Always lovely to see another reader entering the fold. I was one who read Le Guin at 16, and The Left Hand of Darkness has always remained my favourite. One aspect of it that I feel like people never really talk about is how very well it portrays the experience of living abroad. We FEEL the loneliness of being (quite literally) an alien. And then what it is to understand another culture through the eyes of someone you grow to love. As a person who has been in and out of other countries for most of my adult life, that’s what keeps me coming back to the book time and time again.
I love this observation! It's funny, I read this alongside the more recent novel, The Anthropologists, which is *explicitly* about making a home in a foreign country, and I liked it a lot but did not ascend to loving it because I had these novels as a comparison point and thought that they both just explore such similar feelings so well and so beautifully: Shevek's simultaneous desire and repulsion and in LHoD, the truly beautiful sequence on the ice.
I experience this second-hand: I live in my hometown but am married to a German man who grew up in many places and moved to Canada as an adult. We're often running into all the small things that make someone A Local (an idea with its own meaning in a young, changing city like Toronto), make someone fall in love with a place, and what makes/lets people stay.
Also, I know that people always pair it with The Dispossessed, but a much later book set in the same universe, The Telling, is the one I pair in my mind with The Left Hand of Darkness.
Loved reading this as a huge Le Guin fan! Whilst I really like her science fiction, I've always preferred her fantasy. I appreciate the concepts in her SF, but because they are so much novels of ideas sometimes the other stuff gets lost in the mix and I can see why they don't instantly work for some folks. I think as you go on in the Hainish/SF series, she starts to bring some of her characteristic warmth to the stories—I particularly like the story collection Four Ways to Forgiveness (I believe it's been re-released as Five Ways to Forgiveness). These are a lot more grounded and it means they sing a bit more.
Anyway if you like her SF, you must read her fantasy! It's billed as young adult but you can honestly ignore that completely. There is nothing particularly adolescent about it. Earthsea is my favourite series of hers. She brings some wonderful ideas still, but the prose styling is beautiful (she's probably one of my favourite stylists like... ever) and there is so much warmth in them.
Intriguing! I will admit, I was put off by the young adult description (assuming, maybe incorrectly, that the writing would be dulled for a younger audience), so this is a promising endorsement.
Always cool to hear someone’s reaction to encountering as an adult the books I first read as a child. I’m overdue for a Left Hand of Darkness re-read. Not all of my childhood faves hold up to re-readings, but Le Guin absolutely does, and I get something new out of her every time. Welcome aboard!
I would have had a very different perspective on them as a teenager! After publishing this, my dad showed up at my house with three more from his own collection so I'm looking forward to continuing.
'It is harder to write about books I loved than it is to dissect books I thought were mediocre' - is so TRUE. I find myself feeling exactly the same. When I love a book so much it often is in ways that is all tied up in emotion and not words and henceforth is a nightmare for me to try and articulate.
Ok so I really need to try Le Guin again. I have a copy of The Dispossessd which (I think) I was saving to read after Left Hand of Darkness based on someones rec? And, obviously, after dnfing Left Hand because of all the terminology, I have never gotten to it. Would you recommend going into The Dispossessed next instead? I just could not persevere with Left Hand, but maybe after reading some of her work I love, I can do it again. I loved the Lathe of Heaven so much I KNOW the capacity for me to enjoy her work again is right there under the surface. I just need to gently coax it out again.
Yes! If you're interested in returning to Le Guin, The Dispossessed is far more straightforward once you're a few pages in, and a very explicit political commentary (very informed by Cold War politics when it was written), which I think you'd find a lot to think about from
the dispossessed changed my life when i read it (and reread it last year). i should check out the left hand of darkness. frederic jameson has a fantastic essay about both of those books, something about “world reduction,” that i recommend.
Just reading the first few paragraphs of this essay - thank you so much for sharing, it is giving voice to so much of what is transformative about these books. Another advantage of reading something so beloved for so long: so much writing about it and around it to discover.
“The ease with which I climb the scaffolding is the measure of how much I’ll enjoy it” nobody has ever explained it so succinctly! I just read The Fifth Season and feel the exact same way about it. I always assumed it was more the high fantasy I hated but maybe it’s how you’ve explained it. Now I gotta read some of her!!
thank you! i know for others the scaffolding is the draw (this is why, i assume, there are 200+ warhammer novels)... i do sometimes enjoy a succinct court intrigue high fantasy, which LHOD is much closer to being of the two!
You are writing for me, another sci-fi fan (a little out of the habit of reading science fiction) who missed the Le Guin boat at sixteen! (convinced my English teacher to let me write my IB extended essay on Bradbury's Martian Chronicles & Dandelion Wine- and something about time, memory, etc. as literary devices across genre?? haven't thought about this in ages lol). I can feel the Le Guin passion emanating from my laptop screen here!! and appreciate the whole-hearted recommendation- I need to read her!
Oh my god, *incredible* to hear from a fellow IB English essayist--I genuinely cannot remember what the subject of mine was beyond two Palahniuk novels. I started truly disliking one of them about halfway through, unfortunately. I hope Bradbury lives on in your memory in a more positive light... Another author I have never read, if I'm honest!
Glad that the passion is clear - it all just amounts to "a good book is so good"
Always lovely to see another reader entering the fold. I was one who read Le Guin at 16, and The Left Hand of Darkness has always remained my favourite. One aspect of it that I feel like people never really talk about is how very well it portrays the experience of living abroad. We FEEL the loneliness of being (quite literally) an alien. And then what it is to understand another culture through the eyes of someone you grow to love. As a person who has been in and out of other countries for most of my adult life, that’s what keeps me coming back to the book time and time again.
