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General Battuta
Feb 7, 2011

This is how you communicate with a fellow intelligence: you hurt it, you keep on hurting it, until you can distinguish the posts from the screams.

Zola posted:

Has anyone else read "Always Coming Home"? The first time I read it, I was a little puzzled because it wasn't a straight narrative, but subsequent re-reads have given me more appreciation.

As a historical note for those who may not be aware of it, Ursula Le Guin is the daughter of Alfred Kroeber, who was a famous cultural anthropologist in his time. I had taken several classes for native American anthropology, and one of the things my professor brought up that I thought was really interesting is that Le Guin's stories often showed influence from the mythos of some of the tribes her father studied. I think that step away from standard American culture might be why her work is so compelling--she has somewhat of an "outsider" perspective of culture that not many who are born to it can achieve.

I completely agree. Reading LeGuin helps illuminate how blinkered and narrow the main thrust of much American SF in the past century has been - she helps mark the invisible boundaries just by stepping outside them. I think she's potent evidence for the argument that SF writers must actively seek cross-cultural exposure to do their jobs.

I also want to know how she got her sense for prose.

General Battuta fucked around with this message at 18:44 on Dec 26, 2013

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kaworu
Jul 23, 2004

Let us not forget Ursula K. Le Guin's mother, either. From my understanding, Theodora Kroeber was by all accounts a very remarkable woman in her own right. Just to quote the first paragraph of her wikipedia page: "Theodora Kracaw Kroeber Quinn (March 24, 1897 – July 4, 1979) was a writer and anthropologist, best known for her accounts of Ishi, the last member of the Yahi tribe of California, and for her retelling of traditional narratives from several Native Californian cultures." This was something I believe she collaborated with her husband on, but we are still talking about a woman who had a master's degree at age 23 from Berkeley in 1920. Which was incidentally the year wome were first allowed to vote in America, amazingly enough. In any case.

Ursula definitely must have had an absolutely fascinating upbringing and it would absolutely seem that her parents influence is right there in her work. I mean... it really all is right there. You read Left Hand of Darkness and find out that the sort of "research" and "myth" chapters she had in there were things she had written for herself over the course of the novel in order to "discover" things about the planet and people she was writing about. That says a lot right there.

Omnomnomnivore
Nov 14, 2010

I'm swiftly moving toward a solution which pleases nobody! YEAGGH!
I've been reading Earthsea and I'm halfway through The Farthest Shore. These are beautiful books. I wish I'd read these in my intense fantasy-reading adolescence instead of the embarrassing poo poo I was into. No big thinky thoughts about them; I'm mostly posting to tell people that my brain has decided Farthest Shore-era Ged is played by Avery Brooks.

Stavrogin
Feb 6, 2010
She is easily one of my favorite authors. Small Beer Press recently released a two-volume collected short stories called The Unreal and the Real, which has almost all the great ones from The Wind's Twelve Quarters, most notably the powerful "Semley's Necklace," "Nine Lives," which she calls her closest thing to actual science fiction, and "The Rule of Names," a nice quick one right out of Earthsea. Also, I've got a first edition of Three Hainish Novels, which, in addition to being excellent novellas, features THE cheesiest cover I've ever seen. I had to take off the DJ every time I took it in public to read.

LeGuin amazes me- writing excellent fantasy AND excellent science fiction. I'm surprised, though, that nobody's mentioned Lavinia, which is her re-telling of the Aeneid from Aeneas' future wife's perspective. Apparently, her warmup exercise for writing was translating the whole Aeneid from the Latin.

I've got kids now-- has anyone read any "Catwings?"

You can send her a self-addressed stamped envelope, and she'll send back up to six signed book plates with a stylized dragon on them. Pretty cool. She's getting up there in age, so get moving.

Hieronymous Alloy
Jan 30, 2009


Why! Why!! Why must you refuse to accept that Dr. Hieronymous Alloy's Genetically Enhanced Cream Corn Is Superior to the Leading Brand on the Market!?!




Morbid Hound

Stavrogin posted:


You can send her a self-addressed stamped envelope, and she'll send back up to six signed book plates with a stylized dragon on them. Pretty cool. She's getting up there in age, so get moving.

I just checked on her website to find the mailing address and she no longer does this, the printer who made the bookplates died =(

kaworu
Jul 23, 2004

Stavrogin posted:

I've got kids now-- has anyone read any "Catwings?"

