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Ursula Le Guin Books

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Re: Ursula Le Guin Books

#3
If I would allowed to only own one book, it would be "The Dispossessed".

This books explains so many different sides of humanity.

On a more personal note: After reading it a dozen times there are still parts I need to cry. Just thinking about the strong emotions in parts of the book waters my eyes right now.

Re: Ursula Le Guin Books

#5
post #4
post #2

What, no Earthsea?

Srsly. Earthsea is the most potent of all her work.

Agreed. The Earthsea Cycle is one of the greatest and most influential fantasy sagas of all time, right up there next to LotR.

It pioneered the wizarding school trope, later popularized by Harry Potter, as well as a magic system incorporating “true names” of things, a concept used in many other fantasies such as Eragon.

A Wizard of Earthsea is my all time favorite book.

Re: Ursula Le Guin Books

#7
post #6
post #2

What, no Earthsea?

The article does mention a book in the Earthsea series (Lavinia), as a note EDIT: I was mistaken! It's not an Earthsea book; it was just mentioned in the same paragraph

Lavinia is not an Earthsea book.

https://www.wikiwand.com/en/Lavinia_(novel)

Re: Ursula Le Guin Books

#9
post #4
post #2

What, no Earthsea?

Srsly. Earthsea is the most potent of all her work.

Well said, but your word choice ("potent") reminded me of this great essay of hers: https://theanarchistlibrary.org/library/ursula-k-le-guin-the...

tl;dr she's making a feminist argument that a lot of our stories (Joseph Campbell, monomyth, etc) involve this phallic potency of going out into the world with our pointy sticks and poking wooly mammoths or whatever. she thinks maybe instead of pointy sticks we could think about this carrier bag model. but I can't figure out what she really means in practice, because surely she wants her politically-oriented work to be...potent? if her stories aren't effectively pointy sticks then what should they be? anyway I haven't even read Earthsea so I should probably shut up and go do that, but if anybody figures this paradox out lmk.

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