I love this observation! It's funny, I read this alongside the more recent novel, The Anthropologists, which is *explicitly* about making a home in a foreign country, and I liked it a lot but did not ascend to loving it because I had these novels as a comparison point and thought that they both just explore such similar feelings so well and so beautifully: Shevek's simultaneous desire and repulsion and in LHoD, the truly beautiful sequence on the ice.
I experience this second-hand: I live in my hometown but am married to a German man who grew up in many places and moved to Canada as an adult. We're often running into all the small things that make someone A Local (an idea with its own meaning in a young, changing city like Toronto), make someone fall in love with a place, and what makes/lets people stay.
I'll add The Telling to the docket!
Le Guin was raised by anthropologists, and it shows. She also spent significant time abroad, so she writes from experience.
Also, I know that people always pair it with The Dispossessed, but a much later book set in the same universe, The Telling, is the one I pair in my mind with The Left Hand of Darkness.
Loved reading this as a huge Le Guin fan! Whilst I really like her science fiction, I've always preferred her fantasy. I appreciate the concepts in her SF, but because they are so much novels of ideas sometimes the other stuff gets lost in the mix and I can see why they don't instantly work for some folks. I think as you go on in the Hainish/SF series, she starts to bring some of her characteristic warmth to the stories—I particularly like the story collection Four Ways to Forgiveness (I believe it's been re-released as Five Ways to Forgiveness). These are a lot more grounded and it means they sing a bit more.
Anyway if you like her SF, you must read her fantasy! It's billed as young adult but you can honestly ignore that completely. There is nothing particularly adolescent about it. Earthsea is my favourite series of hers. She brings some wonderful ideas still, but the prose styling is beautiful (she's probably one of my favourite stylists like... ever) and there is so much warmth in them.
Intriguing! I will admit, I was put off by the young adult description (assuming, maybe incorrectly, that the writing would be dulled for a younger audience), so this is a promising endorsement.
Always cool to hear someone’s reaction to encountering as an adult the books I first read as a child. I’m overdue for a Left Hand of Darkness re-read. Not all of my childhood faves hold up to re-readings, but Le Guin absolutely does, and I get something new out of her every time. Welcome aboard!
I would have had a very different perspective on them as a teenager! After publishing this, my dad showed up at my house with three more from his own collection so I'm looking forward to continuing.
'It is harder to write about books I loved than it is to dissect books I thought were mediocre' - is so TRUE. I find myself feeling exactly the same. When I love a book so much it often is in ways that is all tied up in emotion and not words and henceforth is a nightmare for me to try and articulate.
Ok so I really need to try Le Guin again. I have a copy of The Dispossessd which (I think) I was saving to read after Left Hand of Darkness based on someones rec? And, obviously, after dnfing Left Hand because of all the terminology, I have never gotten to it. Would you recommend going into The Dispossessed next instead? I just could not persevere with Left Hand, but maybe after reading some of her work I love, I can do it again. I loved the Lathe of Heaven so much I KNOW the capacity for me to enjoy her work again is right there under the surface. I just need to gently coax it out again.
Yes! If you're interested in returning to Le Guin, The Dispossessed is far more straightforward once you're a few pages in, and a very explicit political commentary (very informed by Cold War politics when it was written), which I think you'd find a lot to think about from
Ok noted - I will make sure to put it on my books for the summer list! You know me, I love a fiction informed by historical/political events!
the dispossessed changed my life when i read it (and reread it last year). i should check out the left hand of darkness. frederic jameson has a fantastic essay about both of those books, something about “world reduction,” that i recommend.
Just reading the first few paragraphs of this essay - thank you so much for sharing, it is giving voice to so much of what is transformative about these books. Another advantage of reading something so beloved for so long: so much writing about it and around it to discover.
i’m so glad!!! 🤗
“The ease with which I climb the scaffolding is the measure of how much I’ll enjoy it” nobody has ever explained it so succinctly! I just read The Fifth Season and feel the exact same way about it. I always assumed it was more the high fantasy I hated but maybe it’s how you’ve explained it. Now I gotta read some of her!!
thank you! i know for others the scaffolding is the draw (this is why, i assume, there are 200+ warhammer novels)... i do sometimes enjoy a succinct court intrigue high fantasy, which LHOD is much closer to being of the two!
You are writing for me, another sci-fi fan (a little out of the habit of reading science fiction) who missed the Le Guin boat at sixteen! (convinced my English teacher to let me write my IB extended essay on Bradbury's Martian Chronicles & Dandelion Wine- and something about time, memory, etc. as literary devices across genre?? haven't thought about this in ages lol). I can feel the Le Guin passion emanating from my laptop screen here!! and appreciate the whole-hearted recommendation- I need to read her!
Oh my god, *incredible* to hear from a fellow IB English essayist--I genuinely cannot remember what the subject of mine was beyond two Palahniuk novels. I started truly disliking one of them about halfway through, unfortunately. I hope Bradbury lives on in your memory in a more positive light... Another author I have never read, if I'm honest!
Glad that the passion is clear - it all just amounts to "a good book is so good"
still a huge Bradbury fan luckily --I stand by either of those being great places to start if you're ever curious!!