Welcome goonlings to the Awful Book of the Month! In this thread, we choose one work of Resources: Project Gutenberg - http://www.gutenberg.org - A database of over 17000 books available online. If you can suggest books from here, that'd be the best. SparkNotes - http://www.sparknotes.com/ - A very helpful Cliffnotes-esque site, but much better, in my opinion. If you happen to come in late and need to catch-up, you can get great character/chapter/plot summaries here. For recommendations on future material, suggestions on how to improve the club, or just a general rant, feel free to PM me. Past Books of the Month [for BOTM before 2014, refer to archives] 2014: January: Ursula K. LeGuin - The Left Hand of Darkness February: Mikhail Bulgalov - Master & Margarita March: Richard P. Feynman -- Surely You're Joking, Mr. Feynman! April: James Joyce -- Dubliners May: Gabriel Garcia Marquez -- 100 Years of Solitude June: Howard Zinn -- A People's History of the United States July: Mary Renault -- The Last of the Wine August: Barbara Tuchtman -- The Guns of August September: Jane Austen -- Pride and Prejudice October: Roger Zelazny -- A Night in the Lonesome October November: John Gardner -- Grendel December: Christopher Moore -- The Stupidest Angel 2015: January: Italo Calvino -- Invisible Cities February: Karl Ove Knausgaard -- My Struggle: Book 1. March: Knut Hamsun -- Hunger April: Liu Cixin -- 三体 ( The Three-Body Problem) May: John Steinbeck -- Cannery Row June: Truman Capote -- In Cold Blood (Hiatus) August: Ta-Nehisi Coates -- Between the World and Me September: Wilkie Collins -- The Moonstone October:Seth Dickinson -- The Traitor Baru Cormorant November:Svetlana Alexievich -- Voices from Chernobyl December: Michael Chabon -- Gentlemen of the Road 2016: January: Three Men in a Boat (To say nothing of the Dog!) by Jerome K. Jerome February:The March Up Country (The Anabasis) of Xenophon March: The Name of the Rose by Umberto Eco April: Plain Tales from the Hills by Rudyard Kipling May: Temple of the Golden Pavilion by Yukio Mishima June:The Vegetarian by Han Kang July:Lud-in-the-Mist by Hope Mirrlees August: Pale Fire by Vladimir Nabokov September:Siddhartha by Herman Hesse October:Right Ho, Jeeves by P.G. Wodehouse November:Kitchen Confidential by Anthony Bourdain December: It Can't Happen Here by Sinclair Lewis 2017: January: Mother Night by Kurt Vonnegut February: The Plague by Albert Camus Current: The Dispossessed by Ursula K. LeGuin https://twitter.com/jpbrammer/status/837377129071378433/photo/1?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw Book available here: https://www.amazon.com/dp/B000FC11GA/ref=dp-kindle-redirect?_encoding=UTF8&btkr=1 About the book: quote:The Dispossessed: An Ambiguous Utopia is a 1974 utopian science fiction novel by Ursula K. Le Guin, set in the same fictional universe as that of The Left Hand of Darkness (the Hainish Cycle). The book won the Nebula Award for Best Novel in 1974,[1] won both the Hugo and Locus Awards in 1975,[2] and received a nomination for the John W. Campbell Memorial Award in 1975.[2] It achieved a degree of literary recognition unusual for science fiction works due to its exploration of many ideas and themes, including anarchism and revolutionary societies, capitalism, individualism and collectivism, and freedom versus imprisonment. Themes and Background quote:Le Guin's foreword to the novel notes that her anarchism is closely akin to that of Peter Kropotkin's, whose Mutual Aid closely assessed the influence of the natural world on competition and cooperation.[20] Le Guin's use of realism in this aspect of the work further complicates a simple utopian interpretation of the work. Anarres is not a perfect society, and Le Guin's The Dispossessed seems to argue that no such thing is possible.[citation needed] However, life in Anarres, in her view, is far more free, just, meaningful, and satisfying than life in the main countries of Urras (or in their Earth counterparts when the book was written: the capitalist West and the communist East).[citation needed] quote:It has been suggested that Le Guin's title is a reference to Dostoyevsky's novel The Possessed,[11] although Dostoevsky's title means possessed by demons. Other commenters point to hardship caused by lack of resources as a plausible reference. The people of Anarres are "dispossessed" in the sense that they have no personal material possessions, since all goods are held in common. In contrast, the working class majority of Urras are "dispossessed" in the sense that they do not have access to the wealth which has been created with their labor. Much of the philosophical underpinnings and ecological concepts came from Murray Bookchin's Post-Scarcity Anarchism (1971), according to a letter Le Guin sent to Bookchin.[21] Anarres citizens are dispossessed not just by political choice, but by the very lack of actual resources to possess. Here, again, Le Guin draws a contrast with the natural wealth of Urras, and the competitive behaviors this fosters.[22] Pacing Just read, then Post. Please bookmark the thread to encourage discussion. References and Further Reading https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mutual_Aid:_A_Factor_of_Evolution https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Post-Scarcity_Anarchism http://public.wsu.edu/~brians/science_fiction/dispossessed.html Final Note: Thanks, and I hope everyone enjoys the book! Hieronymous Alloy fucked around with this message at 12:46 on Mar 6, 2017 |
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# ? Mar 6, 2017 04:24 |
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# ? May 15, 2024 03:04 |
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I just started reading this before work today and it seems pretty interesting. I'm still working my way through chapter 1 (hey, watching a puppy, cooking breakfast, and making coffee eat up a large chunk of my morning, ok!?), but the differences in the ways of thinking were pretty cool, higher = better vs central = better, that kind of stuff.
