random thoughts on a wizard of earthsea

*I feel so very sorry for this book. Or rather, I suppose I feel sorry for myself. For as much as I enjoyed this book, I think I would have enjoyed it even more if I had read it at a different time (i.e., not overlapping and following Monsters of Men). Monsters of Men, or the whole Chaos Walking trilogy really, just so took my breath away, so consumed me, that I think nearly anything in comparison would fall short. I think maybe the biggest part of this had to do with the pacing. Monsters of Men is nearly frenetic, and I think being so keyed-up from that experience, I found myself becoming impatient with the pace of A Wizard of Earthsea. So, yes, sad...because I *know* I wouldn't have felt this impatience at a different time.

*Other than my silly impatience though...I really did enjoy this book. And it surprised me immensely when Ana mentioned to me that many people despise this series. I'm with you, Ana, on that one...I can't for the life of me fathom what would stir up such strong negative feelings towards these books. (Of course, I've only read the first...but if it's any indication of what the series is like as whole...) 

*Okay, shall I flaunt my profound ignornance when it comes to fantasy literature? A Wizard of Earthsea is the sort of fantasy that I grew up thinking stereotypical of fantasy. Wizards, dragons, quests. I find it so sad that for so many years I had no idea how enormously broad the fantasy genre is. *sigh* Can we just do away with "genre" altogether? *more sighs* I mean, I understand that categorizing books can have some usefulness in very limited ways. But for me, it does little more than confuse me. I also find it extremely sad that in my day, fantasy literature never made my assigned reading lists for school. Nor did science fiction. Nor did horror. In seventh grade, we did read an Agatha Christie book, but that would pretty much cover it for mysteries. I'm not saying the literature I was assigned was "bad" or "unworthy"...but book blogging has opened my eyes to how very limited it was. Shouldn't the goal of education be to broaden minds, not limit them?

*This was my very encounter with Ursula Le Guin. I know some people have very mixed feelings about her. All I can say is that my first venture into her worlds was a success. And she absolutely earned my respect, not as a writer (though she very much earned my respect in that regard as well), but as a person. With this one simple passage:

Later, when Ged thought back upon that night, he knew that had none touched him when he lay thus spirit-lost, had none called him back in some way, he might have been lost for good. It was only the dumb instinctive wisdom of the beast who licks his hurt companion to comfort him, and yet in that wisdom Ged saw something akin to his own power, something that went as deep as wizardry. From that time forth he believed that the wise man is one who never set himself apart from other living things, whether they have speech or not, and in later years he strove long to learn what can be learned, in silence, from the eyes of animals, the flight of birds, the great slow gestures of trees.

 Oh yes, I love her.

*The next book in the series is on its way from PaperbackSwap. :D