Tag: Ursula Le Guin

WWW Wednesday

Posted January 31, 2018 by Nicky in Reviews / 2 Comments

The three ‘W’s are what are you reading now, what have you recently finished reading, and what are you going to read next, and you can find this week’s post at the host’s blog here if you want to check out other posts.

What are you currently reading?

Cover of Ghost Talkers by Mary Robinette KowalStill Ghost Talkers… I’m being terrible at getting round to finishing that, partly because I feel emotional about it and partly because of course I’ve been reading a lot of Ursula Le Guin’s work instead of whatever I planned to be reading.

What have you recently finished reading?

Cover of I Am Morgan Le Fay by Nancy SpringerBy the time this is up, I’ll have finished I Am Morgan Le Fay, by Nancy Springer. I’m not quite sure what I think of it yet… I don’t think I’m a fan, but it’s not like I hate it either? It’s nice to see someone trying to be nuanced about Morgan Le Fay.

What will you be reading next?

Cover of A Wizard of Earthsea by Ursula Le GuinSomething by Ursula Le Guin, almost certainly. Probably A Wizard of Earthsea, since that’s the book of hers I really love and want to celebrate most. But of course there’s a whole bunch of others on my list to revisit, including The Left Hand of DarknessThe DispossessedThe TellingLavinia

What are you reading right now?

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Review – No Time to Spare

Posted January 28, 2018 by Nicky in Reviews / 0 Comments

Cover of No Time to Spare by Ursula K. Le GuinNo Time To Spare, Ursula Le Guin

Received to review via Netgalley

All the time while I read this, a few weeks ago, I found myself wondering how much longer we’d have Ursula Le Guin. I wonder if the title, No Time to Spare, was intended to be so on the nose. It’s a wonderful collection, full of Le Guin’s personality: her thoughts on ageing, on genre, on books in general, and on her own work. And also her thoughts on her cat, Pard, and one rather mindful piece on the correct way to eat a boiled egg.

It was a quiet moment when I needed one, and I hadn’t even known I needed it, and now there’s a finite amount of Le Guin’s work left in the world for me to find that feeling in again. Thank goodness for rereading and the fact that Le Guin’s work always merits it.

Rating: 4/5

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WWW Wednesday

Posted January 24, 2018 by Nicky in General / 6 Comments

The three ‘W’s are what are you reading now, what have you recently finished reading, and what are you going to read next, and you can find this week’s post at the host’s blog here if you want to check out other posts.

What are you currently reading?

Cover of Ghost Talkers by Mary Robinette KowalI’m most of the way through Ghost Talkers, by Mary Robinette Kowal. I might need to take a liiiiittle break, though, because it’s totally heartbreaking and I don’t quite need that right now. Given, you know, the news about Ursula Le Guin dying.

What have you recently finished reading?

Cover of The Weirdstone of Brisingamen by Alan GarnerThe last thing I finished was a reread of Alan Garner’s The Weirdstone of Brisingamen, I think. I’m still not a big fan, though it started off better than last time. I just don’t like the mashup of mythologies, though. They don’t fit together for me.

What will you be reading next?

Almost certainly something by Le Guin.

What are you reading?

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Turn around: Ursula Le Guin’s words of wisdom

Posted January 24, 2018 by Nicky in General / 2 Comments

I first read A Wizard of Earthsea when I was eleven, I think, or around that age. I loved it from the start. I didn’t love the later books as much then as I do now, because I had to grow up a little to understand them — sometimes I wonder if I’ll ever be grown up enough to understand everything Ursula Le Guin had to say to me.

It’s one AM, and I heard two hours ago that she’s gone, and though I’m sad, all I can think about is the enormous gifts she gave the world, and one gift she gave me in particular. Not that she ever knew I existed, not that she was writing with me in mind… But nonetheless, it was a gift, and it saved my life.

I don’t mean that it pulled me out of the way of an oncoming lorry or cured me from some terrible cancer or persuaded me to turn back from a clifftop. And it wasn’t given for free: it was hard, and I had to work at it, and still do. But she showed me how to get my life back, with the power and wisdom of her fiction.

was pretty sick. I was afraid of everything. I was afraid of dying, and I was afraid of living, and I was afraid of everything in between. I tried to run away from anything that scared me: I was scared of cancer, so I wouldn’t read anything where a character had cancer. I was scared of bugs, so I wouldn’t read anything with bugs in it, even sometimes quite throwaway references. I was scared to tears one winter hearing a line from Simon & Garfunkel: “Silence like a cancer grows…” And I didn’t want it to be me — I didn’t want to be afraid, I didn’t want to deal with it, I saw myself as something helpless, something being pursued. It was from outside me and nothing could keep it out.