You know, I haven't. But I have a little sister, and my parents would read those to her when she was young and she totally adored them, if memory serves. And my parents liked them just as much, if not more. I think read them to her when she was 5 or so and that's sort of the target age for those books more or less? I just checked and "4-8" is what it says on the barnes and noble page, so yeah. Anyway, it's Le Guin and it's about flying cats so how wrong could you really go? :3:

Hieronymous Alloy posted:

I just checked on her website to find the mailing address and she no longer does this, the printer who made the bookplates died =(

This makes me truly, truly sad as I had intended on doing this at some point like a few years ago and it totally got away from me.

I like that you can still write to her personally and she apparently reads it all herself and has no assistant it goes through sending canned responses. Which also means you almost certainly will not get a response. But nevertheless, it makes me want to handwrite a long and heartfelt letter to her about how much her work has truly meant to me (hopefully without sounding like a psychopath) before she does, as they say, shove off. Because she is getting up there in age; 84 now, I believe. Hope she lives to be 100 and in good health, though :)


Anyway, I also want to add that I'm truly cheered by how well this thread has gone. I wasn't actually sure if it wouldn't just fizzle into total disinterest on the first page, so it's really wonderful to see how well it's gone. Nice to see that she still commands a good deal of interest!

The Moon Monster
Dec 30, 2005

I first read her when I had to read Heart of Darkness in 9th grade but couldn't quite remember the title of the book. The part from The Left Hand of Darkness where Genly and Estraven are trekking through the wilderness is possibly my favorite written thing ever. I go back and reread that section a lot.

I've only read the first two Earthsea books. I'm not sure why, I have the third sitting on my bookshelf right now. I've read The Tombs of Atuan three times now, though, which is pretty unusual since I almost never reread books. It's one of those books that communicates itself to me so well it's like I'm watching it play out in my mind, rather than reading it. Which is a bit funny since so much of the book takes place in complete darkness.

One thing I really like about her books is the sense of loneliness. So many SF authors write huge wall of texts describing how strange/frightening/alienating/whatever some ultimately familiar situation is, but she nails it while looking like she isn't even trying. Not that her books are space Kafka or anything...

SnakePlissken
Dec 31, 2009

by zen death robot

Aphra Bane posted:

This thread inspired me to finally pick up my copy of The Left Hand of Darkness I've had lying around for years and give it a try. Thanks thread! It's an incredible book. I definitely recommend it for anyone wanting to check out Le Guin's non-Earthsea books but don't know where to start.
Now I'm interested in looking at some of the other novels in the Hainish Cycle. I've heard lots of praise for The Dispossessed, but the rest of the novels/short stories seem to be less loved. Anyone have an opinion on them?

Yeah. Like I said upthread, "Three Hainish Novels" is really compelling, and together they read like a trilogy. They're also pretty easy reading, and kinda comparable to a number of her contemporary science fiction authors. And BTW, I just caught a glimpse of some documentary about a particular species of primate that share a "song" throughout their adult lives, and it immediately reminded me of "The Word for the World is Forest," that being one of the traits of the Hainish species that inhabit that world. I immediately begin to suspect she was extrapolating from them or another similar species.

BTW, I once read a short by her, as one half of one of those old, old dimestore books where it's two novellas, one printed upside-down and each one having its own front page, I think they were called flip-flops or something. We're talking 50s and 60s here. But it was her most despairing work I've read, and reminded me thematically of Bowie's song, "Life on Mars" but never really went anywhere, felt like an unfinished work to me. It was "The Rise of the Atlanteans" or something. Probably one of her less noteworthy ones, just thought I'd see if anybody remembered it. It kind of matches my mood sometimes.

I'm afraid my next old scifi read is going to be Leigh Brackett. I just discovered what an apparently pivotal role she played in American writing also. Both Star Wars and Firefly make not so subtle references to her, it seems.

The Moon Monster posted:

One thing I really like about her books is the sense of loneliness.
Agreed. And the idea that the courage to stand alone is at least as meaningful as the courage to stand together with companions to hold you up. That's a recurrent theme. One of the stories in "Three Hainish Novels" takes place in a harsh winter setting, bringing up a similar feel to that long snow passage in "Left Hand of Darkness."

