Earthsea 1: A Wizard of Earthsea

March 5, 2012, 12:01 am

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“Only in silence the word, only in dark the light, only in dying life: bright the hawk’s flight on the empty sky.” - The Creation of Ea (A Wizard of Earthsea by Ursula K. Le Guin, p. 1) The books that shape one’s thinking don’t come along very often. I was fortunate enough to stumble [...]

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Earthsea 2: The Tombs of Atuan

March 11, 2012, 8:01 pm

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As a ten year old boy reading The Tombs of Atuan for the first time, I felt tremendously let down. On the surface, it appeared to have little to do with its predecessor. I was crestfallen to discover that Ged didn’t even appear until a third of the way into the story. Why was there [...]

Earthsea 3: The Farthest Shore, Part One

March 17, 2012, 8:00 am

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The Farthest Shore is my favourite story of the Earthsea series. It is also my favourite novel of all time. While I loved Wizard more growing up, Shore is the book I come back to as an adult. There are several things that make it remarkable. The prose is graceful and fluid, written by someone [...]

Earthsea 3: The Farthest Shore, Part Two

March 24, 2012, 7:30 am

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Welcome to part two of the analysis for the third Earthsea novel, The Farthest Shore. In this entry, I would like to explore more thoughts and connections I had that were sparked by the narrative. They include society’s relationship with nature, the perils of greed and consumption, and qualities crucial to environmental leaders and educators. [...]

Changing Planes: The Nna Mmoy Language

May 12, 2012, 3:12 pm

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I downloaded the audiobook version of Changing Planes by Ursula K. Le Guin before a trip so I had something to listen to on a flight. It could not resist the purchase upon reading the premise of the short story collection: The airport serves not only as a space to wait for connecting flights, but [...]

Children and Environmental Tragedies

May 24, 2012, 5:11 pm

≫ Next: Tao Today: A Sage’s Take on Modern Society, Part 1

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My last entry touched briefly on the appropriateness of exposing children to environmental tragedies and injustices. Today, I came across a gem of a passage in an essay by Ursula K. Le Guin. Titled The Child and the Shadow, it explored the importance of myths, fairy-tales, and coming of age stories in confronting the shadow [...]

Tao Today: A Sage’s Take on Modern Society, Part 1

April 18, 2013, 2:18 pm

≫ Next: The Feminine and the Tao: An Interview with Le Guin

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If you follow Ekostories on a regular basis, you would know that one of my chief influences is author Ursula K. Le Guin. It was through her work that I first became intrigued by Taoism as a philosophy. Growing up in Hong Kong, my first encounters with Daoism came from ancient tales of whiskery old [...]

The Feminine and the Tao: An Interview with Le Guin

April 30, 2013, 2:53 pm

≫ Next: It’s All Relative: Le Guin’s Direction of the Road

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I would like to cap off the recent series of posts on Taoism with an interview with Ursula Le Guin, conducted by Brenda Peterson. In it, the lifelong student of Taoism talks about how the Tao Te Ching has influenced her personal life and the construction of her worldview. As usual, I find her comments [...]

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It’s All Relative: Le Guin’s Direction of the Road

May 16, 2013, 5:07 pm

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Last entry on The Botany of Desire explored the social and natural histories of common everyday plants, revealing how they have shaped our values even as we altered them for our own purposes. It serves as a reminder that our connection with the non-human world is not a one-sided affair; it is instead more akin […]

My Favourite Superhuman Protagonists

July 25, 2013, 11:02 am

≫ Next: Nausicaä Vol. 7-2: The Crypt

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But this is a period in which everyone wants to read about ‘heroes’ who are consummately normal people. If they’re not, the readers don’t believe in them. I don’t like this. That’s how things are these days, but frankly speaking, I dislike it. Making heroes who are just like you or everyone else around you. […]

