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I've seen a lot of people here mention Le Guin's work and since she's one of the most seminal science fiction writers like, period, I think we deserve a thread all about her and her works. ☝️ that's her! Author of incredible works like the Hainish cycle, which includes The Dispossessed, The Left Hand of Darkness, and The Word for World is Forest; the double-trilogy books of Earthsea with A Wizard of Earthsea, The Tombs of Atuan and The Farthest Shore forming the first trilogy and Tehanu, Tales from Earthsea and The Other Wind forming the second; short stories like The Ones Who Walk Away from Omelas; Catwings, a children's book series about cats that have wings, poetry, essays, a translation of the Tao Te Ching - she's prolific! She sadly passed away in 2018, but she will live on in her incredible collection of works that preach empathy, kindness, and love. What's your favorite Le Guin book? I am tied between The Left Hand of Darkness and Tehanu, but I think Tehanu wins by virtue of being one of the scariest books I have ever read. I loving love Earthsea so much.
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Apr 4, 2023 01:36
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| # ? Apr 28, 2024 06:37 |
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I'm sad to say I never read any of her books while she was still alive. I read Left Hand of Darkness in 2019 and Worlds of Exile and Illusion in 2021. The latter is part of the Hainish series, it is three separate though pretty brief volumes in one. Of the two I liked LHoD more. Whenever I read other peoples words on Le Guin it makes me want to read more of her work but sometimes it is just a little dry for me? There was a quote from LHoD that really stuck with me though. quote:“How does one hate a country, or love one? Tibe talks about it; I lack the trick of it. I know people, I know towns, farms, hills and rivers and rocks, I know how the sun at sunset in autumn falls on the side of a certain plowland in the hills; but what is the sense of giving a boundary to all that, of giving it a name and ceasing to love where the name ceases to apply? What is love of one’s country; is it hate of one’s uncountry? Then it’s not a good thing.”
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Apr 4, 2023 02:28
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LHoD is so, so, so loving good. If there is a single Le Guin book I would recommend it is that one. For those who want to start somewhere with her work, the Hainish cycle shares a setting but all of the books are separated sometimes by thousands of years so you can read whichever.
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Apr 4, 2023 02:34
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I tried reading A Wizard of Earthsea when I was in elementary school, but at the time I just wasn't ready to appreciate it. I tried again a couple of years ago, though, and loved it. The only bad thing I can say about it is that Le Guin invented the wizard school trope and, as a result, kind of paved the way for Harry Potter. For what it's worth, I don't think Le Guin would appreciate Rowling. One of these days I'll get the rest of the Earthsea books. I also quite liked The Dispossessed. It was cool to read that after having read philosophers and revolutionaries like Kropotkin or Proudhon. BeastOfTheEdelwood fucked around with this message at 06:04 on Apr 4, 2023 |
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Apr 4, 2023 06:00
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BeastOfTheEdelwood posted:I tried reading A Wizard of Earthsea when I was in elementary school, but at the time I just wasn't ready to appreciate it. I tried again a couple of years ago, though, and loved it. The only bad thing I can say about it is that Le Guin invented the wizard school trope and, as a result, kind of paved the way for Harry Potter. For what it's worth, I don't think Le Guin would appreciate Rowling. One of these days I'll get the rest of the Earthsea books. Can't recommend reading the rest of the earthsea books enough. Unlike most series, it isn't just more of the same, she reconsiders and revised the themes of the earlier works in a really beautiful way.
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Apr 4, 2023 07:13
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Tenar is one of my most absolute favorite characters in all of fiction, and Tehanu is the best book in Earthsea, period. Tehanu the book is a great example of Le Guin reconsidering and reviewing her own tropes: After Ged loses his ability to do magic, he can finally become a realized person, because the power can no longer control him. More of Le Guin's taoist influence showing through
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Apr 4, 2023 16:48
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I picked up a copy of LHoD in a library sale a decade or so before I finally read it. I finally read A Wizard of Earthsea last year. I really need to stop putting off reading her books for so long because they're amazing.
