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arbieroo

Arbie's Unoriginally Titled Book Blog

It's a blog! Mainly of book reviews.

Currently reading

Station Zero
Philip Reeve
Progress: 220/282 pages
The Books of Earthsea: The Complete Illustrated Edition
Ursula K. Le Guin, Charles Vess
Progress: 749/997 pages
The Penguin Book of Russian Poetry
Robert Chandler
The Uncertain Land and Other Poems
Patrick O'Brian
Progress: 8/160 pages
The Heptameron (Penguin Classics)
Marguerite de Navarre
Progress: 152/544 pages
The Poems and Plays of John Masefield
John Masefield
Progress: 78/534 pages
Poems Selected
Emily Dickinson, Ted Hughes
Progress: 4/50 pages
Selected Poems
U A Fanthorpe
Progress: 18/160 pages
The Penguin Book of Scottish Verse
Mick Imlah, Robert Crawford
Hainish Novels & Stories, Vol. 2
Ursula K. Le Guin
Progress: 133/789 pages
The Wild Girls - Ursula K. Le Guin An eclectic mixture of things has been poured into this slender volume: the longest piece is a short story, there are some poems, an essay, an interview...

The title piece is the short story, a tale of violence and slavery that is both moving and tragic. LeGuin has discussed slavery in her fiction a number of times but this isn't repetition. Here it seems to be used as an extreme case of what happens when a Patriarchal society reduces women to menials and sex-objects. The only flaw I found in this story is that I found it difficult to see how the society portrayed actually arose; it seems oddly artificial to me, which is rare in my experience of LeGuin.

The poems felt competent but it is too small a sample from which to make a proper judgement of the author's stature in that field and they are the only ones I've read. I'm at least not put off reading more.

The essay and interview are outspoken though not terribly surprising in the views espoused.

I would think this volume would appeal most to LeGuin fans who have are already familiar with several of her major fictional works.