Friday, July 9, 2021

Returning to LeGuin

A few days ago I finished reading The Telling, an Ursula K. LeGuin novel from 2000 that I had never heard of before. I picked up a used first edition at Midway Books in Saint Paul. 

It was (I think) the last book she wrote that's part of her Hainish stories (the same universe that includes The Dispossessed, The Left Hand of Darkness, The Word for World Is Forest, and a number of other novels). It was good — pretty philosophical, and it felt like it was in conversation with the past five years more than the late 1990s, but I suppose that should tell me something about my lack of memory of that earlier time, as well as her ability to write a story that can speak across decades.

After I finished it, I was looking over my to-be-read shelves and piles and noticed I have another LeGuin book I'd forgotten about, Tales from Earthsea. This is also a used first edition, this time one I got at the Book House in Dinkytown. I don't remember when.

It's a short story collection that came out in 2001, though the stories were published over a much longer period. I'm midway through the first story, a novella called "The Finder," which is about the establishment of Roke Island.

It's making me think about rereading the Earthsea books again. I haven't read them since Daughter Number Three-Point-One was about 8, so I guess that's a couple of decades. And I'm not sure I ever read Tehanu at all. 

Seems like a good time for a bit of escapism.


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