This article contains spoilers for Frank Herbert’s first Dune novel.

Think of the most famous sequels to ever grace storytelling: The Empire Strikes Back, Terminator 2, Catching Fire, Lord of the Rings; what do they all have in common? They all build upon their predecessors in meaningful ways. But when it comes to Dune Messiah, the question instead is what do they not have in common, as Frank Herbert drastically reimagined and reinvented the characters, world, and conflicts that the first Dune novel brought to the table.

This week’s Lamron Lit Corner will be a bit different than usual—when tackling Lewis Carroll’s famous children's novel, Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland, I thought to myself, “What can I add to the conversation around this book? What can I say that hasn’t already been said?” Then I looked at my bookshelf and decided that the answer was right in front of me, or rather, the question: for those who have never read this seminal work, what edition should you buy?

Daniel Defoe, most known for his “novels” Robinson Crusoe and Moll Flanders, falls into a sort of liminal literary space that few other authors do; despite being fairly recognizable (Robinson Crusoe being a well-known book), not many readers have the time or energy to read what can be easily seen as the “antique” or “unintuitive” pieces that he produced. Additionally, his work falls outside of strict fiction or nonfiction labels makes it difficult to even categorize, much less understand, what Defoe stood for back in the early 1700s when he wrote. I offer that instead of reading the more recognizable novels he produced, readers in the 2020s should instead look to his 1722 book Journal of the Plague Year to see not only why classic literature matters, but how human nature in response to large-scale catastrophe is nothing more than a horrid, never-ending cycle.

Steven Erikson’s Gardens of the Moon: Learning how to read the largest fantasy saga ever written