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Apr 4, 2023 16:54
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Youremother posted:Tenar is one of my most absolute favorite characters in all of fiction, and Tehanu is the best book in Earthsea, period. Tehanu the book is a great example of Le Guin reconsidering and reviewing her own tropes: After Ged loses his ability to do magic, he can finally become a realized person, because the power can no longer control him. More of Le Guin's taoist influence showing through Yes, exactly! Over the course of the series she moves more and more away from the traditional form of a heroic fantasy story, until the climax of the whole series is a conference of various people in which they only come to partial, uncertain agreement
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Apr 4, 2023 17:00
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Apr 4, 2023 17:06
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distortion park posted:Yes, exactly! Over the course of the series she moves more and more away from the traditional form of a heroic fantasy story, until the climax of the whole series is a conference of various people in which they only come to partial, uncertain agreement I love that the climax of the entire series is them literally demolishing the greatest symbol of magic. Maybe magic was a bad thing the whole time!
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Apr 4, 2023 17:15
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my favorite book of hers is always coming home which is not a novel but a ..... idk an imagined anthropology. centering around an imaginary far-future earth culture, containing descriptions, articles, examples of writing and stories told by members of the culture, etc. hard to describe and therefore hard to recommend to people: if you require a book to have a plot and specific characters don't bother, if you grew up reading the encyclopedia for fun then try it
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Apr 4, 2023 22:58
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I've been reading her short story collections lately (Compass Rose / Winds's Twelve Quaters) and the non Hainish stuff is still really good. especially enjoyed Intracom as a pregnancy metaphor.
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Apr 4, 2023 23:02
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Omelas story good. Incredible how many people read it, imagine themselves someone who would walk away and then do nothing about the world they live in. Obviously, I am talking about someone I know. I mentioned in the Pern thread that I don't really have a taste for SFF, but The Left Hand of Darkness gutted me. Beautifully written, accessible and captivating even at its most pseudo-technical. The love that grows between Estraven and Ai but never comes to any kind of satisfaction is haunting. A gift to queer people.
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Apr 5, 2023 02:50
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Doc Fission posted:The Left Hand of Darkness gutted me. Beautifully written, accessible and captivating even at its most pseudo-technical. The love that grows between Estraven and Ai but never comes to any kind of satisfaction is haunting. A gift to queer people. The scene at the very end where Estraven runs directly towards the border guards and it's ambiguous if they were trying to kill themself or not... Such an incredible book, I don't even have the words. There will never be anything like it
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Apr 5, 2023 05:49
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Youremother posted:What's your favorite Le Guin book? I am tied between The Left Hand of Darkness and Tehanu, but I think Tehanu wins by virtue of being one of the scariest books I have ever read. I loving love Earthsea so much. There's a nice looking illustrated edition of Earthsea (ISBN 9781473223547), and I kinda want to buy it even though I already have them in paperback 
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Apr 5, 2023 12:43
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I bounced off Tehanu as a kid but absolutely loved it when I returned to the series as an adult
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Apr 5, 2023 13:42
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I read LHoD a few years back and it was incredible. Need to get to The Dispossessed one of these days, it's been sitting on my bookshelf for a while
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Apr 5, 2023 14:24
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Absolutely start on The Dispossessed as soon as possible, IMO it's her magnum opus. Left Hand of Darkness is her spiritual thesis and The Dispossessed is her political.
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Apr 5, 2023 14:31
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itry posted:There's a nice looking illustrated edition of Earthsea (ISBN 9781473223547), and I kinda want to buy it even though I already have them in paperback I see a second illustrated edition also available - one is from Orion and one is from Gallery/Saga which one is supposed to be better?
