Clik here to view.
Earthsea 1: A Wizard of Earthsea
“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...
View ArticleClik here to view.
Earthsea 2: The Tombs of Atuan
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...
View ArticleClik here to view.
Earthsea 3: The Farthest Shore, Part One
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...
View ArticleClik here to view.
Earthsea 3: The Farthest Shore, Part Two
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...
View ArticleClik here to view.
Changing Planes: The Nna Mmoy Language
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...
View ArticleClik here to view.
Children and Environmental Tragedies
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...
View ArticleClik here to view.
Tao Today: A Sage’s Take on Modern Society, Part 1
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....
View ArticleClik here to view.
The Feminine and the Tao: An Interview with Le Guin
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...
View ArticleClik here to view.
It’s All Relative: Le Guin’s Direction of the Road
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...
View ArticleClik here to view.
My Favourite Superhuman Protagonists
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...
View ArticleClik here to view.
Nausicaä Vol. 7-2: The Crypt
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...
View ArticleClik here to view.
Life Beyond Death and Fate: Le Guin’s Lavinia
“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...
View ArticleClik here to view.
Winter’s Tale: The Left Hand of Darkness
“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.” -...
View ArticleClik here to view.
The Left Hand of Darkness: Nature, Culture, and the Other
“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...
View ArticleClik here to view.
Antspeak and Rocktalk: Le Guin’s The Author of Acacia Seeds
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....
View ArticleClik here to view.
Ekostories Quote: Time and The Promise
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...
View ArticleClik here to view.
Crossing the Wall: The Dispossessed
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...
View ArticleClik here to view.
The Dispossessed: The Heaven and Hell of Urras
“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...
View ArticleClik here to view.
The Dispossessed Part 3: Anarres the Promise Kept
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...
View ArticleClik here to view.
The Dispossessed: Reconciling Time, Creating Meaning
“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...
View Article