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# ? Mar 9, 2017 05:10 |
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Also just started, nothing to say yet.
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# ? Mar 9, 2017 08:58 |
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Huh, read this one a few months ago. A Good Book is all I will say.
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# ? Mar 9, 2017 11:19 |
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I too just read this a few months ago. Le Guin always surprises me with her avoidance of cliche in most of her works. It's refreshing in sci fi, socially from the era this novel was written. No offense to other authors of the day, but so many used tired tropes to express interesting views of the future.
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# ? Mar 12, 2017 02:47 |
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Did anyone else feel that the anarchist planet had a more opressive system in many aspects than the capitalist imperialist one?
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# ? Mar 13, 2017 00:42 |
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Take the plunge! Okay! posted:Did anyone else feel that the anarchist planet had a more opressive system in many aspects than the capitalist imperialist one? I think that's the point. You give up something regardless of which planet you're on. Either you lose the generic gamble and get hosed over by a hierarchical society or you don't wager where no one loses but no one wins either.
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# ? Mar 13, 2017 01:13 |
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Take the plunge! Okay! posted:Did anyone else feel that the anarchist planet had a more opressive system in many aspects than the capitalist imperialist one? I'm still reading, and in fact have only just finished the second chapter, but find myself thinking that Anarres (the anarchist planet) is pretty oppressive with its information censoring and assignment of work. I haven't gotten to read much about Urras except for what the Annarens (?) are taught, to fear and hate them and that they were supposedly burning bodies of unpropertied children that had died of famine while the [i]propertied[i] classes dined in luxury. I'm sure that there will be tons of bad things about Urras in the coming chapters. Really, the thing that I felt most reading Shevek's history was that Anarres was kind of like a non-militaristic North Korea and Urras was South Korea. This could be because I have lived in SK for 8+ years, though.
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# ? Mar 13, 2017 01:45 |
Ottermotive Insanity posted:I think that's the point. You give up something regardless of which planet you're on. Either you lose the generic gamble and get hosed over by a hierarchical society or you don't wager where no one loses but no one wins either. It also ties into LeGuin's Taoist beliefs -- there's no perfect system, but there are two opposing systems, each of which contains in itself the seeds of its own destruction and transformation into the other system. That said, I think LeGuin probably *did* believe she was representing Anarres more positively than she was Urras, so it's an interesting puzzle to think out why. Personally, I'd point to the relative opportunity for and response to change on each planet respectively. For another angle, keep in mind that this book was published in 1974, roughly eight years after Heinlein won the Hugo for The Moon is a Harsh Mistress. It's hard not to see this book as a direct response. Hieronymous Alloy fucked around with this message at 06:13 on Mar 13, 2017 |
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# ? Mar 13, 2017 06:10 |
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About halfway through now. I already had great respect for LeGuin (having read the Earthsea books plus some others of hers) but goddamn, this is some gay space communism of the finest grade. (And yes, the imperfection of both worlds is shining through very clearly by this point.)
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# ? Mar 13, 2017 11:20 |
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Take the plunge! Okay! posted:Did anyone else feel that the anarchist planet had a more opressive system in many aspects than the capitalist imperialist one? I saw bits of the oppressive nature through the first half, then it really kicks into high gear just after half way first with the paper he wanted published and then the baby and drought stuff. In the capitalist society, he could have gotten the paper published even on his own, but did not have the opportunity in there anarchist. Hieronymous Alloy posted:It also ties into LeGuin's Taoist beliefs -- there's no perfect system, but there are two opposing systems, each of which contains in itself the seeds of its own destruction and transformation into the other system. I'm about 60% through and getting that no perfect system vibe as well. It's pretty clear than the "no perfect system" is what she's dgetting at. Purely anarchist is just as bad as purely capitalist. I talk about the same argument of "no perfect system" with my hardcore capitalist friend vs. my socialist views. Each system needs a little of the other to prosper.