SnakePlissken fucked around with this message at 12:29 on Dec 31, 2013

Omglosser
Sep 2, 2007

I'm so happy that there is a Le Guin thread. I mentioned this before in the book of the month thread, but I picked up A Wizard of Earthsea on a whim from a crazy 'nam vet creative writing teacher in high school's unsanctioned and unsolicited "hey kids take these books home before the man throws them in the trash". (he also had us read find and read aloud some dirty limericks in Slaughterhouse Five) I didn't end up reading it until I was in my 20's, and it took me a few tries to actually get into it (hadn't read a book for fun in a decade at this point), but I ravenously picked up and read the rest of the series as soon as I could.

It's a little strange to me that Le Guin is so far underrated...I mean, in my opinion, Earthsea trumps LoTR in every way. They got some great movies made, and all Earthsea got was some piece of poo poo that took samples from the first two books and made up its own story from those bits. And it wasn't even a good story. It was cheesy, inane, and predictable. It was infuriating to say the least. I think at one point the "bad guy" was deadlocked with hand-to-hand weapons against Ged, and he said "This is where brute force trumps slight of hand!" Dude, magic is real, it isn't 'slight of hand'. Then Ged doesn't even loving use any real magic, he just changes color and gets stronger or some stupid poo poo to defeat him. The only thing they really got right was casting Danny Glover as Ogion. I wish the series had the pop appeal for Honest Trailers to make an episode for it. And didn't the head wizard of Roke die trying to undo what Ged did? In the movie he just goes "wow that was inconvenient." But I digress.

I really really am itching to reread the whole series now, especially Tehanu. I remember being mostly bored, but extremely invigorated near the climax when that old witch tells Therru to speak her Name. And weren't her burn scars self-inflicted? Wasn't that determined at some point? I can't remember but it seems like the people who left her behind weren't as bad as initially presumed.

For now I am reading Left Hand of Darkness. I was reading it at work and someone asked me what it was about. I told them Michael Jackson. I might be funny, or racist. Probably not either, though.

Sally
Jan 9, 2007


Don't post Small Dash!

Omglosser posted:

I really really am itching to reread the whole series now, especially Tehanu. I remember being mostly bored, but extremely invigorated near the climax when that old witch tells Therru to speak her Name. And weren't her burn scars self-inflicted? Wasn't that determined at some point? I can't remember but it seems like the people who left her behind weren't as bad as initially presumed.

From what I understood, her burns were the result of a horrific attack. However, people judged her on her outer appearance, so they assumed she was evil or cursed or something, so the burns were "her fault". Also, the people who left her behind were pretty bad. gently caress them. Pretty sure Ged had to stab a couple of them to prevent a home invasion.

Kassad
Nov 12, 2005

It's about time.
I've finished reading Tehanu not long ago so here's the gist of what happened (massive spoilers ahead):

Therru's the daughter of some vagrant who lives with a group of ~5 people. When she was eight they abused her and threw her in a fire. From that she lost an eye and a hand, her voice was permanently hosed up and she was massively traumatized. The horrific scars make people think she is cursed. Tenar adopts her and the kid starts recovering as they live a normal life. One of the vagrants later shows up and tries to take Therru back but Tenar manages to board Lebannen's ship to get away. The vagrant manages to touch Therru once and that destroys most of the progress she made in dealing with the trauma. A while later, at night, the vagrants try to break into Tenar's farmhouse to either abduct Therru or kill the two of them. But Ged had lucked into following them and he stabs one with a pitchfork and the other vagrants run away. Later it's revealed than Therru's mother was abused by the male vagrants to go beg in some towns (they'd beat her up and make her tell the townsfolk that if she didn't bring back something they'd kill her). They end up beating her to death and then they get caught by bailiffs appointed by Lebannen. Tenar tells Therru about it: she has little reaction to her mother's death but shows some happiness that the other vagrants will hang.

So yeah, gently caress those people. That part of the plot is incredibly dark, especially since the book is largely about everyday life.

kaworu
Jul 23, 2004

Kassad posted:

I've finished reading Tehanu not long ago so here's the gist of what happened (massive spoilers ahead):

Therru's the daughter of some vagrant who lives with a group of ~5 people. When she was eight they abused her and threw her in a fire. From that she lost an eye and a hand, her voice was permanently hosed up and she was massively traumatized. The horrific scars make people think she is cursed. Tenar adopts her and the kid starts recovering as they live a normal life. One of the vagrants later shows up and tries to take Therru back but Tenar manages to board Lebannen's ship to get away. The vagrant manages to touch Therru once and that destroys most of the progress she made in dealing with the trauma. A while later, at night, the vagrants try to break into Tenar's farmhouse to either abduct Therru or kill the two of them. But Ged had lucked into following them and he stabs one with a pitchfork and the other vagrants run away. Later it's revealed than Therru's mother was abused by the male vagrants to go beg in some towns (they'd beat her up and make her tell the townsfolk that if she didn't bring back something they'd kill her). They end up beating her to death and then they get caught by bailiffs appointed by Lebannen. Tenar tells Therru about it: she has little reaction to her mother's death but shows some happiness that the other vagrants will hang.