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Apr 5, 2023 15:12
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buffalo all day posted:I see a second illustrated edition also available - one is from Orion and one is from Gallery/Saga which one is supposed to be better? Both of the Gollancz/Saga prints have 1008 pages and illustrations by Charles Vess. The differences appear to be the weight and margins - Saga's weighs more (almost twice as much) and has wider margins. And Saga's comes with a color dust jacket, while Gollancz's, I think, comes in a slip case. Edit:  https://store.gollancz.co.uk/products/the-books-of-earthsea-the-complete-illustrated-edition https://www.simonandschuster.com/books/The-Books-of-Earthsea/Ursula-K-Le-Guin/Earthsea-Cycle/9781481465588 There's a photo with the Gollancz slip case in here: https://www.abebooks.co.uk/signed-first-edition/Books-Earthsea-Complete-Illustrated-Special-Edition/30133512616/bd#&gid=1&pid=4 itry fucked around with this message at 16:09 on Apr 5, 2023 |
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Apr 5, 2023 15:38
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Youremother posted:Absolutely start on The Dispossessed as soon as possible, IMO it's her magnum opus. Left Hand of Darkness is her spiritual thesis and The Dispossessed is her political. Reading the Dispossessed was the first time I'd seen anarchism taken seriously and was revalatory for me. It's called an "ambiguous utopia" but the writing doesn't feel utopian, it's more like it shows how our value systems aren't the only ones imaginable.
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Apr 5, 2023 15:41
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The Dispossessed is one of my favourite books ever, and the only book I’ve ever read more than once (three times, once over the course of a few days, twice back to back in a police cell for, ironically enough, anti-capitalist protest related things). I’m not sure if I love it as much as The Lathe of Heaven though. Me and my pal once considered opening a leftist bar in our city and calling it The Cave of Bevvin’
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Apr 5, 2023 16:11
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The one i think about a lot is actually The Birthday of the World, late short story collection, particularly Solitude and The matter of Seggri. Solitude is about a post-apocalyptic society of people with pathological demand avoidance and who ritually cleanse themselves of all emotional attachment to people or places because it was what brought the end times before. The women throw rocks at men if they start trying to do patriarchy at them Oh yeah and Coming of age in Karhide, which has about the most beautiful and wholesome depiction of an orgy ever written I think
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Apr 5, 2023 23:31
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i really liked The Birthday of the World. those stories also feel more anthropological to me, short portraits of a way that people could live, meditations on ways of life and how living them forms people, eh. and i just really like Coming of Age in Karhide, i enjoy the descriptions, i like the prose. Also in the titular story when humans from another planet land in their space suits and it's being interpreted by this young kid who was raised in a cloister, like.
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Apr 6, 2023 00:28
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There are some pretty funny ones too, like the one where the arsehole dude gets abducted by aliens, or the one where rodents (?) climb up a house.
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Apr 6, 2023 08:32
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She Unnames Them is just an absolutely beautiful piece of writing, not even showing instead of saying, more like showing you the way
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Apr 6, 2023 08:36
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i've only read the lathe of heaven, and i was not impressed
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Apr 7, 2023 11:57
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I didn't really like The Lathe of Heaven either when I read it. Too weird and didn't make a lot of sense. I haven't read a ton of her works but so far it's been the weakest for me.
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Apr 7, 2023 16:15
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I enjoyed lathe of heaven. Read it on a backpacking trip and tbh gave myself the heebie jeebies. I can see why one wouldn’t put it in their top top tier though. It’s the only one I’ve read besides omelas I guess. Sounds like I need to check out some other books of hers.
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Apr 7, 2023 16:35
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If you love fantasy or are scared of grown up books read wizard of Earthsea otherwise read left hand of darkness, imo. Lathe of heaven is fine but I have no idea why you’d read that one out of all her amazing books
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Apr 7, 2023 16:49
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ive read Pierre and I can’t figure out what everyone is on about with this Melville guy!!!
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Apr 7, 2023 16:52
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buffalo all day posted:If you love fantasy or are scared of grown up books read wizard of Earthsea otherwise read left hand of darkness, imo. Lathe of heaven is fine but I have no idea why you’d read that one out of all her amazing books Lathe of heaven was available for instant checkout and her other stuff had a wait time at the library. I guess there was a reason for that!