And I happened to pick up a book I loved, for comfort, and found a character who was scared just like me. A character who was running away from what scared him — running away from the fear itself, letting the fear drive him… until he came to his friend, his teacher, a man who knew how hard the lesson was but told him what he had to do.

“If you go ahead, if you keep running, wherever you run you will meet danger and evil, for it drives you, it chooses the way you go. You must choose. You must seek what seeks you. You must hunt the hunter.”

I haven’t always been able to follow Ogion’s advice. Sometimes I hesitate and draw back. But it’s entirely true: if you run from anxiety, it comes after you. If you won’t acknowledge that fear is a part of you that deserves to be recognised, it swallows you whole. If you turn and face it… Ged triumphs because he turns to the Shadow and names it with his own name, tells it that they are one and the same.

My fear and I, we’re one and the same. It’s a part of me, and the more I deny it — the more I run from it — the stronger it grows. But like Ged, in turning to face it, I’ve found my strength.

I don’t imagine that Le Guin was unafraid of death, but she acknowledged her fears and saw them clearly, and they had no dominion.

For a word to be spoken, there must be silence. Before, and after.

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Review – Outer Space, Inner Lands

Posted September 10, 2017 by Nicky in Reviews / 1 Comment

Cover of The Unreal and the Real by Ursula Le GuinOuter Space, Inner Lands, Ursula Le Guin

Outer Space, Inner Lands is the second of two volumes collecting together the best of Ursula Le Guin’s short fiction. It’s also the one containing all the SF work, or at least all the less realistic work, and it contains stories like ‘Those Who Walk Away from Omelas’, one of Ursula Le Guin’s most famous stories (at least among people I know) — though not my favourite, as I think the moral is obvious from the beginning.

As always, Le Guin’s writing is clear and strong, and the stories chosen here span her career and showcase all kinds of different ideas and different phases of her work. I prefer it to the first volume, because I find Le Guin’s speculative fiction more accessible.

She’s brilliant. Do yourself a favour.

Rating: 5/5

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Review – The Other Wind

Posted June 14, 2016 by Nicky in Reviews / 4 Comments

Cover of The Other Wind by Ursula Le GuinThe Other Wind, Ursula Le Guin

The Other Wind ends the Earthsea Cycle by resolving an issue which, for attentive readers, has been present since the very first book. Despite all the joys of wizardry and the great things the wizards can do, the world of death looms from the very first, and it doesn’t sound like a great place. In the second book, Tenar’s background reveals that her people believe their souls are reborn, but that wizards’ souls are not. In the third book, we see the world of death: a dead, dry, empty place, surrounded only by pain, where lovers can pass each other on the street and not recognise one another.

That’s not a world we want to see Ged or Lebannen condemned to, and so The Other Wind is a fitting end in that it dismantles that — and brings in another female character who is Kargish, makes Lebannen examine some of his issues, makes Tehanu grow up, and ties in the thread of Irian from the novella ‘Dragonfly’. Other themes that’ve been a big part of the books previously (the role of women, for example) are still here, now integral to the world where perhaps they weren’t in time for A Wizard of Earthsea and Yarrow.

It wasn’t my favourite of the series when I first read it — I think I have to concede I love the first two books most and always will, though Tehanu and The Other Wind are growing on me — but reading it this time, it seems like a very fitting ending point. I think I’m right in saying that Le Guin isn’t writing novels anymore, so it’s likely this really is Earthsea’s end, and it’s a good way to finish, with Ged and Tenar in their house and the dragons flying on the other wind.

Rating: 4/5

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Review – Tales from Earthsea

Posted June 2, 2016 by Nicky in Reviews / 1 Comment

Cover of Tales from Earthsea by Ursula Le GuinTales from Earthsea, Ursula Le Guin

If you read nothing else from this collection, you should grab this to read ‘Dragonfly’. The other stories fill in bits and pieces of the background, or use the world to tell a new story that is small in scope compared to Ged’s. ‘Dragonfly’, on the other hand, is necessary (to my mind) to really understanding The Other Wind, and should definitely be read first. It introduces a character who becomes important, and events which are referred to throughout the novel.

As for the writing of the stories themselves, well: Ursula Le Guin’s prose is as fine as you would expect, and the words are precise and crisp and each placed exactly right. The glimpses of history and other places which we get in these stories is worth the price of entry, too. I think ‘Darkrose and Diamond’, for instance, is incredibly slight compared to Ged’s story, but on the other hand it does reflect on some of the same themes as Tehanu. As does ‘Dragonfly’, in different ways.

Rating: 4/5

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Review – Tehanu

Posted May 24, 2016 by Nicky in Reviews / 2 Comments

Cover of Tehanu by Ursula Le GuinTehanu, Ursula Le Guin

This still wasn’t a favourite book for me in the Earthsea sequence, because it deals so much with the consequences of what happened to Ged in The Farthest Shore. Considering I’m not a great fan of that plot (though I have come to appreciate it more as an artistic choice and for the way it changes Earthsea), I guess it’s not surprising that I’m not such a fan — even though, like The Tombs of Atuan, this brings the female point of view to the fore and deals with some of the issues of sexism in the world.