So yeah, gently caress those people. That part of the plot is incredibly dark, especially since the book is largely about everyday life.

Tehanu's back-story is even more horrific than that, really. Some of it is more subtly revealed, I think, like the fact that she was raped and sexually abused by her "family", in addition to being malnourished and regularly beaten. I'm not sure but I don't think we find this out till later in the book where Tenar angrily misinterprets something her town witch says as meaning Therru is unfit to be a witch because she isn't a virgin.

In any case, the implication I got from when Therru got burned was that they had used her for pity to beg for more money, but once it got to the point where it was too physically evident that they were beating and raping the child, they just shoved her face-first into the hot coals of a dying fire one morning on their way out of town, and left her for dead: which is where Tenar finds her.

I don't know why, but I feel like that's even more awful than if they had... actively been cruel to her. But what made Therru's story so deeply awful to me was that her original "family" couldn't even be bothered to even be actively cruel to her, because that would mean acknowledging her as a person; they just used her for their purposes and once keeping her around was more trouble than it was worth, they throw her away like trash.


Tehanu is really one of those rare books that made me so upset during certain scenes that I was literally both shaking with anger *and* crying. And what was so awful in a way was that Le Guin never, ever uses these events gratuitously or for shock value or lingers on the details or anything. It's not about that. The events are nowhere near as important as how we pick ourselves up again and learn how to live all over again.

kaworu fucked around with this message at 04:25 on Jan 14, 2014

Disco Pope
Dec 6, 2004

Top Class!

SnakePlissken posted:

"The Word for the World is Forest" is a harsh, unapologetic take on classic he-men and their love of domination, taking place on a pristine planet being pillaged by a militarized earth. So if you read it, goons, you can have the pleasure of adding it to the "oh that was just like dances with wolves" list.

I finished reading this today as part of "Again, Dangerous Visions" and I really enjoyed it, even if the synopsis sounds a bit hackneyed to modern ears. My heart broke about three times reading it, I think.

Swan Oat
Oct 9, 2012

I was selected for my skill.
The Left Hand of Darkness is one of those books that benefits hugely from second, third, and fourth readings. Since things start out in medias res, and information about how Gethenians behave and communicate and so forth are revealed as you read, there's a lot at the beginning and even in the middle that don't make much sense. That's not to say it's a bad read -- in fact I couldn't put it down the first time -- but the book is far richer if you already understand what Gethenians are, and what that means. It really makes you appreciate how well-crafted the story is.

I also really love this quote, where Genry is thinking about Gethenians and war;

quote:

But on Gethen nothing led to war. Quarrels, murders, feuds, forays, vendettas, assassinations, tortures and abominations, all these were in their repertory of human accomplishments; but they did not go to war. They lacked, it seemed, the capacity to mobilize. They behaved like animals, in that respect; or like women. They did not behave like men, or ants. At any rate they never yet had done so. [...] If this occurred the Gethenians might have an excellent chance of achieving the condition of war.

Also, if you like poetry and can track down Le Guin's verse, you won't be disappointed.

General Battuta
Feb 7, 2011

This is how you communicate with a fellow intelligence: you hurt it, you keep on hurting it, until you can distinguish the posts from the screams.
It's a nice quote, but for all that I love Darkness for opening up the exploration of gender in science fiction, it has some queasy essentialism I'd definitely take issue with if it were written today. I don't buy the argument LeGuin's making there at all.

Tuxedo Catfish
Mar 17, 2007

You've got guts! Come to my village, I'll buy you lunch.
That quote's from Genry's point of view, isn't it? Before he learned much about the world, even.

Swan Oat
Oct 9, 2012

I was selected for my skill.
Yes, it is from Genry's point of view and it's from early in the story -- he was still in the Karhidish capital. These are the thoughts of the somewhat callow narrator, not necessarily Le Guin's herself.

