Page 9 ; Literary Anniversaries: 2015; Word Find

Volume 18, Number 4 Fall 2015 Literary Anniversaries: 2015 Looking for something new to read? People often tend to gravitate towards recent publications when looking for a new book to get comfortable with—an understandable instinct, but something of an unfortunate one! Why not take a look back to previous decades, and even centuries, for one’s next great read? A preferred method for some is to read or re-read classic literature as it celebrates a significant anniversary, generally the year of its publication. Here are a few literary classics that are celebrating significant anniversaries this year that you can check out from our library! 50 Years Ago: Frank Herbert’s science-fiction masterpiece Dune was published in 1965, and while it has not penetrated popular culture in the same way that other sci-fi/fantasy works from the same era has, it remains one of the best-selling science fiction novels ever produced, and is widely praised for its Middle East-inspired world-building and rich explorations of uncommon themes in fiction, including environmentalism, Zen Buddhism, and sociobiology. The novel largely focuses on one Paul Atreides, whose family is put into a dangerous political situation as the guardians of the desert planet Arrakis. Arrakis, also called Dune, is the only source in the known universe of ‘melange,’ a valuable substance that is the cornerstone of the novel’s interstellar but somewhat regressive feudal society. 200 Years Ago: It is difficult to imagine now that at the time at which Jane Austen’s novels were published they seemed to have largely gone unnoticed, at least by the literary elite, being at the time overshadowed by luminaries like Charles Dickens and George Eliot. However, they quickly became fashionable among influential taste-makers and trend-setters, and it was not long before her works were being favorably compared to Homer and Shakespeare. In modern times, her works occupy a unique role in literature, being both academically appreciated and having garnered a popular following that ...