• 167 Posts
  • 560 Comments
Joined 1 year ago
Cake day: September 22nd, 2023
  • Bebo@literature.cafetoFiction Books@literature.cafe•Good Place to Start With Ursula K. LeGuin? English
    6·
    3 months ago

    The Left Hand of Darkness. That’s her first scifi book I read and fell in love with it. I will add here the review I wrote when I read it:

    In this book Genly Ai is sent to the planet Gethen on behalf of the Ekumen, an alliance of human societies residing on far flung planets, to acquaint the inhabitants with the existence of the Ekumen and convince them to join the alliance. The Gethenians are unique: every individual has the potential to be a man or a woman during regular periods of time, referred to as “kemmer”. The period of kemmer is the only time when a Gethenian has a defined sexuality. Throughout the course of the book any individual Gethenian is referred to as a “man”. The narrative is told through two POVs, both in the first person: Genly Ai, the Envoy; and Estraven, who is the prime minister of Karhide, Mr Ai’s liaison with the nation’s king. Over the course of the narrative, Le Guin explores a society totally uninfluenced by sexuality which interestingly holds up a mirror to how sexuality /gender permeates every nook and cranny of our social existence. It was however the beautiful depiction of the progression of the relationship between Mr Ai and Estraven that made me fall in love with this book. The complete disconnect between the cultures of the two main characters initially made them misjudge each other leading to dangerous consequences. Later, unexpectedly thrown in together while traveling for days in the icy wilderness, they begin to understand and accept each other for who they are; the story ultimately culminating into it’s heartbreaking conclusion. I will end with these beautiful lines: “Light is the left hand of darkness and darkness the right 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.”

  • Bebo@literature.cafetoAsk Lemmy@lemmy.world•Do you get sick of the same songs and how do you combat it?English
    2·
    3 months ago

    Oh this is partly how listening to music works for me. I’ll be listening to some particular songs in the moment repeatedly, get fed up of either all of them at once or one by one, then just stop listening to those that I get fed up of. I’ll then again listen to music when I again feel like listening to some particular music.

    This is not directly related, but one reason I stop myself from binge watching TV shows is that if I end up watching too many episodes of a TV series at one go it can end up ruining the show for me, regardless of how great it may be, because watching too many episodes at one go makes me so fed up of the show that I don’t feel like watching it anymore. Binge watching almost ruined Breaking Bad for me; since then I make it a point to never watch more than 2 episodes of a show in a day. I generally restrict myself to one episode per day.