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Fandom Snowflake 02: share a canon
Another day of ![[community profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/community.png)
snowflake_challenge. As part of it, I'm going to do my damnedest to comment on everyone's entries who are on my reading list. If you've dropped in recently and want to expand your circle, drop me a subscribe and I'll do the same.
Under cut: Le Guin's Left Hand.
Book: Ursula K. Le Guin - The Left Hand of Darkness
I don't know what it is about Le Guin, but she arrived at my life at the perfect time, with the perfect book. I don't know if Left Hand might have had the same impact if I read it now; or if it'll have the same impact on someone else today. It's an old book, too, written in 1969, and things - especially discourses around gender, sexuality, government, etcetera - have changed a lot since then.
But it's a beautiful, difficult book. It has language that flows over me like water, and the main character - Therem Harth rem ir Estraven - is (and, I think, for me will always be) a model of a complicated, believable, difficult protagonist. I don't think I've ever read any other work where I have felt the range of emotions that I have had about Estraven: confusion, derision, deep empathy, deep respect, deep grief, small joys.
Instead of telling you what the book's about, I think in the spirit of the challenge I'll talk about how it changed me. It taught me about public versus private personas. It taught me about how one culture can interface with another culture, and about how that has many faces.
It taught me that study isn't lived experience. It taught me that some experiences are barriers that can never be crossed. It also taught me that there are other experiences that are transcendental. It taught me that trying to classify those things into binary categories is impossible, but also that it might not be foolish.
It showed me different ways that different people grieve, work, live. It taught me about perseverance, and about looking to the bigger picture, and about the paralytic slowness of mundane change that so often precedes a catalyst coming along to blow paradigms out of the water.
Writing this, I'm figuring I titled this post share a canon more than rec a canon. This book is too close to me, too much a cornerstone of my own, very personal emotional and philosophical growth. I can't promise you'll pick it up and love it. You might pick it up and hate it, might think its treatment of any number of topics is hard to swallow. But I think that, regardless, if you do pick it up, and do get through it, it'll change or reinforce the way you think. And that's a brilliant thing to come out of a book.
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On a separate note, I'm going to ping off of![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
yhlee's Pay It Forward meme:
I would be more than happy to buy The Left Hand of Darkness (or one of Le Guin's short story collections featuring the Hainish Cycle; it's not that I don't like Earthsea - I've just never read it) - physical or digital - for someone as part of it.
snowflake_challenge. As part of it, I'm going to do my damnedest to comment on everyone's entries who are on my reading list. If you've dropped in recently and want to expand your circle, drop me a subscribe and I'll do the same.Under cut: Le Guin's Left Hand.
Book: Ursula K. Le Guin - The Left Hand of Darkness
I don't know what it is about Le Guin, but she arrived at my life at the perfect time, with the perfect book. I don't know if Left Hand might have had the same impact if I read it now; or if it'll have the same impact on someone else today. It's an old book, too, written in 1969, and things - especially discourses around gender, sexuality, government, etcetera - have changed a lot since then.
But it's a beautiful, difficult book. It has language that flows over me like water, and the main character - Therem Harth rem ir Estraven - is (and, I think, for me will always be) a model of a complicated, believable, difficult protagonist. I don't think I've ever read any other work where I have felt the range of emotions that I have had about Estraven: confusion, derision, deep empathy, deep respect, deep grief, small joys.
Instead of telling you what the book's about, I think in the spirit of the challenge I'll talk about how it changed me. It taught me about public versus private personas. It taught me about how one culture can interface with another culture, and about how that has many faces.
It taught me that study isn't lived experience. It taught me that some experiences are barriers that can never be crossed. It also taught me that there are other experiences that are transcendental. It taught me that trying to classify those things into binary categories is impossible, but also that it might not be foolish.
It showed me different ways that different people grieve, work, live. It taught me about perseverance, and about looking to the bigger picture, and about the paralytic slowness of mundane change that so often precedes a catalyst coming along to blow paradigms out of the water.
Writing this, I'm figuring I titled this post share a canon more than rec a canon. This book is too close to me, too much a cornerstone of my own, very personal emotional and philosophical growth. I can't promise you'll pick it up and love it. You might pick it up and hate it, might think its treatment of any number of topics is hard to swallow. But I think that, regardless, if you do pick it up, and do get through it, it'll change or reinforce the way you think. And that's a brilliant thing to come out of a book.
---
On a separate note, I'm going to ping off of
yhlee's Pay It Forward meme:Let's start 2017 off in a positive way with a Pay It Forward meme. The first 6 people to comment (and more if I can manage it) will receive a surprise from me at some point in 2017 - anything from a book, a ticket, something home-grown or made, a postcard, absolutely any surprise! It will happen when the mood comes over me and I find something that I believe would suit you and make you happy.
(If you don't like surprises and would rather have something off a wishlist and/or some warning, let me know in your comment. The goal is to make you happy.)
If you can, post this in your own journal and pay it forward. Let's do more kind and loving things for each other in 2017, without any reason other than to make each other smile and show that we think of each other.
I would be more than happy to buy The Left Hand of Darkness (or one of Le Guin's short story collections featuring the Hainish Cycle; it's not that I don't like Earthsea - I've just never read it) - physical or digital - for someone as part of it.
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Also yes, Left Hand of Darkness is one of the first books that I will rec whenever anyone tells me they are looking for Sci-fi. There was a really beautiful reading of it put out by the BBC I think.... last year? Which made me fall in love with it all over again. They were free for a while, but now I think are only available for purchase, alas.
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ETA: OMG I just realized why your username seemed so familiar! You wrote for FFVII too! Totally different ships, but :DDD
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If you're in Japan, I look enviously upon your Kinokuniyas.
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Among other thing, this is the book that taught me what speculative fiction *could* do.
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