The reason I like the passage isn't that I agree with it. I like it because of the language it uses, and the contrast it draws. It compares animals to women, and then immediately men to insects. Even the order of the comparison is different, to put women and men right next to each other. I think it's rather clever and shocking to read for the first time. I left out some spoilery stuff about how nations in Gethen were behaving and how it looked like war was coming. It's sort of banal geopolitical stuff, and then you segue right into animals are like women, men are like ants; it's jarring.

It's stupidly essentialist to be sure, and wrong to boot, but I thought it was neat, rhetorically.

John Charity Spring
Nov 4, 2009

SCREEEEE

General Battuta posted:

It's a nice quote, but for all that I love Darkness for opening up the exploration of gender in science fiction, it has some queasy essentialism I'd definitely take issue with if it were written today. I don't buy the argument LeGuin's making there at all.

I found the same thing about Darkness but it soon struck me that it's easily ascribed to the narrator's hang-ups about masculinity and femininity (which inform a lot of his character) rather than being Le Guin's own views. Although they are very 1970s views to have in general and you'd hope that a hypothetical future human society would have got past them.

kaworu
Jul 23, 2004

You know, it's funny. I almost have to consider Left Hand as three separate short books, in some ways. There are quite a few chapters that tell Gethenian legends and stories, or consist of earlier Ekumenical reports on Gethen. These chapters definitely feel distinct from the story but are nicely sprinkled throughout. Not being written by either of our protagonists/narrators (Genly and Estraven) these chapters definitely stick out, but it was a drat good thing le Guin put them in there, I think.

And then we havee the two very distinct halves of the main story. There's the first half where Genly Ai is going about trying to accomplish his mission through the conventional means he has likely learned from his training with the Ekumen, and if his social attitudes reflect those of the era that the book was written in, we can hardly fault le Guin too much for that. [

While Genly is obviously trying to adapt to the Gethenian ways and get the hang of things, he is clearly held back in a number of ways, most significantly by his total inability to grasp the meaning behind shifgrethor, the sort of "game" or "system" of social pride and order and face-saving that essentially dictates how the Gethenians live their lives and what dictates their senses of self-work and value (spiritually, practically, sexually) in themselves and others. I think that there are a number of analogs on earth, but I have always loved the concept of shifgrethor and just trying to figure out what in hell it means.

After the first half concludes with Genly's and Estraven's abject failure in their efforts to first get Karhide to take Genly seriously, and then get Orgoreyn to take him seriously. And thus the second (and by far the best) half of the book begins, with their long trek alone across a glacier in winter on a planet in the midst of an ice age.

That second half is the part that really sticks with me, though, because it's also a love story in its own way - a very beautiful and tragic one. One of the things that also stuck with me are the brief but extremely significant allusions to Estraven's brother, Arek, whom he clearly loved deeply and tragically a very long time ago and had a child with. When Genly teaches his companion to mindspeak, it is Arek's voice that he hears in his head when Genly mindspeaks to him. I always thought that was so tragically beautiful, but maybe I'm a sap.


But anyway, yeah. I really think there are basically three different distinct books going on here. Part of it is because I always felt the first half just felt so disconnected from the second half in tone and content. The first half is good, but the second half is GREAT and is what elevates this book to the status of classic in my eyes.

DirtyRobot
Dec 15, 2003

it was a normally happy sunny day... but Dirty Robot was dirty

kaworu posted:

Hieronymous Alloy posted:


And let us not neglect The Ones Who Walk Away from Omelas.
I completely forgot about this. Maybe because no matter how many times I read it, I find it profoundly upsetting. And the more I think about it, the more upset I get. Which is to say it's a pretty stunning little piece of writing.
This might be my favourite Le Guin.

Though I have to say I actually find the end really uplifting:

quote:

Now do you believe them? Are they not more credible? But there is one more thing to tell, and this is quite incredible.

At times one of the adolescent girls or boys who go see the child does not go home to weep or rage, does not, in fact, go home at all. Sometimes also a man or a woman much older falls silent for a day or two, then leaves home. These people go out into the street, and walk down the street alone. They keep walking, and walk straight out of the city of Omelas, through the beautiful gates. They keep walking across the farmlands of Omelas. Each one goes alone, youth or girl, man or woman.

Night falls; the traveler must pass down village streets, between the houses with yellow-lit windows, and on out into the darkness of the fields. Each alone, they go west or north, towards the mountains. They go on. They leave Omelas, they walk ahead into the darkness, and they do not come back. The place they go towards is a place even less imaginable to most of us than the city of happiness. I cannot describe it at all. It is possible that it does not exist. But they seem to know where they are going, the ones who walk away from Omelas.