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# ? Mar 13, 2017 21:31 |
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Yeah, the anarchist planet feels a lot like "conform and contribute, or you're dead". I guess that in the not-USA you could just choose to waste your life away with a bottle of not-Budweiser in front of the TV. No such option on Anarres. I read it a couple of months ago, but if I'm not mistaken, Anarres handles sexuality a lot better than Urras, right?
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# ? Mar 13, 2017 22:21 |
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Take the plunge! Okay! posted:Yeah, the anarchist planet feels a lot like "conform and contribute, or you're dead". I guess that in the not-USA you could just choose to waste your life away with a bottle of not-Budweiser in front of the TV. No such option on Anarres. Anarres handles sexuality better in the sense that they seem to be more open and less repressed about it, but conversely they seem to use their weirdo passive aggression to discourage monogamy or raising your own children, and this leads to all sorts of resentments (like Shev's whole relationship with "the mother"). The whole point of the novel seems to be in the duality of basically everything, showing the positive and negative side of every possible philosophical stance.
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# ? Mar 13, 2017 22:56 |
habituallyred posted:Huh, read this one a few months ago. A Good Book is all I will say. Read this many years ago and this is also my memory. I should reread though.
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# ? Mar 14, 2017 19:15 |
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So I got a little sidetracked reading Zorba the Greek but now that I'm done with it I've returned to The Dispossessed. Just finished chapter 3, which is set on Urras. So far, at least to my eye, Anarres seems like a pretty oppressive place (due in large part to my reading of chapter 2, Shevek's childhood) and Urras, aside from the hugely sexist system in place, seems pretty decent? I am trying to keep in mind that Shevek is something of a VIP and would naturally be taken around to only the good parts of town, and since we only see what he is seeing, we are only seeing the good bits as well. I'm guessing that we'll slowly get exposed to more and more inequity as the book goes on. I will say that the conversations between Shevek and Pae and co. are pretty fun to read. LeGuin does a pretty good job of getting the feeling of two parties trying to converse across a relatively large cultural gulf into her writing. Also, watching Shevek slowly come to grips with the the concept of property, like when he first explores his room, is definitely fun. So far, liking this book quite a lot. *edit* Finished chapter 4. Man, the family structure on Anarres is all kinds of messed up. Poor Shevek must have some weird mommy issues to work out. USMC_Karl fucked around with this message at 02:26 on Mar 17, 2017 |
# ? Mar 16, 2017 04:35 |
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Finished; a very fine book.
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# ? Mar 17, 2017 10:38 |
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USMC_Karl posted:*edit* Finished chapter 4. Man, the family structure on Anarres is all kinds of messed up. Poor Shevek must have some weird mommy issues to work out. It's unusual to our eyes, but not without precedent in human history, the Israeli kibbutz being the most recent and arguably most extreme; there's a great Guardian article about it here, and it's interesting to compare the description of the kibbutz's communal lifestyle to that of the Anarrans. Le Guin is the daughter of notable anthropologist, and you can see that discipline's influences in most of her work. I wouldn't be at all surprised to learn that most of the strangeness in both societies of The Dispossessed had direct real-world analogues somewhere.
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# ? Mar 17, 2017 18:39 |
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Kestral posted:It's unusual to our eyes, but not without precedent in human history, the Israeli kibbutz being the most recent and arguably most extreme; there's a great Guardian article about it here, and it's interesting to compare the description of the kibbutz's communal lifestyle to that of the Anarrans. Le Guin is the daughter of notable anthropologist, and you can see that discipline's influences in most of her work. I wouldn't be at all surprised to learn that most of the strangeness in both societies of The Dispossessed had direct real-world analogues somewhere. Well thank you for that, I'll go read that article. Very interesting to see real-world parallels to the book. I'm up to chapter 7 and, as the story goes on, I find myself wanting to read it more and more. This has definitely been a slow burn book for me, starting out I wasn't super interested and just kind of getting my feet. By chapter 4 I was starting to actually care for Shavek. Now, at chapter 7, I have to force myself to put it down after every chapter so I can have some time to do other stuff/think about what I read. I'm glad I voted for this one.
