things!

[glass_icarus]

1; Went back to the library this week for the first time in a couple months, and picked up Catherine Coulter's The Nightingale Legacy, which I think I read once back in high school along with a few of her other ones? (It's been years since I've done the whole romance novel thing; back in the day, I only nosed into that section to give myself (occasional & very brief) breaks between SF/F binges. :P What can I say, I imprinted on my favored genres at a very young age.) In any case, the Coulter was just as bland as I half-remembered. Feh.

On the other hand, I also picked up Ursula LeGuin's The Left Hand of Darkness on karanguni's long-ago recommendation, and as;dlkfja;sldgkh eeeeee! &hearts &hearts &hearts HOLY SHIT, you guys, that was SO SATISFYING. ALSO, MINDBLOWING. I've been dying for a good scifi kick for ages; should've remembered to go back to LeGuin. MORE OF HER BOOKS, I NEED THEM, NOW. Um, possibly I will blog about this one properly when I am more coherent/have finished the rest of the books I borrowed.

2; sophinisba gave me six icons to talk about!

iProngs! *g* I don't remember who made this one, alas- I snagged it a few years ago when there were a bunch of iPod icons making the rounds. I had some Remus/Sirius ones and an SGA one too, but I decided to keep this one because JAMES! PRONGS/FLAILY ARMS! OBNOXIOUSLY GREEN! Hilariously fitting in every sense; I keep it for when I am feeling ridiculous, or when I need a laugh.


I made this one... last summer?... as a pick-me-up for myself; I was trawling for pretty pictures of pretty people to offset a bad day, and Aishwarya Rai was one of them! Her eyes are so stunning.


Ahahaha. I made this one a few months back, after having a laugh about the world's tiniest violins. I got the original picture from ciderpress; I have no idea where she got it, though! Is there a tiny violin photo-stash somewhere on the internet that I can raid???


crossedwires made this one as part of a glorious Saving Face icon post! I'm sure you've all heard me go on about Saving Face before, seeing as I have a tag for it, so I'll just do this short-form: &WIL; &VIV; &WIL/VIV;;;; Cutest ever! :> :> :>


Made by famineghost; snagged because HELLO, TELEPHONE??? LAHV LAHV LAHV, even if all the burning cigarettes at eye level made me wince. xD


Foot!love! One of my favorite scenes from season 1, n'aww. Colin's squinchy face is so precious. Made by hils.

Let me know if you want six! :)

Comments

[zahrawithaz.livejournal.com]

Ah, The Left Hand of Darkness! That book is just pure magic.

The thing that amazes me is that it is from the 1960s, and from before Le Guin even identified as a feminist--and even with all the tremendous progress that has been made in some places in such thinking (multiple waves feminism, LGB rights, trans and genderqueer movements) it STILL holds up as a meditation on gender, and as a story.

Maybe we're still on the Mishnory road. (Also, that metaphor--I cannot tell you how useful it has been to me and my life.)

ALWAYS HAPPY TO FACILITATE REQUESTS FOR MORE LE GUIN!!!

If you've just read Left Hand, you really have to read "Is Gender Necessary? Redux" the essay she wrote about it and then revised. It's in most of her edited collections, including the 2nd ed of The Language of the Night and also Dancing at the Edge of the World. Personally, I think Language of the Night is a must-read on its own.

Le Guin is at heart a short story writer, and much of her short work is her strongest. (Even her best novels tend to be succinct.) I highly, highly, highly recommend her relatively recent collection The Birthday of the World and Other Stories, which includes some of her most recent Gethen-set work, though that is not as memorable as the mind-blowing title story and "Paradises Lost," a novella about a Chinese generation ship en route to colonize a new world.

I also adore somewhat older A Fisherman of the Inland Sea, the title story of which is her first story set on O (a planet on which all marriages include 4 partners; Le Guin has described some of the O stories in Birthday as Jane Austen in a different society), and a really doozy. (Not many short stories make me cry.) I also really love "Newton's Sleep" (a clever and creepy critique of special-people-escape-troubled-earth-by-fleeing-to-the-stars-and-oh-look!-they-all-happen-to-be-white story) and the very political "The Rock That Changed Things," which always makes me shiver. There are people who think this collection is "too political" or "too feminist" except for the final story--which just about everyone loves--but they are most definitely not me.

I adored Lavinia, which is close to straight-up but very smart mythical/historical fiction about the character from the Aeneid.

And I would very highly recommend both her YA fantasy series: all 6 books of the Earthsea Cycle (whose world-building she revised as her politics shifted and understanding of feminism grew) and the more recent trilogy the Annals of the Western Shore (Gifts, Voices, and Powers).

I would avoid The Telling, which is probably her weakest book (down there with City of Illusions), though I personally had a lot of fun arguing with it when I read it. I could go on--basically ask me about any Le Guin book you're interested in and I will most likely have an opinion!

[glass_icarus]

Oh, awesome! :D I have read the Earthsea books, but that was a long time ago, heh. Will have to check out everything else!

eta because I forgot: The Word for World is Forest was also in the library, but I didn't actually borrow that. Obvious Message is apparently Obvious, but was that one of the better reads?

[zahrawithaz.livejournal.com]

I don't think Word for World Is Forest is one of her best by a long shot. It's been a while since I read it, admittedly, but yes, it is an allegory about the Vietnam War (Le Guin has an essay in Language of the Night in which she talks about her OWN judgment of it as too Obvious in its Message--she wrote it while in the UK, when she didn't have the usual political outlet of protesting the war she did at home).

It's often criticized for being dated given the obvious Vietnam analogs--though some of those critiques suffer from the "why is anyone still talking about Vietnam anyway?" syndrome, the problems of which should be obvious--but it's fair to say that the propaganda is audible, and I personally don't think the characters are her best or most memorable. I found the very heavy-handed villain (Le Guin is usually much better at avoiding such things) particularly hard to take.

Hope that helps--and I'm happy to answer any other questions you may have.