( Fury of the Phoenix, by Cindy Pon )

The other promised catch-up post.

The Years of Rice and Salt (Kim Stanley Robinson ( Read more... )

The Nibelungenlied (Anonymous/various, trans. A.T. Hatto)

( Cut for length )

The Word for World is Forest (Ursula Le Guin ( Read more... )

The Little Sister (Raymond Chandler ( Read more... )

Searoad is lovely. Quiet, reflective, a little melancholic. Perhaps not the best thing to choose to read on Christmas Day/Boxing Day, but at the same time, I'm glad I read it. Ursula Le Guin always writes beautifully, always makes me feel, always makes me want to write. I'm full of shapeless, formless ideas right now, of thoughts. There were parts ( Read more... )

Catwings is a sweet little book. I like pretty much everything Ursula Le Guin writes, so it's not surprising that I like her fiction for young children, too. It seems like it'd be pretty good to read aloud, but there are also lovely pictures ( Read more... )

Hmm. The three books of this trilogy aren't that directly related -- I think they can be read alone. I think Voices is probably the best, in that it has a plot as well as the other things that make Le Guin's writing so lovely. I might like this better on a reread, as I did with Gifts, but I think perhaps I found this the weakest -- and I'm not sure ( Read more... )

I love Ursula Le Guin's non-fiction -- her thoughts on writing, her thoughts about the genre. Her prose is generally easy to read, even when she's talking about something people are more likely to consider dusty, and she has a sense of humour that would probably make just about anything delightful. The only problem I have with Cheek By Jowl is more ( Read more... )

A lot more seems to happen in Voices than in the first book of the trilogy, Gifts. It has more tension, more drive, and it feels more full. Ursula Le Guin has a habit of writing very beautiful books that aren't very immediate or exciting because they have very little by way of plot. I still like them, but plenty of people won't stop to read them. ( Read more... )