I liked A Light In August more than The Sound and the Fury, but I need to reread it. Sorry I don’t have anything worthwhile to say about it now.
Live at Pompeii is another thing I need to revisit. It’s been over 20 years since I last saw it.

Are you going to review the 2017 Gilmour Live at Pompeii?

Glad you still like Dune. I should reread those books and then read the last three.

I remember saying that the new Dune movie seemed like it would be more confusing to than the David Lynch movie, and Norville responded that all you need to know to understand the plot is “Atreides,” “Harkonnen,” and “Spice.” I think that was because I was trying to read all the little crumbs that are just references to what you identified as a “huge, indispensable part of the book” put there to keep fans happy as something viewers would recognize as actual information that were supposed to mean something in the movie. I don’t remember the examples though, and I’m not rewatching it to find it.

I’m going to continue to point out the same thing about the “target age,” which was that it was printed in Analog magazine and almost certainly written specifically for Analog. The different SF magazines has their own identities, but the market wasn’t very fragmented back then. There was SF written specifically for younger readers, but the major magazines weren’t. It came out a little before the New Wave of Science fiction, which was a deliberate literary movement. The audience was whoever was reading science fiction in 1963-1965 (the first magazine installment was December ‘63). People always say “The Golden Age of Science fiction is 12.” If you were around 12 when John W. Campbell took over Astounding Science Fiction (later renamed Analog of Science Fiction and Fact) then you were around 38 when Dune came out. So I guess the target age was 12 to 38?

I’ve never seen mentioned Last Year At Marienbad. I’ve seen it described as a horror movie, but last year when I asked what horror movies I should prioritize and mentioned it, someone said “It’s only horror if you think existential dread is horror.” I know you pointed out that nobody else cares about this (as if it needed pointing out) but it was nominated for a Hugo award in a year it went to “no award.” Whatever, they did that they year of Carey too. The “Dramatic Presentation” category was always a throw away garbage award, and the category where the people receiving it didn’t care either.

Re Troy, I never bothered with it because I expect it to suck, but in principle complaining about “liberties” is silly. The Greeks didn’t have canonical versions of their legends. The Greek dramas aren’t necessarily consistent with Homer in their stories relating to Troy. A version without the gods in it isn’t even trying to channel Homer though.
You know that rape and infanticide are important parts of the traditional sack of Troy story, right?

I like Pump more than you do (like every Aerosmith album up to this point, I guess with the exception of Done With Mirrors) but I mostly hate the production (aside from on Janie) because I like most, although not all, of the rockers and it doesn’t work for those songs. Monkey On My Back is my favorite song on the album. I think it’s not a coincidence that the only new songs they played on Unplugged were that one and Hangman Jury. Also regarding Janie and Monkey, I won’t stick up for the album as having great lyrics, but I do think it was the last album where Steven Tyler personally cared about anything that he was writing.
Glad you liked What It Takes. That’s the best of the later powerballads. It, Cryin’, and gag I Don’t Wanna Miss A Thing are the three that got played alot beyond the tour for the albums they were off of.
Even if the next album was a huge hit, I think this was the last album where things were going well behind the scenes when they put it together.

re Rainbow, _but looking around the Internet, he’s just about the only one. _

??? Really??? I thought their live albums were the heart of their reputation. They certainly put out numerous live albums with all of the same songs on them. Anyway, I think that’s their best album. Deep Purple was a better_ band_, but Blackmore’s guitar playing is probably better on the Rainbow albums.
You don’t like live albums. Are you going to listen to Aerosmith’s Live! Bootleg? Maybe you’ll hate it, but you should hear it. You don’t need to listen to their other live albums, but that one is historically interesting.

The Times They Are A-Changin’ has some great songs, but half of it is boring. People might complain that the album is humorless compared to his others, but when I saw him live the day after George W. Bush was re-elected and he played the title track, I could only interpret it as a joke.

It’s a measure of Forbidden’s forgettableness that I didn’t remember that Ice T was on it. When you said ‘“Get A Grip,” though, is really awful.”“ at first I though you were saying “Compared to other dinosaur rock bands of the era, Aerosmith put out an even shittier album two years earlier,” but then I realized you were just talking about another Black Sabbath song I’d forgotten.