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lgpiper

Reading Slothfully

I was told in elementary school that I only could read at half the speed for success in college. Oh well, one benefit of slow reading is you get to live with the characters a longer period of time. I read in a vain attempt to better understand people. At my other homes, I'm known as a spouse, pop, guy in the choir, physical chemist, computer/web dilettante and child-care provider. In theory, I'm a published author, if you consider stuff like Quenching Cross Sections for Electronic Energy Transfer Reactions Between Metastable Argon Atoms and Noble Gases and Small Molecules to count as publications. I've strewn dozens of such fascinating things to the winds.

Currently reading

Twenty Thousand Leagues Under the Seas
Jules Verne
The Spirit of the Border
Zane Grey
Ramona the Brave (Ramona, #3)
Beverly Cleary
The Underground Man (Vintage Crime/Black Lizard)
Ross Macdonald
Delilah of the Snows
Harold Bindloss
Mrs. Miniver
Jan Struther
Betsy-Tacy Treasury (P.S.)
Maud Hart Lovelace
A Christmas Carol
Charles Dickens
The Way Some People Die
Ross Macdonald
Envy of Angels
Matt Wallace

A Wizard of Earthsea (The Earthsea Cycle, #1)

A Wizard of Earthsea (The Earthsea Cycle, #1) - Ursula K. Le Guin With all the hoo-ha regarding LeGuin's recent passing, I figured I should read one of her books to find out why she was so beloved. I think one of my kids might have read some LeGuin back during his adolescence.

So, it seems this is to be the tale of a person born Duny, who is later named as Ged on his “naming day”, i.e. upon turning 13, who later sometimes became known as SparrowHawk. He had magical gifts, was tutored briefly by an aunt who was a witch, and later on by a great wizard. Something like that. Will I persist past the first chapter? We’ll see.

Well, I did manage to finish this. I didn't much like it. The problem is I'm not into dragons and wizards and so forth. I do confess to having rather liked The Hobbit, and was ok with The Lord of the Rings, but this didn't do much for me. Probably part of the problem was that the main character was kind of an asshole throughout much of the book. Yes, he sort of came out of it toward the end, but by that time, I kept wishing his shadow self would just kill him off so I could stop reading and take up something more edifying.

The best part of this book was LeGuin's afterword in which she described some of her thoughts about the genre and why mindless killing was stupid and why having non-lily-white characters was a good idea.