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The Something Awful Forums > The Finer Arts > The Book Barn > The Ursula K. Le Guin Megathread
 
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Mecca-Benghazi
Mar 31, 2012


 Yay, a LeGuin thread. :)

I haven't read any of her other books (I've got Left Hand of Darkness and The Dispossessed right here but never started them for some reason; I'll do that tomorrow :3:), but the Earthsea Cycle has always been a bit personal for me. Growing up, it was the only fantasy I could find with people that looked like me. And it seems a bit silly because on a surface level it's not so different from say, Harry Potter, but it meant a lot to me at the time.

* # ¿ Nov 2, 2013 10:25
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# ¿ Apr 27, 2024 19:37
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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.

* # ¿ Feb 12, 2014 08:26
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The Something Awful Forums > The Finer Arts > The Book Barn > The Ursula K. Le Guin Megathread