Attention, fans of Ursula K. Le Guin, Earthsea, and free stuff! Houghton Mifflin Harcourt and Simon & Schuster have worked together to produce a brand-new set of all six Earthsea books with beautiful new art and packaging. Thanks to their kindness, I have a set to give away to a fan. For the next 24 hours, leave a reply here to enter the random drawing. Tell me what you like about Le Guin and/or Earthsea, leave a reminiscence about the first time you read her books, or whatever else you might like to share. I'll take the names of everyone who leaves a comment on this thread by 12:00 PM PST Thursday, October 18, and randomly pick a winner. Good luck!
You can get a sneak peek at the new set here.
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The first three books are my favourite fantasy novels. I have read them many times and haven't found anything better yet.
ReplyDeleteLe Guin can talk about the deepest dilemmas of humans using the farthest planets and galaxies. She's a genious!
ReplyDeleteI was introduced to Ursula Le Guin through my love for Tolkien - in on-line discussions in Tolkien groups of what other authors the posters liked, Ursula Le Guin kept coming up with very warm recommendations, and after some hesitation I finally picked up an Earthsea omnibus, which I didn't regret.
ReplyDeleteWhen I visit the Earthsea, I have that yearning to find out what is on the next island -- to discover the islands through the story, and it is this that is, to me, the greatest attraction of her books.
Like Troels I am a Tolkien fan and digitally hang out with other Tolkien fans, especially my fellow students at Signum University and the Mythgard Institute, many of whom are interested in other fantasy authors. My first introduction to Le Guin came in Mythgard's Modern Fantasy course this past summer, which I audited. The class only had time to cover A Wizard of Earthsea but I was so impressed by the quality of Le Guin's writing that I made a mental note to read the rest of the series at the first convenient opportunity.
ReplyDeleteOur class had some complex discussions about what exactly Ged's shadow is and how we are supposed to understand its operation in the story. The richness of Le Guin's portrayal of Ged's shadow reminds me of what Tolkien said he liked about the Beowulf-poet's dragon, that it was simultaneously symbolic and an actual foe that had to be reckoned with on the physical plane. I'm curious to see if Le Guin handles her mythic elements the same way throughout the rest of the Earthsea series; I guess if I should be lucky enough to win the drawing, I'll soon find out!
I was going to say something about how I enjoyed these many years ago but wanted to read them again, only to realise that I was remembering The Dark is Rising, not Earthsea (I think somehow my brain transposed Greenwitch and Earthsea or something).
ReplyDeleteAnyway ... I wouldn't mind having the complete set to read for the first time, as I tend to burn through series pretty rapidly and that would save repeated trips to the library :)
A Wizard of Earthsea and The Tombs of Atuan were two of the then-new books I encountered in the fantasy shelves of my local bookstore during the period when I was haunting it regularly in hopes that The Silmarillion would soon magically appear thereon.
ReplyDeleteIt was the maps that got me. Le Guin says that the creator of imaginary worlds should always work to a map, and she drew hers as the first step. The maps of the islands of the archipelago and of the tunnels of Atuan reminded me sharply of the maps I had been doodling in boring classes all through childhood. They spoke to my soul. Of course I immediately read the books to learn more about these islands and what took place there, and I've been a devoted Le Guin fan ever since.
My favourite Earthsea book is the fifth one, Tales from Earthsea, because it tells about Earthsea secondary world without any plot. Just magic!
ReplyDeleteI keep coming back to Ursul Le Guin's work by different paths. My parents read me her books when I was growing up, and then I returned to her again through Tolkien.
ReplyDeleteLater I was studying Anthropology at college and reading works by Alfred Kroeber. At some point I discovered that his daughter was Ursula Kroeber, later Ursula K. Le Guin. This prompted me to return to her works yet again (not just Earthsea, but also her sci fi and harder to classify books like 'Always Coming Home'). It was amazingly apparent that she shared her father's gift for seeing into culture - someone on the Lord of the Rings Plaza once said "I'd agree that no one after Tolkien had "been inside language". But I would argue that LeGuin has "been inside culture" in a way that no other fantasy writer . . . has been", which I think is very true.
One of my favourite Le Guin quotes is surely: Could you hear voices, Schliemann, in the streets of Troy? If you did, you were crazy too. The Trojans had all been dead three thousand years.
-Always Coming Home, page 4
The first Ursula K. LeGuin I read was her “Annals of the Western Shore” trilogy, which I read my sophomore year of high school and was entranced by immediately. I read “Four Ways to Forgiveness” the year after that and the first three Earthsea books the year after that. I started a reread of them just recently, with the intent of eventually getting through the entire series. (Owning them would help that along tremendously!) There are scenes that stick vividly in my mind years later, and I remain deeply impressed by the way her characters struggled with fantastic dilemmas that are yet somehow relatable to us ordinary folk.
ReplyDeleteI haven't been to Earthsea or met any of Ursula K. LeGuin's books yet but I have heard great things (including above) and would like to.
ReplyDeleteThus far I've only had the opportunity to read A Wizard of Earthsea, but I loved it. Her style is fluid and very engaging! Looking forward to breaking into the rest of the series.
ReplyDeleteThanks to everyone who shared thoughts and reminiscences. We have a winner, but please feel free to continue the thread on Le Guin. :)
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