Nausicaä Vol. 7-2: The Crypt

August 30, 2013, 11:45 am

≫ Next: Life Beyond Death and Fate: Le Guin’s Lavinia

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Welcome to the conclusion of Hayao Miyazaki’s Nausicaä of the Valley of the Wind. Exiting the hidden garden, Nausicaä realizes that Ohma has gone on by itself to Shuwa. A group of wormhandlers track her down and swears fealty to their new guardian deity.  Surrounded by loyal subjects willing to do her bidding, Nausicaä realizes that she is […]

Life Beyond Death and Fate: Le Guin’s Lavinia

November 29, 2013, 11:02 am

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“In our loss and fear we craved the acts of religion, the ceremonies that allow us to admit our helplessness, our dependence on the great forces we do not understand.” (Lavinia, p. 177) This piece is dedicated to Russell Collier, fellow Le Guin fan, dear colleague, guide, friend. In memoriam. Lavinia, a novel by Ursula […]

Winter’s Tale: The Left Hand of Darkness

December 20, 2013, 12:01 pm

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“Light is the left hand of darkness and darkness the left hand of light. Two are one, life and death, lying together like lovers in kemmer, like hands joined together, like the end and the way.” - Tormer’s Lay, p.233-234 Some stories enter our lives as flings, escapist tales that thrill and delight but leave […]

The Left Hand of Darkness: Nature, Culture, and the Other

December 26, 2013, 12:14 pm

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“Estraven stood there in harness beside me looking at that magnificent and unspeakable desolation. ‘I am glad I have lived to see this,’ he said. I felt as he did. It is good to have an end to journey towards; but it is the journey that matters, in the end.” (p.220) Welcome to the second […]

Antspeak and Rocktalk: Le Guin’s The Author of Acacia Seeds

April 21, 2014, 12:17 pm

≫ Next: Ekostories Quote: Time and The Promise

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Last week I explored Amy Leach’s creative non-fiction and its appeal to wonder and imagination. This week, I would like to turn to fiction and highlight a fantastical tale that does the same. Ursula K. Le Guin’s The Author of Acacia Seeds and Other Extracts from the Journal of Therolinguistics takes place in the future, […]

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Ekostories Quote: Time and The Promise

June 5, 2014, 7:30 am

≫ Next: Crossing the Wall: The Dispossessed

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Outside the locked room is the landscape of time, in which the spirit may, with luck and courage, construct the fragile, makeshift improbable roads and cities of fidelity: a landscape inhabitable by human beings. It is not until an act occurs within the landscape of the past and the future that it is a human […]

Crossing the Wall: The Dispossessed

June 19, 2014, 11:00 am

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My honeymoon with The Dispossessed: An Ambiguous Utopia was an intense and  extended one. Ursula K. Le Guin’s Nebula and Hugo-winning novel proved immensely alluring to me – its rendition of post-capitalistic civilization; its probing into the nature of revolution and power; its look at the possibility for change. The novelty and power of its ideas […]

The Dispossessed: The Heaven and Hell of Urras

July 18, 2014, 9:00 am

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“Shevek, a brilliant physicist, decides to take action. He will seek answers, question the unquestionable, and attempt to tear down the walls of hatred that have isolated his planets of anarchists from the rest of the civilized universe… Shevek must make the unprecedented journey to the utopian mother planet, Urras, to challenge the complex structures […]

The Dispossessed Part 3: Anarres the Promise Kept

July 31, 2014, 9:00 am

≫ Next: The Dispossessed: Reconciling Time, Creating Meaning

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Welcome to my continuing series exploring Ursula K. Le Guin’s The Dispossessed: An Ambiguous Utopia. You can check out my history with the novel and part 2 of the analysis. This piece details the protagonist Shevek growing up in the anarchic world of Anarres, the nature of his unique society, and the journey he undertakes to find […]

The Dispossessed: Reconciling Time, Creating Meaning

August 15, 2014, 9:00 am

≫ Next: 20 Quotes from The Dispossessed

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“You are our history. We are perhaps your future. I want to learn, not ignore. It is the reason I came. We must know each other. We are not primitive men. Our morality is no longer tribal, it cannot be. Such ignorance is a wrong, from which wrong will arise. So I come to learn.” […]