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Arbie's Unoriginally Titled Book Blog
It's a blog! Mainly of book reviews.
Currently reading
Station Zero
Progress:
220/282 pages
The Books of Earthsea: The Complete Illustrated Edition
Progress:
749/997 pages
The Penguin Book of Russian Poetry
The Uncertain Land and Other Poems
Progress:
8/160 pages
The Heptameron (Penguin Classics)
Progress:
152/544 pages
The Poems and Plays of John Masefield
Progress:
78/534 pages
Poems Selected
Progress:
4/50 pages
Selected Poems
Progress:
18/160 pages
The Penguin Book of Scottish Verse
Hainish Novels & Stories, Vol. 2
Progress:
133/789 pages
Reading progress update: I've read 945 out of 1100 pages.
Winter's King
OK, now I want to talk about gender. The original version of this story was written prior to Left Hand of Darkness and is re-printed in the appendix of this volume. This version was re-written after Left Hand was published and it switches from referring to everybody on Gethen as "he" to referring to everybody as "she." Immediately I switched from thinking of the characters as male to thinking of them as female. But they are both and neither.
I've never come across a better illustration of why we need gender-neutral pronouns in English. It's looking like "they" is going to win out despite the consequent singular-plural ambiguity.
Also, good story about the effects of special relativity!