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# ? Mar 20, 2017 01:29 |
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Anyone who feels the way USMC_Karl does should run, not walk, to the nearest place they can find Le Guin's other great sci-fi sociology / anthropology novel, The Left Hand of Darkness, which was rightly the BOTM for January 2014. It is just as good as The Dispossessed, possibly better, and is incredibly relevant today - possibly more so than when it was written. Like Dispossessed, it's a slow burn until around the halfway mark, but absolutely worth it.
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# ? Mar 20, 2017 03:18 |
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Kestral posted:Anyone who feels the way USMC_Karl does should run, not walk, to the nearest place they can find Le Guin's other great sci-fi sociology / anthropology novel, The Left Hand of Darkness, which was rightly the BOTM for January 2014. It is just as good as The Dispossessed, possibly better, and is incredibly relevant today - possibly more so than when it was written. Like Dispossessed, it's a slow burn until around the halfway mark, but absolutely worth it. You're killing me. I'll add that to my list. Thanks for the recommendation.
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# ? Mar 20, 2017 03:44 |
Whereas Eye of the Heron is boring as gently caress.
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# ? Mar 20, 2017 05:33 |
Need suggestions for next month. Can't be fantasy/SF since we just did that.
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# ? Mar 21, 2017 02:40 |
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Well, I just finished it and couldn't really take part, but it looks like you haven't done Zorba the Greek yet. I thought it was a ton of fun as a book, and it wasn't particularly hard to read. It seemed to me that you could discuss a little of it as well.
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# ? Mar 21, 2017 03:27 |
USMC_Karl posted:Well, I just finished it and couldn't really take part, but it looks like you haven't done Zorba the Greek yet. I thought it was a ton of fun as a book, and it wasn't particularly hard to read. It seemed to me that you could discuss a little of it as well. That's a neat thought. It'll go in the poll. I have to wonder if anybody at all, when it came out, realized how screamingly gay it was I still see "Zorba's" greek restaurants all over, it was a huge novel back in the day. And I encourage anyone who's read a BOTM recently enough to remember it to participate. Or even dredge up old BOTM threads if you want to commment after the fact. Hieronymous Alloy fucked around with this message at 03:44 on Mar 21, 2017 |
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# ? Mar 21, 2017 03:42 |
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If it manages to make it as a BoTM, I'd recommend Peter Bien's translation. I got it on amazon for $12 and the quality was top notch. Totally colloquial, lots of feeling, and smooth to read. *edit* to move back to The Dispossessed, finishing up chapter 7 as we speak and I get the feeling that we are going to start delving into the not-so-nice things on Urras. Shevek has started to try to seek out some of the unpropertied classes and seems to be trying to buck the university a bit. USMC_Karl fucked around with this message at 03:49 on Mar 21, 2017 |
# ? Mar 21, 2017 03:45 |
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Can I put in Underground by Murakami in for BOTM?
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# ? Mar 21, 2017 05:34 |
Twerkteam Pizza posted:Can I put in Underground by Murakami in for BOTM? Suggest anything you want, sure. In fact, *please.* It helps a lot if you give me a couple of sentences as a "why would a goon want to read this book" blurb because I haven't read everything! (The only Murakami I've read was the bird one). I usually take a few suggestions + a few of my own contenders and make the poll that way. If a suggestion doesn't make the poll it doesn't necessarily mean I don't like that book, I might just have decided to, for example, pick all female authors for a month, or all nonfiction, etc.; I rarely know what's going to be in the poll till I make it.
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# ? Mar 21, 2017 06:09 |
Maybe Civilwarland in Bad Decline by George Saunders?
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# ? Mar 21, 2017 06:58 |
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I've been reading some historical fiction recently, and am just about to finish up Shogun. I, Claudius is next on my reading list, so I might as well suggest that. It is a fictional autobiography of the roman emperor Claudius. I know it was made into a BBC series, and it is listed on time's list of the 100 best English novels since 1923. Plus, the kindle version is two dollars right now, which never hurts. Filthy Monkey fucked around with this message at 21:31 on Mar 21, 2017 |
# ? Mar 21, 2017 21:26 |
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I think we should do The friend of the family of the 'Narcissus' next because it's short, available on Gutenberg and will irritate people due to its title.
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# ? Mar 21, 2017 22:21 |
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Take the plunge! Okay! posted:I think we should do The friend of the family of the 'Narcissus' next because it's short, available on Gutenberg and will irritate people due to its title. I've read some Conrad before but not that one; you'd have my vote. To think that a man who learned English as an adult could write like he did... drat, brother.
