You can’t live in Portland and not know about Ursula LeGuin. A few years ago she and Margaret Atwood shared the stage at Portland Arts and Lectures, a conversation I still remember several years later. It’s inexplicable then that until this effort, I had read only one of her books: Lavinia. This is largely because I generally don’t seek out science fiction; I usually wait for it to find me. I was struck by her remarks at the National Book Awards in December and realized […]
Reading with the Lights Off
First of all, this is a sequel. If you haven’t read the preceding novel A Wizard of Earthsea, then go do that right now. It’s not long. I’ll wait… It’s wonderful, right? I remember how the prose grabbed me when I first read it, and it still grabs me that same way. It’s like The Gunslinger in that way; it feels truly, effortlessly ethereal. The text exists outside of time, as do all great fairy tales. And that’s the one problem with the sequel. Much […]