Ursula K. Le Guin on Suffering and Getting to the Other Side of Pain
“All you have is what you are, and what you give.”
▻https://www.brainpickings.org/2018/11/29/ursula-k-le-guin-the-dispossessed-suffering
That indelible relationship between suffering and life is what Ursula K. Le Guin (October 21, 1929–January 22, 2018) explores throughout The Dispossessed: An Ambiguous Utopia (public library) — the superb 1974 novel, part science fiction and part philosophy, that gave us Le Guin’s insight into time, loyalty, and the root of human responsibility.
21 Books You Don’t Have to Read | GQ
▻https://www.gq.com/story/21-books-you-dont-have-to-read
C’est bone liste pour la Californie. Et pour la France, l’talie, le Sénégal, le Cameroun, le Congo, l’Égyte, la Russie, l’Inde et la Chine ? Et pour l’Allemagne ?
Une fois ces listes réunis je me prends un an de vacances avec des amis et on se traduit et s’explique mutuellement le pour et le contre des livres.
On commence là sur #Seenthis ?
We’ve been told all our lives that we can only call ourselves well-read once we’ve read the Great Books. We tried. We got halfway through Infinite Jest and halfway through the SparkNotes on Finnegans Wake. But a few pages into Bleak House, we realized that not all the Great Books have aged well. Some are racist and some are sexist, but most are just really, really boring. So we—and a group of un-boring writers—give you permission to strike these books from the canon. Here’s what you should read instead.
...
1. Lonesome Dove by Larry McMurtry
Instead: The Mountain Lion by Jean Stafford
2. The Catcher in the Rye by J. D. Salinger
Instead: Olivia: A Novel by Dorothy Strachey
3. Goodbye to All That by Robert Graves
Instead: Dispatches by Michael Herr
4. The Old Man and the Sea by Ernest Hemingway
Instead: The Summer Book by Tove Jansson
5. The Alchemist by Paulo Coelho
Instead: Near to the Wild Heart by Clarice Lispector
6. A Farewell to Arms by Ernest Hemingway
Instead: The Great Fire by Shirley Hazzard
7. Blood Meridian by Cormac McCarthy
Instead: The Sisters Brothers by Patrick deWitt
8. John Adams by David McCullough
Instead: Destiny of the Republic: A Tale of Madness, Medicine and the Murder of a President by Candice Millard
9 & 10. Adventures of Huckleberry Finn by Mark Twain
Instead: Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass, an American Slave by Fredrick Douglass
Instead: The Adventures and Misadventures of Maqroll by Alvaro Mutis
11. The Ambassadors by Henry James
Instead: The Rise and Fall of the Third Reich by William L. Shirer
12. The Bible
Instead: The Notebook by Agota Kristof
13. Franny and Zooey by J. D. Salinger
Instead: Death Comes for the Archbishop by Willa Cather
14. The Lord of the Rings by J. R. R. Tolkien
Instead: Earthsea Series by Ursula K. Le Guin
15. Dracula by Bram Stoker
Instead: Angels by Denis Johnson
16. Catch-22 by Joseph Heller
Instead: The American Granddaughter by Inaam Kachachi
17. Life by Keith Richards
Instead: The Worst Journey in the World by Apsley Cherry-Garrard
18. Freedom by Jonathan Franzen
Instead: Too Loud a Solitude by Bohumil Hrabal
19. Gravity’s Rainbow by Thomas Pynchon
Instead: Inherent Vice by Thomas Pynchon
20. Slaughterhouse-Five by Kurt Vonnegut
Instead: Veronica by Mary Gaitskill
21. Gulliver’s Travels by Jonathan Swift
Instead: The Life and Opinions of Tristram Shandy, Gentleman by Laurence Sterne
]]>Remembering Ursula K. Le Guin, an inspiration to scientists
▻https://massivesci.com/articles/ursula-k-le-guin-science-fiction-hero-inspiration
Le Guin was a testament to how fiction reveals truth, empathy, and the beauty of knowledge
]]>#Ursula_K_Le_Guin, Acclaimed for Her Fantasy Fiction, Is Dead at 88 - The New York Times
▻https://www.nytimes.com/2018/01/23/obituaries/ursula-k-le-guin-acclaimed-for-her-fantasy-fiction-is-dead-at-88.html
Ursula K. Le Guin, the immensely popular author who brought literary depth and a tough-minded feminist sensibility to science fiction and fantasy with books like “The Left Hand of Darkness” and the Earthsea series, died on Monday at her home in Portland, Ore. She was 88.
Her son, Theo Downes-Le Guin, confirmed the death. He did not specify a cause but said she had been in poor health for several months.
Ms. Le Guin embraced the standard themes of her chosen genres: sorcery and dragons, spaceships and planetary conflict. But even when her protagonists are male, they avoid the macho posturing of so many science fiction and fantasy heroes. The conflicts they face are typically rooted in a clash of cultures and resolved more by conciliation and self-sacrifice than by swordplay or space battles.
]]>Ursula K. Le Guin on the Future of the Left
▻http://www.filmsforaction.org/articles/ursula-k-le-guin-on-the-future-of-the-left
When you’re given the opportunity to publish Ursula K. Le Guin, you leap at it—even if you’re ostensibly a fiction magazine and what lands on your desk is one of Le Guin’s political essays.
It’s...
]]>Ursula Le Guin Speech Challenges The Inevitability of Capitalism
▻http://www.filmsforaction.org/watch/ursula-le-guin-speech-challenges-the-inevitability-of-capitalism
Ursula K. Le Guin accepts the National Book Foundation’s Medal for Distinguished Contribution to American Letters and challenges the assumption that capitalism seems inescapable. Transcript below...
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