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# ? Mar 21, 2017 23:21 |
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Just finished chapter 8 and, man, what a pendulum of emotions regarding Shevek. First, we deal with the attempted(?) rape in chapter 7, which makes me kind of dislike him, and then we move on to him getting split up from his partner and his newborn baby in chapter 8, which makes me feel really sorry for him.
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# ? Mar 22, 2017 01:56 |
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Just finished this book yesterday, and I have to say that I really love the tension Le Guin puts in this story. Anaerres is naturally oppressive as a planet, more so than Urras, and the only way for a society to flourish on it is for the society to organize it in a way that promotes harmony. Anarchism! But unfortunately, like every other social order, it is vulnerable to human nature. Le Guin undercuts her posture of the Anaerresian society with Sabul, the Divlab computers, and the council. Like USMC_Karl pointed out, she also undercuts her portrayal of Shevek. Really, it's one of the big things that makes this story great. Just this constant sense of tension being pulled between two views. I also loved the ending. Shevek transcends all by "open sourcing" his great technological achievement. This theory that could have redefined the galactic power struggles is suddenly available to all, so there's one less reason to fight. Knowledge that truly belongs to no one.
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# ? Mar 24, 2017 11:57 |
3 chapters or so into my reread. Amazing how much detail I have forgotten. Also my eyes are old, these letters are so tiny now (its a third print run)!
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# ? Mar 26, 2017 03:43 |
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I read this, and reminded me of an article that I recently read: http://nautil.us/issue/46/balance/survival-of-the-friendliest It's juicy food for thought.
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# ? Mar 26, 2017 15:08 |
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rngd in the womb posted:Just finished this book yesterday, and I have to say that I really love the tension Le Guin puts in this story. Anaerres is naturally oppressive as a planet, more so than Urras, and the only way for a society to flourish on it is for the society to organize it in a way that promotes harmony. Anarchism! But unfortunately, like every other social order, it is vulnerable to human nature. Le Guin undercuts her posture of the Anaerresian society with Sabul, the Divlab computers, and the council. Same, just finished the book and I love the constant tension building. The first half of the book kind of set up the story and brought us to a point where we could sort of understand Shevek and his crusade on Urras, and then from that point on it's constant stress. The party scene on Urras, the forced separation of Shevek and Takver, and the protests and reprisals all start to rub our faces in the fact that neither planet is ideal. In fact, the only "characters" in the story that came out seeming to be decent was the Terran and the Hainish. The Terrans because they already royally screwed their planet up and came across as kind of having no real standing and mostly just tolerated, and the Hainish because they seemed to be purely altruistic in nature. Of course, I could be totally mistaken and operating off of my assumptions and incomplete knowledge. Since The Dispossessed is part of the Hainish Cycle series, maybe the Hainish and the Terrans are huge jerks in other books. The ending of the book was really good, I particularly liked how the Hainish dude decided to accompany Shevek down to the planet, even though there was essentially a riot going on due to his arrival. Kind of leaves the reader with the idea that, maybe, Anaerres will return to the "constant revolution" that Shevek talks about.. All in all, I have to thank Hieronymous Alloy and the people who voted for this as a BoTM. This was my first time participating in a BoTM and I had no idea what to expect, but it was a lot of fun -AND- pushed me to read something I normally wouldn't. I just might stick around for next month's BoTM and bother you all with more of my inane posts.
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# ? Mar 27, 2017 01:30 |
Forget reread; I have forgotten all details other than the overall arc. And I am really enjoying it much more than I had I think because its much more easy for me to relate with Shevek now. I do like the occasional anachronism from the 70s that show up. Rewrite your paper? As in long hand? A space faring people, with paper as a precious commodity, WRITING.
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# ? Mar 27, 2017 04:32 |
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Hieronymous Alloy posted:Suggest anything you want, sure. In fact, *please.* It helps a lot if you give me a couple of sentences as a "why would a goon want to read this book" blurb because I haven't read everything! (The only Murakami I've read was the bird one). i apologize if you already put up the poll somewhere and i missed it, but i think republic of wine deserves another shot. i'd also like to make a pitch for farid ud-din attar's the conference of the birds. i believe there's an english translation or two in public domain, and it is a very pretty allegorical long form poem about living a better life and also submission to g-d. there are birds in it, as well.
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# ? Apr 2, 2017 18:54 |
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Tree Goat posted:i apologize if you already put up the poll somewhere and i missed it, but i think republic of wine deserves another shot. Namaste
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# ? Apr 3, 2017 00:22 |
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# ? May 15, 2024 03:04 |
Just finished The Dispossessed. Much better than I recall it from forever ago, but then I seem to have forgotten most details. I loved the concluding two chapters.
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# ? Apr 3, 2017 00:58 |