Snowflake Challenge, day 2

[edenfalling]

snowflake_challenge day 2:

Share a book/song/movie/tv show/fanwork/etc that changed your life. Something that impacted on your consciousness in a way that left its mark on your soul.

Many over the years, but I'm going to say Ursula Le Guin in general, because she did that to me twice. The first was The Tombs of Atuan, which I read when I was... probably eight? Could have been seven or nine, but eight sounds right. I picked it up at random in my school library, and while I wouldn't necessarily say it knocked me for a loop (I was a bit young for that), it was, I think, a very lucky early counter-argument to the reams of male-centric swords-and-horses stories I read subsequently: a quiet voice always there in the bedrock of my mind, saying, "There are other ways."

Some years later (I think I was twelve or thirteen), I read The Dispossessed and that one DID knock me for a loop -- less for the anarchist stuff than for the structure of the thing and how it balances and tie in to the themes and the emotional arc, plus the richness of the worldbuilding in general, and also of course the characters and the very believable-feeling descriptions of alien science as a lived experience. I walked around for a couple weeks with a good quarter of my brain constantly chewing over that book, while I tried to stumble through the rest of my life and not give away how utterly distracted I was.

Comments

[sperrywink]

It's so wonderful when media can throw you for a loop like that and Ursula Le Guin is definitely up there for being novel and thought-provoking!

[edenfalling]

It's an extremely disconcerting experience to have one's brain so thoroughly up-ended, but in a good way. :)

[akatsuki210.livejournal.com]

I like Ursula K. LeGuin as well--I really enjoyed the Earthsea Trilogy when I read it years ago. I have a copy of The Dispossessed, but haven't gotten around to reading it yet.

[edenfalling]

I will warn you that people who go in to The Dispossessed expecting 'OMG the best thing ever!!!' have a tendency to come out saying, "...was that all?" It's a book that sort of sneaks up on you when you're not looking, so if you are looking, that ruins a bit of the effect. *wry*

(And also, of course, no one book can be all things to all people.)