finally getting over myself and reading le guin

[isunshower]

when my ex-girlfriend left me, in the summer of 2022, she shortly after took a college class where she read some le guin book. the dispossessed or something like that. so while we were navigating breaking our lease and returning our stuff to each other and getting her to pay me back for the rent that i had paid singlehandedly, all she wanted to talk about was "well in this book i'm reading for school".

naturally, this did not make me very enthusiastic about ursula k. le guin.

unfortunately, i'm a former anthropology major and current sff enjoyer and both of those things put together mean that i kind of had to read her work, there was no way around it. so i got the left hand of darkness out from the library last month.

and my god. yeah, this is a good book. the worldbuilding is so clever and makes me want more!!!!!! i am definitely reading more hainish cycle books this was fun!!!! as for the plot, it took a while for me to get into the rhythm of it, and it didn't feel like the story was really going anywhere until genly and estraven were on the ice, but once we were there we were MOVING. and estraven. listen, i'm sad. there was a part of me that was really hoping for estraven to go with genly to the stars.

Comments

[starcle]

Ah, I definitely know the feeling of having a hard time giving something a fair shot because you associate it with something unpleasant happening in your life... though I'm sure my experiences with that are much less intense than yours. I've only read a little bit of Le Guin's work, I really need to read more.

[thegreatratsby]

yes yes yes, my first le guin experience was "birthday of the world" short story collection/novella and i HIGHLY recommend. i need to get around to left hand of darkness still :x i started it ages ago but couldn't get into it but after reading the short story collection i think i have more of a handle on her style and will be able to get into it easier.

[isunshower]

i'll say about left hand of darkness (and i think i said so in the original post actually, it's been a few days), it does take a while to really get going. it took me three weeks to read the first 1/3 of the book and then i tore through the rest of it. (this is saying a lot because my job has a LOT of free time during the winter so i've been bringing books to work.) you just have to keep pushing.

[thegreatratsby]

i have a nice dogeared paperback of left hand of darkness at home so we'll see if i can't make that my end-of-year-break self-assigned reading!