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Scissor Sisters
★★★★☆"All killer no filler" or something. It's basically an album full of big songs and little electronic twitches. The production on the CD is pretty fantastic — not overly glossy — though some songs do start to sound a little similar. Though the lyrics aren't always fantastic, they're just part of the overall texture here and they don't detract massively (though some of the songs are insanely catchy, you can't help hating yourself for repeating some silly lines).
I avoid radio most of the time, but I'd still heard quite a few of the songs from this album before encountering it. (Partly attributable to a brilliant mashup with "Take Your Mama Out", "A Day In The Life" by The Beatles, some George Michael and Aretha Franklin). Apparently "Comfortably Numb" was a pretty big hit, and it's probably on par with the original, though obviously styled in a very different way. My favourite song on the album is probably "Return To Oz", just because it's really evocative... of something which I'm not quite sure of. :) The album is rifftastic, though, and if I was to make a playlist of songs to powerwalk to, then maybe ⅓ of its songs would make it.
Really quite a good album, but not quite "fantastic". Worthy of four stars, since I think it's consistently good, but it's not so amazing that it tells me to give five.
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Dune
★★★★★This book is a must-read. In keeping with other books I enjoy (such as the Chronicles of Amber), Dune presents a labyrinth of political and social interactions, slowly coming to resolve from the beginning of the book to the end. It is set on a desert planet, containing a consciousness-raising drug, the spice melange, which is very important to spaceship navigation.
Melange, as it happens, is the drug which allows space travel to occur at all. It allows the user to see possibilities in the future and manipulate reality accordingly (as I understand it). It's fascinating, anyway, even if I do have it wrong.
Dune tracks the adventures of the protaganist Paul Muad'Dib through his struggles within and against a galactic feudal system. It presents a world where technology is important, but exists alongside antique ceremonies (gladiator fights) and ideological movements. Religious themes are found throughout the book, where it seems that religion exists but there is no mention of a god. There are strong cues from our present religions — use of the word jihad, for one — but religion in the book is almost unrecognisable when compared to what we have now.
I've not given much away about the story, which is just as well, because I envy those who read this book for the first time. Though it's quite heavy going and doesn't come lightly off the page, it's worth the effort.
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One Flew Over The Cuckoo's Nest
★★★☆☆ S-440353-35553Good read. Not quite sure what it was getting at overall, though, and in parts it does get a little ridiculous. Most books get a little ridiculous, but I'm not sure this manages suspension of disbelief as well as some others. Regardless, it kept me entertained and at times mildly incensed. Recommended, but not as essential as, say, Dune.