The brief glimpse of Lebanen as the young king is lovely, and the understanding Tenar and Ged eventually come to is too. The stuff about the friendship between women, and the way Tenar realises that she’s totally failed to raise the kind of man she’d like for a son, also works pretty well.

But it takes away Ged’s dignity — and that, more than the loss of his power, I dislike intensely. He’s always been proud, and here… he can’t fight, can’t save himself. He needs Therru and the dragons.

So as with The Farthest Shore, I see the thematic importance. I just… don’t like it that much.

Rating: 3/5

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Top Ten Tuesday

Posted May 24, 2016 by Nicky in General / 6 Comments

This week’s theme is an interesting one: ten books I feel differently about now time has passed. There’s a lot of books I feel that way about from when I was a kid, of course, but I’ll try to go for more recent stuff.

  1. Cocaine Blues, Kerry Greenwood. I reaaaally changed my opinion on this one, and ended up devouring the whole series. But the first time I tried it, I hated it.
  2. The Lord of the Rings, J.R.R. Tolkien. I’ve always liked reading it, but I’ve gone through periods of being more or less critical. There was one point where I didn’t dare reread it, because I thought I’d find it too racist, sexist, simplistic… But thanks to Ursula Le Guin’s writing on Tolkien’s work, and then studying it during my MA, I’ve come to appreciate it a lot more. A lot of the things people complain about post-Tolkien fantasy really are post-Tolkien — he didn’t bring them in. Derivativeness, lack of thought about the implications of this choice or that on the world — I’ve come to see that lack of thought was never Tolkien’s problem, though it has been a problem for people after him.
  3. The Diamond Throne, David Eddings. I’ve had a long succession of feelings about this too; loved it and thought it really romantic as a kid, grew up and thought it was crappy and derivative, but recently I reread a bit and thought it was kind of funny anyway. (Even if Sparhawk and Ehlana is actually a creepy relationship.)
  4. Chalice, Robin McKinley. I think I originally gave this one three stars, but I keep thinking about it and I’ve read it again since and I just… I love it.
  5. Tooth and Claw, Jo Walton. Didn’t love this the first time, fell right into it on a reread. The right book at the right time, I guess.
  6. The Farthest Shore, Ursula Le Guin. This is less one that I’ve got to like more, and more one I appreciate more. I’m still not a big fan of it and wouldn’t idly pick it up the way I would, say, The Tombs of Atuan. But I see its purpose and beauty.
  7. Across the Nightingale Floor, Lian Hearn. I loved this at the time, but I don’t know if it’d stand up to that now. I’m a little afraid to try, so I think that counts for the list?
  8. Memoirs of a Geisha, Arthur Golden. I know in how many ways this is exploitative and so on, but I did love this at one point. Another one I don’t think I’ll try again.
  9. Guenevere, Queen of the Summer Country, Rosalind Miles. I might like this more now that I read more romance, I don’t know, but I wouldn’t hold my breath. My opinion got worse and worse as I read more of her books.
  10. The Crystal Cave, Mary Stewart. The misogyny drove me mad the first time, but I actually appreciated parts of it more the second time.

That was… harder than I expected. Although I was also distracted by being a backseat driver to my partner playing Assassin’s Creed.

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Review – The Farthest Shore

Posted May 10, 2016 by Nicky in Reviews / 0 Comments

Cover of The Farthest Shore by Ursula Le GuinThe Farthest Shore, Ursula Le Guin

This has always been my least favourite of the Earthsea books, and I think that’s sort of inevitable given the central conflict, the issue that the whole book centres around. It’s about magic dying out, about death and fighting death and being afraid of death, where few people are whole and entire and able to see the world as it is rather than wishing it was something else. Ged is one of those people, of course: he’s the Archmage for a reason, and more importantly, he’s faced the dark part of himself and accepted it.

But it’s not primarily about Ged: it’s primarily about Arren and his journey to kingship. We saw Ged from an outside POV in The Tombs of Atuan, and it’s not as though Tenar completely trusted or respected him instantly… but Arren’s distrust and indifference at times grate, especially set against his hero worship at first.

I can see the beauty of the story, of what Ged does, but I don’t enjoy it. It’s a shadow of a story, a feeling of foreboding – the shadow at the door. It’s, in part, an ending to an adventure that I wanted more of. It makes sense that Earthsea has to change, but that doesn’t reconcile me to the fact.

Needless to say, Ursula Le Guin’s writing is great and that’s not the problem.

Rating: 3/5

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