The story is "about" (given its title) the ones who walk away, the ones who look at their society, and everything they stand to benefit from staying in it, and say, "Nope, sorry, gently caress this poo poo, not worth it."

I also really love the intro in my edition that talks about where she got the idea for the town/place. It's from a road sign or something in Salem, Oregan, which fits the theme that actually Omelas could be any old place. Also, Omelas = salem, but backwards. That is, it means peace, but backwards. Or it's a kind of homophone for home hélas, which translates to "man, alas."

kaworu
Jul 23, 2004

DirtyRobot posted:

I also really love the intro in my edition that talks about where she got the idea for the town/place. It's from a road sign or something in Salem, Oregan, which fits the theme that actually Omelas could be any old place. Also, Omelas = salem, but backwards. That is, it means peace, but backwards. Or it's a kind of homophone for home hélas, which translates to "man, alas."

Yeah, she mentions the origin of the name "Omelas" in one of my favorite quotes of hers, where she also talks about how she had inadvertently borrowed some central ideas for the story from when she had read Dostoyevsky's The Brothers Karamazov at age 25, a connection I didn't make, myself. Anyway, the quote: "[People always ask me] Where do you get your ideas from, Ms. Le Guin?' From forgetting Dostoyevsky and reading road signs backwards, naturally. Where else?"


And there was something else I wanted to mention - I got around to reading the "A Description of Earthsea" section at the end of the 2012 hardcover re-release of Tales From Earthsea that I had bought recently. It's pretty great because it goes into detail about some of the legends and histories alluded to throughout the series (Erreth-Akbe, Morred and Elferran, etc) and it's just fun to read about that stuff in depth, as a longtime fan of the series.

She also added in something that I thought was just GREAT and which I got a total kick out of. In telling the story of Erreth-Akbe in depth, she goes into detail about how he was best friends growing up with Prince (and eventual King) Maharion, whom you might remember as the last of the old line of the Kings. The one without an heir who made the long-unfulfilled prophecy about the one who will inherit his kingdom will cross the dark land living, a prophecy which of course Arren/Lebannen and Ged fulfill.

In any case, Le Guin stats that Erreth-Akbe and Maharion were "Heart's Brothers" and the very, very strong implication was that they were homosexual lovers and that this was more or less commonly culturally accepted in Earthsea, at least back then (and I don't believe homosexuality is brought up much in the main books). But regardless, as a gay reader I got a real kick out of her making the big macho most powerful (pre-Ged) made and hero of legend (Erreth-Akbe) a homosexual. And it's not "retconning" given that this is how she has always worked, creating the history of her world as she discovers it herself.

Mecca-Benghazi
Mar 31, 2012


I got Powers on the cheap a while back through an Amazon sale; are the books in the Annals of the Western Shore series self-contained or should I look into reading the first two books before I start that one?

Also I read The Left Hand of Darkness a while back and I guess I just forgot to talk more about it in the monthly let's read thread. Even after a month I am still not too sure what my thoughts on it were or what I was expecting going into it (I knew the basic plot summary), but I will say that her prose is beautiful.

kaworu posted:

While Genly is obviously trying to adapt to the Gethenian ways and get the hang of things, he is clearly held back in a number of ways, most significantly by his total inability to grasp the meaning behind shifgrethor, the sort of "game" or "system" of social pride and order and face-saving that essentially dictates how the Gethenians live their lives and what dictates their senses of self-work and value (spiritually, practically, sexually) in themselves and others. I think that there are a number of analogs on earth, but I have always loved the concept of shifgrethor and just trying to figure out what in hell it means.
It's probably because I'm not a native speaker but I feel like shifgrethor is one of those things where I know what it means but not how to describe it, if that makes sense.

quote:

But anyway, yeah. I really think there are basically three different distinct books going on here. Part of it is because I always felt the first half just felt so disconnected from the second half in tone and content. The first half is good, but the second half is GREAT and is what elevates this book to the status of classic in my eyes.
I'm almost certain it was intentional, maybe to mirror the shift in Genly and Estraven's relationship but I'd have to reread to remember when exactly that takes place.

InediblePenguin
Sep 27, 2004

I'm strong. And a giant penguin. Please don't eat me. No, really. Don't try.
Has anyone else read Always Coming Home? That is one of my favorite things.

