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Died of being really fucking old. (88)

Everyone will now mourn in the traditional way of ignoring all Reading Corner threads.

Never finished Wizard of Earthsea. The writing style drove me nuts.

I wasn't that crazy about most of her stuff actually but obviously a lot of people were and she was hugely influential etc. at a time when there weren't a lot of women writing fantasy and sci-fi.

But it was a much bigger deal to me when Bradbury croaked tbh.

I liked A Wizard of Earthsea, but I thought the sequel, the Tombs of Atuan, was superior. Still need to read The Farthest Shore, Tehanu, ect. The Left Hand of Darkness was a nice novel, although I thought her essay at the beginning of the book on why Science Fiction should be taken seriously by the Literary Establishment is now rather dated. I thought The Dispossessed was more pretentious than satisfying as a novel, plus she was rather vague about how her anarchist utopian society worked (not as vague as Gene Rodenberry was with his Star Trek utopia, but not half as detailed as H.G. Wells in his utopian novels). The Beginning Place started well as a mash-up of Social Realism and High Fantasy, but the ending was heavy-handed with its obvious symbolism. I've meant to read her early Hanish novels, but I still haven't gotten around to it. I always wanted to read her Imaginary Country novel Malifrena, but I've read reader reviews online and most people there said it was a tedious work. I've read some of her Orsinian stories (Orsinia is the country Malifrena is set in) and I thought they were dull. Le Guin was at times an excellent writer, but always when she made the stories and the characters the most important elements. When she let the theme be the dominant factor, she could be kind of tedious. I think I'll re-read A Wizard of Earthsea.