uncle would pick her & her siblings up in his tender truck, drive out to the dunes & they’d make pools in the dunes. They’d spend the day making sand castles. Sleepless in Seattle is not THE Washington Experience.

I wish I’d read Dune as a teen. I’d recommend it to anyone, but I wish I could get everyone from Eastern Washington & Oregon to read it. If I had someone visiting me from out of the area, I’d ask them if they’d read Dune! Then we could go for a drive to the sand dunes. 🙂

The book I read this month that I REALLY recommend is Kathryn Aalgo’s The Natural World of Winnie the Pooh. It’s the loveliest book I’ve read in a long time. It’s about Milne’s inspiration for Winnie the Pooh & Shepard’s inspiration for the artwork.

I’m finishing up Stephen King’s The Bazaar of Bad Dreams. I should have had it finished by now, but my brains a little scattered currently.