V for Vegas
Sep 1, 2004

THUNDERDOME LOSER
Great reference to Omelas in another disturbing piece,

http://aeon.co/magazine/world-views/whats-it-like-to-be-disabled-in-china/

jneen
Feb 8, 2014

InediblePenguin posted:

Has anyone else read Always Coming Home? That is one of my favorite things.

Always Coming Home is fantastic. I need to pick it up again soon. All her world-building magic going into a pretty realistic "utopian" "novel".

Chamberk
Jan 11, 2004

when there is nothing left to burn you have to set yourself on fire
I have recently discovered Le Guin via the Earthsea books, and just read Left Hand of Darkness last month. I don't have much to add to this discussion, but I do love Le Guin's very simple, almost stark style. She says more with a few sentences than most scifi/fantasy authors can with a full page.

Blog Free or Die
Apr 30, 2005

FOR THE MOTHERLAND
Yeah, I'm always surprised each time I go to reread Wizard of Earthsea at how thin the book is. So much happens in the book, so beautifully described, and yet it isn't even 200 pages long :wtf:

I've read books three times as thick that didn't have half as much going on.

General Battuta
Feb 7, 2011

This is how you communicate with a fellow intelligence: you hurt it, you keep on hurting it, until you can distinguish the posts from the screams.
Her prose control is enviable and incredible. I've only disagreed with one sentence of hers, although for some reason it's stuck in my head ever since - there's a passage in The Dispossessed where a character compares her daughter's goodness to clear water, and I felt like it was such a LeGuin metaphor it almost felt like self-parody. A stupid thing to get hung up on, but I think it's a testament to how incredibly precise and minimalist she is that I got annoyed with just that one image.

I always find her little poems from Earthsea and The Left Hand of Darkness very comforting. I leave them open in browser tabs when I'm depressed at work. :unsmith:

Die Sexmonster!
Nov 30, 2005
I was a little confused reading this thread and trying to find praise for A Wrinkle in Time. Wrong author!

Le Guin is amazing. I'm really glad this thread exists for recommendations, as I've only read my father's copies of the first two Earthsea novels. Completely captivated me both in writing style and content, loved those books.

Swan Oat
Oct 9, 2012

I was selected for my skill.
I was at my parents' house recently looking through some of the books I had left behind and came across The Telling, which is one of her later works set in the Ekumen universe. It's not necessarily a great story but it's definitely enjoyable. However what struck me is that every time I re-read something from LeGuin that I haven't read in a while, I am amazed anew at her gift for economy of language, and how that economy can manifest in beauty. To me it feels very sharp and austere, like a glacier. Which I guess is an appropriate image since The Left Hand of Darkness is like my favorite book :v:

General Battuta posted:

Her prose control is enviable and incredible. I've only disagreed with one sentence of hers, although for some reason it's stuck in my head ever since - there's a passage in The Dispossessed where a character compares her daughter's goodness to clear water, and I felt like it was such a LeGuin metaphor it almost felt like self-parody. A stupid thing to get hung up on, but I think it's a testament to how incredibly precise and minimalist she is that I got annoyed with just that one image.

I always find her little poems from Earthsea and The Left Hand of Darkness very comforting. I leave them open in browser tabs when I'm depressed at work. :unsmith:

Haha I know exactly what you are talking about. The one tick of hers that sort of bothered me was that at least it TLOTD there are several sentences that read like "Fires in Karhide are to warm the spirit not the flesh" and, like, there should be a comma there!

kaworu
Jul 23, 2004

I know I'm bringing back an old thread of mine, but I'm kind of surprised it didn't get bumped after Ursula K. Le Guin's *wonderful* speech at The National Book Awards back on November 19th. Some of you might have seen this, because it did sort of make the rounds on the social media sites a little bit.

It's a pretty great speech, and it just makes me so happy to hear her saying things like this. We really don't have very many people like this left in the world, and when they decide to speak up and say something (even if just for 6 minutes) it's usually worth listening to.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Et9Nf-rsALk

Ursula Le Guin is pretty much the most awesome person ever. She's just of a breed that isn't around much anymore. She's so wonderful and witty and sharp and incisive here. I just wanted to post it here in case anyone missed it, because it's really worth watching.

kaworu fucked around with this message at 21:44 on Dec 10, 2014

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Aphra Bane
Oct 3, 2013

I for one hadn't seen it, so thanks for the link. She's a treasure :unsmith:

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