Mario Party 6 - I will not say how many hours we have spent playing this lately because it is just sickening. Basically, it's several similar boardgames, with basic-motor-skills minigames between each turn. And apparently something hypnotic. And we aren't even using it as a drinking game, which had been suggested to us.

Chapterhouse Dune, by Frank Herbert. Pretty much the same as what I said for Heretics of Dune, but with an ending that (at least for me) is heart-rending, and at the same time maddeningly frustrating because it is supposed to embody Herbert's disavowal of absolute endings - it's an ending that doesn't really end anything at all. Beyond that, the novel does plod along slowly, but not by virtue of its writing - rather, it's the sheer amount of ideas that Herbert crammed into this last Dune novel, as one critic adroitly pointed out.

"You cannot manipulate a marionette with only one string." - seems simple enough, but it seems like there might be more there, too...

word of the day: sangfroid - coolness and composure under trying circumstances