Welcome to Litsy!

Any other Littens on Substack? I‘m at Kirsten‘s Kitchen Table!

I don‘t tend to read a lot of science fiction, so although I enjoyed this, it‘s not something I would generally choose on my own. Following the life of the main character Shevek in his present and through flashbacks to his past, it describes life in two very different political worlds on two different planets. I thought Le Guin did an amazing job of clearly describing the good and bad of both societies.

#AuthorAMonth #1001books #audiobook

Hello, June! I‘ll be doing some traveling for work this month, so my kindle is already all loaded up with #aam, #sundaybuddyread, one of the #camplitsy reads, and #roll100 picks 🥰

I can‘t decide if I want to read the tagged for #AuthoraMonth, or if I want to go in the suggested order for the Hainish Cycle and start with Rocannon‘s World… UKLG says there are only loose connection among the books, and I own the tagged novel, sooo…

#June #Bookspin @TheAromaofBooks

Trying to read a few books from my shelves before I buy anything new... let's see how long I can last. This one is proving a strong read so far - we've got communism, captilism, political manoeuvring, a bit of a love story, some physics. It's all going on. Only my second Le Guin (after The Lathe of Heaven, which I really liked).

If you want a damn good story with plenty to think about, Ursula Le Guin is a great choice.
Here are two companion worlds, one much like the contemporary West (declared a paradise by the Terran ambassador, whose Earth was wrecked by our current dominant culture) and the other a breakaway non-authoritarian communist society. Shevek is the scientist caught between them: regardless of ideology, people go on being the best and worst of themselves.

Keeping cozy tonight with a couple of cats and a new book. It‘s my first foray into Ursula K. Le Guin and I‘m very excited. #lennox #huey #catsoflitsy

📖 The Dispossessed
✍️ Lord Dunsany
📺 Doctor Who
🧑‍🎤 David Bowie
🎶 Dream On (Aerosmith), Don't Fear the Reaper (Blue Öyster Cult)

#ManicMonday #LetterD @CBee

Woo hoo! I made a lot of good progress in March & even got a bingo! My second this year! Hoping I can get another bingo in April! #BookSpinBingo

@TheAromaofBooks

"I used to want so badly to be different. I wonder why?"
"There's a point, around the age of twenty," Bedap said, "when you have to choose whether to be like everybody else the rest of your life, or to make a virtue of your peculiarities."
"Or at least accept them with resignation," said Shevek.

"A body-profiteer," Takver called women who used their sexuality as a weapon in a power-struggle with men. To look at her, Vea was the body-profiteer to end them all. (...) She was so elaborately and ostentatiously a female body that she seemed scarcely to be a human being.

"You can't crush ideas by suppressing them. You can only crush them by ignoring them. By refusing to think - refusing to change."

"But what," Oiie said abruptly, as if the question, long kept back, burst from him under pressure- "What keeps people in order? Why don't they rob and murder each other?"
"Nobody owns anything to rob. If you want things you take them from the depository. As for violence, well, I don't know, Oiie; would you murder me, ordinarily? And if you felt like it, would a law against it stop you? Coercion is the least efficient means of obtaining order."

'There were walls around all his thoughts, and he seemed utterly unaware of them though he was perpetually hiding behind them.'

The idea is like grass. It craves light, likes crowds, thrives on cross breeding, grows better for being stepped on.💡

Today‘s moment of serendipity. The Data Detective was describing how statistics are often presented with too limited information for you to understand context and therefore usefulness.
At the same time, Shevek & friends were discussing whether the other world they see from afar could be different than what they are told in history classes. Not that anyone is lying but only that they know only what they‘ve been told, which could be outdated.

🤍

New book for my #tbr. Found through this list:

https://www.buzzfeed.com/alliehayes/books-that-changed-lives-reddit

"If you've ever wondered how to reconcile a desire for freedom and a desire to support the common good, look no further."

An author I haven‘t read yet and really should have.

I didn't love this the way I loved The Left Hand of Darkness but that doesn't mean it isn't brilliant. Le Guin mixes complex philosophical and political ideas with theoretical physics and phenomenal writing to create another story that ultimately asks what makes us human #bookspin @TheAromaofBooks

second book of the year takes its place as one of, if not my favorite novel of all time 🙂 there are such strong flashes of benjamin in this story — the overcoming of empty, homogenous time; the messianic revolutionary figure; the pursuit of tikkun olam/olamot — that i wonder if his work was a source of inspiration for le guin?