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Apr 7, 2023 17:49
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as I've said repeatedly i love her short fiction and recently i saw Lathe of Heaven on the novels rack of a Family Dollar and bought it but couldn't get into it like i could her short works. I hereby absolve myself of doing like that was a personal failing
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Apr 7, 2023 18:09
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I love left hand of darkness so much, and the dispossessed is really good. Even though taking anarchism seriously is not something that grown adults should be doing I think the storytelling is easily strong enough to make up for it. I've read a ton of le guin and the only thing I didn't like was The Telling, which just felt like dumb liberal Chinese panic of the early 2000s and I only made it like a third of the way in, but I really adored everything else I've read of hers. The fourth earthsea book is amazing and I still find myself thinking of it often.
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Apr 7, 2023 18:53
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I actually just finished all 6 Earthsea books and short stories. I grabbed that giant rear end compilation from the library, and it was well worth the big read Tombs of Atuan and Tehanu were both fantastic, with the former being one of my favorite fantasy books ever. I bet I would have hated Tehanu as a teenager, or even in my 20s, but now I'm 35 with two kids and it made me cry I enjoyed all the others with the exception of The Other Wind, which felt pretty unnecessary and was uncharacteristically clunky, but (as others have mentioned) the way its central conflict gets resolved is fantastic The Books of Earthsea also might have the nicest paper I've ever seen in a book. Super thick, feels really good in the hand. Here's it on the left compared to another doorstopper on the right. It actually has 200 pages fewer than the doorstopper (~1,000 vs. ~1,200) yet is nearly 20% thicker  I didn't really care for the illustrations in the book, but it's still a must-buy for people who enjoy Earthsea
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Apr 7, 2023 19:58
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I was lucky enough that my library had The Books of Earthsea, and it really is the best way to read the entire series. I agree about not liking the illustrations, something about Le Guin's writing gives me extremely vivid mental imagery compared to other books so I couldn't click with the illustrations at all. For example, in my dream The Dispossessed movie Shevek would definitely be played by Dev Patel.
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Apr 7, 2023 20:06
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buffalo all day posted:ive read Pierre and I can’t figure out what everyone is on about with this Melville guy!!! I liked Pierre, although I can absolutely see why someone wouldn't like it.
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Apr 7, 2023 23:40
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The Books Of Earthsea also has one previously unpublished short story, which hit quite hard as the collection was published after Le Guin's death.
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Apr 8, 2023 06:42
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Not So Fast posted:I've been reading her short story collections lately (Compass Rose / Winds's Twelve Quaters) and the non Hainish stuff is still really good. especially enjoyed Intracom as a pregnancy metaphor. I've only read "The Compass Rose," and I think this is as good a time as any to reread it. "The Author of the Acacia Seeds" has stayed with me for over twenty years. I'm really interested in things like animal intelligence and the origins and evolution of language, especially as we learn more and more about animal communication and intelligence. (Did you know that dolphins gossip? That's amazing!) I never picked up on "Intercom" as a metaphor for pregnancy, that's an interesting perspective. Another reason to reread it
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Apr 8, 2023 19:02
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I just finished the Dispossessed a week or so ago and loved it. It does something subversive which most speculative fiction pretends to do by presenting ideas that can't exist outside the framework of the fiction, whereas the Dispossessed seems like an actual honest exploration of real world philosophy and presents a plausible depiction that's far from utopian. It made me pick up her first short story collection which has a story set in the same setting related to the Dispossessed that I'm excited to read. Two of the testimonials or whatever are people comparing her to Borges which I'd never heard before but makes me even more excited since he's one of my favorites. I tried Left Hand when I was very young, like junior high or late elementary school and don't remember a thing about it. Definitely on my list to read again.
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Apr 8, 2023 20:31
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