Cannonball Read 16

Sticking It to Cancer One Book at a Time

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The making of a wizard

A Wizard of Earthsea by Ursula K. Le Guin

The Tombs of Atuan by Ursula K. Le Guin

The Farthest Shore by Ursula K. Le Guin

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The thrill that comes from reading a classic of any particular genre is you get to see the early formation of that particular class of fiction. That can also be a problem, as the object of inspiration often leads to greater literary feats that can sometimes make the early attempts feel underwhelming. That’s sort of how I felt about the first three books in the Earthsea series, though I definitely got more engaged as I made my way through the trio. A Wizard of Earthsea […]

yes, yes, I should have read this already

The Ones Who Walk Away from Omelas by Ursula K. Le Guin

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My first thought while reading this: there are authors and there are Authors, whose reach is seen everywhere. I think there’s been a large number of books I’ve read this year or in recent time that owe a large debt of gratitude towards Le Guin’s short (some 30 odd pages) story on the society of the Omelas. If you’ve never read it, then steer clear if you really want to avoid spoilers but Le Guin does give away the punchline in her author’s note (the […]

Fine, but not for me

The Dispossessed by Ursula K. Le Guin

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This was a library sci-fi book club pick, and I’m not sure it’s one I would’ve finished otherwise. I know Le Guin is the Grandma of Science Fiction, and I’ve read and enjoyed her before, but this one felt like a Philosophy 101 class and I don’t think I was quite in the mood for it. Urras is the main planet, crowded with haves and have nots and doing the normal things society does, except for an added focus on science and physics. Anarres is […]

The cover makes the book look more exciting than it is

A Wizard of Earthsea by Ursula K. Le Guin

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I know that Ursula K. Le Guin is a big name in influential fantasy authors, especially for children’s and YA.  And I’d never read anything by her, so I figured that I should.  A Wizard of Earthsea is the classic hero’s journey with wizards and magic and dragons and all sorts of other stuff.  What more could you ask for?   Apparently a lot.  I was bored!  Partly due to the story, and partly because of the language. It felt stuffy.  I think she was […]

Two pieces of yesterday were in Captain Davidson’s mind when he woke, and he lay looking at them in the darkness for a while.

The Word for World is Forest by Ursula K Le Guin

The Telling by Ursula K Le Guin

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The Word for World is Forest: 3/5 Stars A novella from 1972 and part of the Hainish cycle, this book tells the story of a human colony sent to an arboreal world to strip all the resources from it. They are commanded by a human explorer extraordinaire (who is characterized and portrayed in a very 19th century American sensibility of absolute dominance over the landscape and the people who live there). We come across the colony as they are about to receive a “shipment” of […]

Getting my nerd card revoked

Unlocking the Air by Ursula K. Le Guin

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You guuuuuuys, I feel terrible, but I did NOT enjoy this. The writing is, of course, incredible. It’s amazing how quickly Le Guin can set a scene and sketch out a character. Even the stories that were only a few pages long had an incredibly clear snapshot of a person or a setting. She can make a character feel real with only a few paragraphs. However. They’re not real stories, which is what my brain had been expecting. A lot of them are completely aimless […]



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