This novel is classic science fiction at its best. It checks all the boxes: great world building, interesting characters, fascinating social commentary, two concurrent plots that never lag or get boring, and on and on. The technology may have seemed advanced when this was written in the mid-1970s but we've since passed most of what is portrayed. I stayed up past my bedtime often to read this, it was hard to put down.

Barely a pick. Just finished this one for a virtual book club that I host for some IRL friends. This book has won ALL the awards and I am very well versed in anarchist philosophy but the book barely moved my interest meter. Plenty worth discussing for a book club so that's a win, but it's just a very lukewarm entertainment experience.

Shavek, a physicist working on a grand unified theory of time, leaves the anarcho-socialist not-quite utopia of Anarres for the “propertarian“, “archist“ societies of its sister planet Urras hoping to find a more intellectually stimulating environment so that he can complete his work and to act as a bridge between the Anarresti and their Urrasti origins in order to continue the revolution. 👎

#sunlightwellness

“Dead anarchists make martyrs, you know, and keep living for centuries. But absent ones can be forgotten.”

Even pain counts.

“It is hard to swear when sex is not dirty and blasphemy does not exist.”

I slept until 10 because I was up until 4 so I‘m counting the hour of reading I did before bed but after midnight 😁 reading this for my Writing Utopias class and am going to be cranky when I get to the halfway point and have to stop so I don‘t spoil anything for others if I read on 😬 But, I have all of Rubyfruit Jungle to read by 11:30 tomorrow for book club. #readathon @DeweysReadathon #24HourReadathon

I am posting one book per day from my extensive to-be-read collection. No description or reason for wanting to read the book. Some are old and some will be new. Don't judge me - I have a lot of books.
Day 100

#tbrmountain #bookbuyingdiet

Wow - that‘s a stunner!

Still good but my high expectations for this author made me a bit disappointed.

The book centers around Shevek,a physicist from Anarres.Anarres was settled by a group of anarchists who left Urras,a place probably similar to earth,in search of Utopia.Le Guin explores the advantages and weaknesses of both societies,and does so very well without idealizing one over the other.She addressees important political issues such as anarchy,gender roles,feminism and homosexuality and that utopia isn‘t always what we imagine it to be.👇🏻

Reading an actual book. A physical one.
It's been a while.

"No distinction was drawn between the arts and the crafts; art was not considered as having a place in life, but as being a basic technique of life, like speech."

I'm back! Lots I want to catch up on, but today will be a quiet day. I'm babying the remnants of a bad headache so it doesn't flare up again. Tea and the last 50 pages of this book. Then probably more tea and a different book 🙂

#bookreport #weeklyforecast

Checked everything off my forecast this week and started two others.

Not making a forecast for this week, as I probably won't be online next weekend, but my tentative plan for the next 2 weeks:
Finish The Dispossessed, Genji, Emma, Broken Stars
Start and finish Christmas Days, and probably The Bollywood Affair
Continue with Literary Women and The Hobbit

"He was borne off to the waiting limousine, eminently photographic to the last because of his height, his long hair, and the strange look of grief and recognition on his face."

(Le Guin's sentences get me every time.)

Another LeGuin masterwork. This story unraveled in multiple timelines, telling a bleak and sobering tale of an anarchist from an anarchic society who was welcomed back into the fold of free market bureaucracy.

Just started. Highly praised by my fiancé who had to read it for a political science literature class.

I genuinely liked this novel a lot, but the time lapses were too confusing a lot of the time. Everything was made to be pretty readable despite the content surrounding physics philosophy (?) The characters were fulfilling and the story of anarchism (beyond time theory) was something I'd love to read more of.

A Sci-Fi classic, this book is the story of Shevek, a brilliant physicist who has grown up on the anarchist utopia of Anarres. Hoping to find more freedom for his work and to leave behind jealous colleagues, he leaves his wife and children and moves to the planet Urras. Urras has two main states fighting for dominance-one capitalist and patriarchal, and the other proletariat. He is soon in the middle of a revolution and longing for home. 4⭐️ #2019

After a year of wanting to read this book, it‘s finally time. I think this novel is one that is perpetually timely.

This my least favorite Le Guin so far. But it still captured my attention.