The Daughter of Odren, Ursula K. Le Guin

 

The Daughter of Odren by Ursula K. Le Guin is a book in the Earthsea Cycle

Started: October 13, 2025
Completed: October 13, 2025
Recommendation: Recommended
Recommended By: Nobody

Review:

The key to Le Guin's magic in Earthsea is that in order to bring one thing to this place, it must come from that place.  There is a loss associated with magic and not simply a gain.  That is a critically important concept to my mind and switches magic from being "magical" to being a form of theft.  Sometimes this theft is appropriate and some times it is not.  It has felt to me in other books of Earthsea that Le Guin has explored that trade-off.  Here, however, there is much more the perspective of magic being simply gain without loss.  This time, she explores the hollowness of victory.  It is still a good story, but not the excellence I anticipate from an Earthsea lay.

Changing Planes, Ursula K. Le Guin

 

Changing Planes by Ursula K. Le Guin

Started: July 28, 2025
Completed: July 31, 2025
Recommendation: Recommended
Recommended By: Nobody

Review:

As usual, Le Guin wrote good stuff.  By the end, however, the motif of changing planes had started to wear off and the morality lessons were beginning to add up.  I enjoyed these stories both as stories and as morality plays, but this is not my genre.

The Word for World Is Forest, Ursula K. Le Guin

The Word for World is Forest by Ursula K. Le Guin

Started: July 12, 2024

Completed: July 31, 2024

Recommendation: Recommended

Recommended By: Nobody

Words for which I sought help:

apposite -- apt in the circumstances or in relation to something

sett -- a badger's den

Review:

This is the first Le Guin novel I have read that was really hard reading.  The whole thing is basically about murder.  The method of giving up reminded me of Footfall by Larry Niven and Jerry Pournelle (although it is certain that Le Guin was first, I just happened to read Footfall first).  This was a first contact/colonization/outpost kind of book with all those pieces rolled up into one.  Yet, at the same time, it looked at the ugly side of humanity. Unsettling to read at bed time.

Lavinia, Ursula K. Le Guin

 

Lavinia by Ursula K. Le Guin is a book I only recently learned was available.

Started: 5/4/2024
Completed: 5/7/2024
Recommendation: Highly Recommended
Recommended By: Nobody

Review:

This is sort of a riff on a minor character in Virgil's Aeneid.  Le Guin writes strong characters and this book is full of the same.  Small details matter (like the corner of the toga being pulled over the head) and this book is lush with those details.  It is amazing to me that someone can take a passing reference and build an entire novel from it.  Clearly Le Guin was well versed in classical literature and she brings to life a character in the gritty circumstances that are more likely than Virgil's god filled hazy conception yet still true to that conception.

The Left Hand of Darkness, Ursula Le Guin

 

The Left Hand of Darkness by Ursula K. Le Guin is a book I read years ago and wanted to read again.

Started: 6/15/2022
Completed: 6/17/2022
Recommendation: Highly Recommended
Recommended By: Nobody

Review:

This is a great book and the introduction from Le Guin was a great addition from the version I read over 30 years ago.  I had forgotten almost all the details from the book (with the broad exception of a trek across the ice).  I vaguely remembered the concept of changing sex in response to a regular rhythm that depended on the partners involved.  I think that I missed many of the details of how this type of sexuality impacted so many different things.  Truly a wonderful book with many good features to recommend it and well worth not reading once, but twice!

The Tombs of Atuan, Ursula K. Le Guin

 

The Tombs of Atuan by Ursula K. Le Guin is the second book of the Earthsea Cycle.  I have read it before, but couldn't resist a revisit.

Started: 9/14/2020
Completed: 9/15/2020
Recommendation: Highly Recommended
Recommended By:  Nobody

Review:

It is a good story.  It is well told.  I enjoyed it!

A Wizard of Earthsea, Ursula K. Le Guin

 

A Wizard of Earthsea by Ursula K. Le Guin is a book I have read several times and I enjoy the Earthsea Cycle.

Started: 8/24/2020

Completed: 8/26/2020

Recommendation: Highly Recommended

Recommended By:  Nobody

Review:

I come back to this cycle without having read it for 20 or so years.  I often cite it as my favorite set of books, but it has been long enough without Ged and I think it is good to spend time with him once more.

The audio version by Harlan Ellison is just amazing.

The Wave in the Mind, Ursula K. Le Guin

 

The Wave in the Mind:  Talks and essays on the writer, the reader, and the imagination by Ursula K. Le Guin is a book I picked up as soon as I heard about it, but well after the author's death.

Started: 8/15/2020

Completed: 8/18/2020

Recommendation: Highly Recommended

Recommended By:  Nobody

Words for which I sought help:

didactic -- intended to teach, particularly in having moral instruction as an alternative motive (in its used in this book, it appears that there was no moral instruction intended--the lesson was about the nature of poetry's mechanics in contrast to prose)

Review:

This was not the book I was expecting, but I am glad to have read it.  I have experienced the pacing of a novel, but I have not thought about it until reading this book.  I know that writers agonize over word choice, sentence structure, etc.  I have not had a coherent explanation for why this causes writers so much pause.  Is it critical to say, "onward" or "forward?"  Maybe it might be an issue with the patois of a given speaker or the environment in which something is said (a cowboy on the trail in the midwest might reasonably say "onward," but an English lord in India might be more inclined to say "forward"), but beyond that it has mystified me.  Le Guin explains that "onward" is likely not stressed in either syllable, or stressed in both ("onward" or "ONWARD").   "Forward," however is stressed in one or the other "FORward" or "forWARD."    In the former, it is usually elongated "FOOOORward."  This kind of stressing effects the pacing of the sentence.  That is part of the agony.  Part of the effort to bring forward a cohesive whole.