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Lastnight I read Flow my Tears, the Policeman Said by PK Dick, and before that I read The Power Broker by Robert Caro, which was terribly fascinating for me to read. I highly reccomend anyone who has the time and interest to check out his three-part biography of Lyndon Johnson, which is inarguably the greatest work of biography I've ever encountered. I've also been going through the collected works of Allen Ginsberg. Was quite amused to hear a poem he wrote concerning loving boys who go to Naropa, where I take classes. Lawlita posted:Also finished The Left Hand of Darkness by Ursula Le Guin, was curious after reading her Dispossessed; this one takes an interesting approach to sexuality. Left Hand is one of my favourite sci-fi book of all time, at least in terms of basic likability. I'd say it takes an entirely unique approach to sexuality, and one of the things I find so stunning is that Le Guin wrote that book in '69, when concepts such as 'transgendered' barely existed in any form at all. It's ultimately flawed, due to plotting and pronoun issues, but from the point when Estraven and Ai escape together to the end of the book, it's just incredible. Somebody fucked around with this message at 19:44 on Nov 26, 2006 |
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Nov 16, 2006 20:42
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I've been recently on a kick of reading Ursula K. Le Guin - it started with trying to read the books by her that I had never read, but of course I've ultimately brought out my old favorites that I had not read in 10+ years and revisited them - Left Hand of Darkness, The Dispossessed, The Earthsea Trilogy-turned-Quartet-turned-Cycle... Earthsea in particular was worth revisiting, as despite growing up with it as a "trilogy" and adoring those books (this was pre Harry Potter, mind you, not many bildungsromans about young wizards around). So anyway, I have been re-reading them, starting from the beginning. And I am just stunned, I must say, as to how infinitely better that first book was to me now, as a 28-year-old man with some life experience, than it was to me as a 13-year-old boy where I took much of it at face value. It's actually a bit stunning, to be frank. Because I identified with the character so much back then that I used his name as my handle for a long while online. And now I see how deep that identification went, in some ways, and that is fascinating and deeply affecting to me. I couldn't sleep last night and wound up reading the bulk of The Tombs of Atuan, the second book of the original Earthsea Trilogy, and originally a sort of "black sheep" in the trilogy, in that it did not focus on the magnetic male hero of the first book, Ged/Sparrowhawk, but on a young girl who is priestess of a strange religion in a lonely tomb where only women and eunuchs are allowed. Ged, the hero, does not show up till halfway through and really plays a supporting role. I absolutely did not understand this book at all when I had read it last before; I must have been 15 then. But it made me weep openly last night on several occasions, and I was deeply moved by many, many different aspects of it this time around. I am a bit chagrined at how little credit I gave it when I read it as a young teen. I suppose I could not identify with the protagonist at all, and thus could not see the book for what it was. But boy. I not only identified with the protagonist this time, but I was just awed by the sheer power of the book. THIS is how you write a High Fantasy novel. I couldn't help but think a little of George R. R. Martin, and how incredibly different Ursula K. Le Guin's style of fantasy is when compared to his. I mean no disrespect to GRRM, but... I can't help but compare since I was reading his fantasy-writing last, and by comparison his style seems horrifically bloated and I simply feel like he could take a TON of tips from her. Tombs of Atuan is a sparsely written book that clocks in at maybe 175 pages, but what she does with those 175 pages is pretty stunning. She simply manages to say so much by saying so little, and hers is the sort of writing where you might ponder and re-read a particular passage or scene a dozen times before moving on. Because there is just so much going on in this world that she has created, between the pages and lines. It practically teems with a life of its own. I have no clue how she manages to pull this off, or write the way she does. I find it stunning. In any case, I shall continue in my re-read, but I don't know if I will run into another surprise like this. The Farthest Shore is next, and while I remember it being the greatest of the Earthsea books, I have also read it more than the others - I happened to retain a copy of it that's been rattling around for years, so while I never got to re-read the others, I did re-read that one on occasion. It may surprise me, though; who knows. edit: I may make an Ursula K. Le Guin/Earthsea Cycle/Hainish Cycle megathread. Probably just an Ursula megathread. Is this a reasonable idea? I think she is certainly worthy of it, having an extremely long, prolific, and almost unbelievably influential career over the last 50 years. She's probably the greatest living sci-fi/fantasy writer of her generation, still going strong at around 85 years old, I believe. kaworu fucked around with this message at 16:52 on Oct 26, 2013 |
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Oct 26, 2013 16:47
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Nettle Soup posted:I read the Earthsea books for the first time this month and I think The Tombs of Atuan ended up being my favourite. I really should have a go at her other books I guess! Yeah, Lathe of Heaven is a wonderful, imaginative, amazing mind-bending sci-fi novel in the vein of Philip K. Dick. In fact, Le Guin was very explicit about the novel being something of a tribute/homage to PK Dick, and you can really tell while reading that this is so. It's a little different than most of her writing because of this, in my opinion. Personally though, I would recommend The Left Hand of Darkness. I think it is easily the best single novel she ever wrote, and just stunning, amazing stuff. kaworu fucked around with this message at 17:38 on Oct 26, 2013 |
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Oct 26, 2013 17:35
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ProfessorProf posted:As a huge PK Dick fan and someone looking for more books to read, is Lathe something I can pick up and read without knowing Earthsea, or do I need to read them in order? Yeah, you really do not need to worry about this at all with the exception of her 5 Earthsea novels. The Hainish cycle can be read in any order, since they are more a loose collection of novels that exist within the same general sci-fi mythology. Lathe is outside all of these and somewhat rather set apart from her work in a number of ways. It truly is like a Dick novel in every way - it uses his stock female character to some extent, has a Beatles song as a centrally important part of the plot, deals with many alternate forms of reality and the inherent subjectivity of the universe, as well as drug abuse. Takes place in an alternate future set in 2002 much like our own but slightly dystopian with small differences, again like many Dick novels. Something very amusing I found out was that Le Guin and Dick were in the same graduating class (1947) at Berkeley High School in CA. Though, they didn't know one another. Amazing coincidence. edit: There is a great quote from Dick on the wikipedia page for Lathe of Heaven: Philip K. Dick posted:"One of the best novels, and most important to understanding of the nature of our world, is Ursula Le Guin's The Lathe of Heaven, in which the dream universe is articulated in such a striking and compelling way that I hesitate to add any further explanation to it; it requires none." kaworu fucked around with this message at 15:04 on Oct 27, 2013 |
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Oct 27, 2013 15:02
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