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The Left Hand of Darkness
Which I assume is the book @ltc was talking about. It's not a good treatment of gender. A world full of people who have no gender most of the time, but both the protagonist and the author consistently refer to the characters in male terms when they're in active, important roles and female when not. Genly calls the overweight, gossipy, nosey person who rents him a room his landlady, but the country is ruled by a king.
did a bit of accidental misogyny
Internalised misogyny is a constant thing in most of her books, which remind me a lot of Mary Renault, who did the same thing. In the first Earthsea book there are almost no female characters and all but one of them are evil or weak and let Ged down or betray him. They're even more absent from the third. Same pattern in The Dispossessed: an anarchist utopia where the very language they speak is designed to make the articulation of bigotry difficult, but almost no involvement of women in the plot and one of them is the protagonist's mother who... is malevolent and spiteful and spends her whole time attacking her son's work and mission. Have to wonder what kind of a relationship the author had with her own mother.
Le Guin was criticised for this all through her writing career, conceded herself that it was an issue and the belated fourth Earthsea book was explicitly written to address it. Surprised any of this is news to you both.
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That's all fair, I know she'd returned to Earthsea deliberately, but the last time I re-read it was straight through with the new additions and short stories, which I think did a decent job of re-framing the earlier ones. Maybe I was just being too generous as interpreting the obvious misogyny as belonging to the characters rather than the author.
I'd agree that LHOD has some, uh, gender stereotyping language, but I don't really feel it outweighs the more deliberate treatment of gender roles in the rest of it. Maybe I need to read it again!
The Dispossessed I think is actually worse, in that the discussion of gender roles and how characters actually behave is more at odds.
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I don't really feel it outweighs the more deliberate treatment of gender roles in the rest of it.
I don't think it does that, though. The mechanics of their biology are discussed as if it were an expansion to a Hain roleplaying game explaining a new alien race. But it barely features in the narrative of the major characters and I really don't feel that Le Guin managed to describe them (or have them express themselves) as genderless (for most of their life) people. It's not just a lack of ungendered pronouns, she just describes them as men. Men are what she knows how to write.
The Dispossessed I think is actually worse, in that the discussion of gender roles and how characters actually behave is more at odds.
True, that.
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Jack Kerouac - On The Road
Only the second book ever that I haven't finished.
Saw someone recommend it on a different thread and thought it sounded interesting, but it just did not work at all for me.
40 Pages left but I cannot waste anymore time on it. Particularly as I have two other books that I really want to start.
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he wrote the first draft in just 3 weeks
don't do amphetamines kids
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I’ve just started reading;
The Trees, Percival Everett. A clever mix of historical events and fictional plots around the lynching of Emmett Till.
I’m only 50 odd pages in and already there are 2 or 3 murders, or maybe 4, could be 2, no I’m pretty sure it’s 3, but it is darkly funny, I hope it’s meant to be funny, because I’ve laughed out loud a few times.
I wouldn’t say I was an avid reader. in fact it’s fair to say I struggle a bit (dyslexic) and I’ll be honest I almost gave up on this on the first page when the word nescience was used. But I’m glad I’m persevering*, as its short chapters are a great way to read just one more. Each chapter is a stand alone scene and they really drive you on.
It’s not one to read if you find the use of derogatory language upsetting, although it really is needed here.
More as and when.
*cheers @withered_preacher autocomplete a blessing and also a curse. -
persevering
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Ha, I’m just an asshole at heart
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Been lucky in the local book exchange.
The Priory of the Orange tree, Bob Mortimer's Satsuma Complex, Notes from a small island by Bill Bryson and lastly Good Omens. (All replaced with read books).
(I've also bought Empire of the Vampire as per recommendation above).
Started the PotOT, about 1/8 in. Confusing at the start, but starting to click now and is pretty enjoyable so far!
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Enjoyed this on the journey from rural England to zen master
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I've mentioned this before, but I own an indie bookshop down in Southsea and we really need all the support we can get right now. If you, or anyone you know, usually buys through one of the big online shops but fancies supporting an indie instead, could you possibly consider passing on the link to our store on Bookshop.org? We'll get a cut of anything sold through there, which will be a massive boost.
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Books - What are you reading?
Posted by
@chris_crash
Yeah, that's massively frustrating. It seems that (not unlike GRRM) he has earned so much from the initial books, and so enjoys the convention/fandom life, that the incentive to knuckle down and birth that final book maybe isn't really there. It must also be a terrifying creative enterprise to look to complete a series which has exploded in popularity and has a massive (and massively passionate) fandom with very strong opinions on the characters and where the story needs to go. Undoubtedly harder still when you make a point of engaging with that fandom at every opportunity....