lyndseyreader's review against another edition
5.0
"After all, dictators are always afraid of poets."
--Ursula K. Le Guin
--Ursula K. Le Guin
blairlovesbooks's review against another edition
3.0
I am almost embarrassed to rate a book as a 3 (a rarity for me) when it is clearly so beloved, but I have to follow my gut.
I have to acknowledge something crucial: I have never read Ms. Le Guin’s works. Truthfully, I’ve been encouraged to for years but have never known where to start, as she has an enormous body of work.
The saving grace of this book is that Le Guin’s writing (as shown in excerpts) is indeed sinuous and clear, like running your hands under a tap. And many gems of her advice were indeed valuable and fascinating (in particular her extrapolations on the possibilities of grammar).
But one thing she said (multiple times) stuck in my craw. She just could not stop talking about how they don’t teach imagination in schools, “anymore,” while acknowledging that she herself has never taught and generally interacts very little with educators. Now it’s true that imagination is not part of curriculum in the strictest sense, but it never has been.
Every great artist of the 20th century has a story about a teacher who was either a gleeful quasher of their creativity, or a kind-hearted encourager of their youthful joie de vivre. I have experienced both at all levels of education. As a passionate teacher lover myself, those who complain about education while knowing absolutely nothing about the state of modern education other than what trickles down to them from sullen op-eds are particularly irksome to me.
That sin, while annoying and swaying towards doddering, pales in comparison to the format of this book. They REALLY took 3 podcast interviews, transcribed them, and sold them back to us for $27.95. Sorry, but that is highway robbery. Sure, they added some fancy formatting, and David Naimon wrote 5,000 or so extra words about how much he loves Ursula K. Le Guin, then they found some excerpts for good measure, but it is exactly like when you buy an influencer’s online course for $99 only to find out the extent of their advice is “believe in yourself and buy a paper planner.”
Pro tip: podcast transcripts are generally out there and available for free as an accessibility tool. Save yourself the fluff and just read those.
I have to acknowledge something crucial: I have never read Ms. Le Guin’s works. Truthfully, I’ve been encouraged to for years but have never known where to start, as she has an enormous body of work.
The saving grace of this book is that Le Guin’s writing (as shown in excerpts) is indeed sinuous and clear, like running your hands under a tap. And many gems of her advice were indeed valuable and fascinating (in particular her extrapolations on the possibilities of grammar).
But one thing she said (multiple times) stuck in my craw. She just could not stop talking about how they don’t teach imagination in schools, “anymore,” while acknowledging that she herself has never taught and generally interacts very little with educators. Now it’s true that imagination is not part of curriculum in the strictest sense, but it never has been.
Every great artist of the 20th century has a story about a teacher who was either a gleeful quasher of their creativity, or a kind-hearted encourager of their youthful joie de vivre. I have experienced both at all levels of education. As a passionate teacher lover myself, those who complain about education while knowing absolutely nothing about the state of modern education other than what trickles down to them from sullen op-eds are particularly irksome to me.
That sin, while annoying and swaying towards doddering, pales in comparison to the format of this book. They REALLY took 3 podcast interviews, transcribed them, and sold them back to us for $27.95. Sorry, but that is highway robbery. Sure, they added some fancy formatting, and David Naimon wrote 5,000 or so extra words about how much he loves Ursula K. Le Guin, then they found some excerpts for good measure, but it is exactly like when you buy an influencer’s online course for $99 only to find out the extent of their advice is “believe in yourself and buy a paper planner.”
Pro tip: podcast transcripts are generally out there and available for free as an accessibility tool. Save yourself the fluff and just read those.
brisingr's review against another edition
3.0
Have I read anything else but two short stories by Ursula K. Le Guin? Not really, but when an author says the kind of literary, life-changing things that she wrote, I got too curious about her and some of her thoughts. This was interesting, but again, being a collection, it stays perfectly at the middle ground of enjoyment.
bozodubbedover's review against another edition
5.0
I always love coming back to Le Guin. Such a marvel of writing as a whole, with her ability to write all kinds of fiction, poetry, and non-fiction; if I could write with a knowledge and control of the fraction of any of her genres she mastered I would be contented. I lapped this short book chock full of wisdom up like water.
xmagicanderson's review against another edition
4.0
An insightful book to read for fans of Le Guin. Notable conversations below:
They’ll say, I don’t read fiction because it isn’t real. This is incredibly naive. Fiction is something that only human beings do, and only in certain circumstances. We don’t know exactly for what purposes. But one of the things it does is lead you to recognize what you did not know before.
This is what a lot of mystical disciplines are after—simply seeing, really seeing, really being aware. Which means you’re recognizing the things around you more deeply, but they also seem new. So the seeing-as-new and recognition are really the same thing.
HUBER: Have you ever thought about writing a memoir?
LE GUIN: Memoir? No. I’m like my father: I’m not interested in talking about who I was. I’m much more interested in finding out who I am. [Laughs] Going ahead.
LE GUIN: You’re how old? FIfty-four, fifty-six? Believe me, you haven’t been there. You may think you’re getting old, but you have a ways to go.
STREITFELD: It’s a long slide downhill, it seems like.
LE GUIN: A long way to go doesn’t tell you up or down, does it? It’s just a long way to go. I’m neither an optimist nor a pessimist. I just tell it the way it is. [Laughs] Being an artist takes a certain amount of arrogance.
That, as of old, was the writer’s job, maybe his primary job. To show us the futures we didn’t want, and the futures we could have if we wanted. The key line in the speech, for me, was the one about, “We live in capitalism, its power seems inescapable—but then, so did the divine right of kings.” We can change our lives.
I can’t make moral judgments about what was wrong and right a hundred or two hundred years ago. I don’t live in that world. We have so much trouble reading history without colonizing it...as if they had the ideas in their head to think the way we do. It’s so unfair. There’s a sort of absolutism today. You do one bad thing and you’re a bad person. That’s just childish. There’s a lot of childishness around.
They’ll say, I don’t read fiction because it isn’t real. This is incredibly naive. Fiction is something that only human beings do, and only in certain circumstances. We don’t know exactly for what purposes. But one of the things it does is lead you to recognize what you did not know before.
This is what a lot of mystical disciplines are after—simply seeing, really seeing, really being aware. Which means you’re recognizing the things around you more deeply, but they also seem new. So the seeing-as-new and recognition are really the same thing.
HUBER: Have you ever thought about writing a memoir?
LE GUIN: Memoir? No. I’m like my father: I’m not interested in talking about who I was. I’m much more interested in finding out who I am. [Laughs] Going ahead.
LE GUIN: You’re how old? FIfty-four, fifty-six? Believe me, you haven’t been there. You may think you’re getting old, but you have a ways to go.
STREITFELD: It’s a long slide downhill, it seems like.
LE GUIN: A long way to go doesn’t tell you up or down, does it? It’s just a long way to go. I’m neither an optimist nor a pessimist. I just tell it the way it is. [Laughs] Being an artist takes a certain amount of arrogance.
That, as of old, was the writer’s job, maybe his primary job. To show us the futures we didn’t want, and the futures we could have if we wanted. The key line in the speech, for me, was the one about, “We live in capitalism, its power seems inescapable—but then, so did the divine right of kings.” We can change our lives.
I can’t make moral judgments about what was wrong and right a hundred or two hundred years ago. I don’t live in that world. We have so much trouble reading history without colonizing it...as if they had the ideas in their head to think the way we do. It’s so unfair. There’s a sort of absolutism today. You do one bad thing and you’re a bad person. That’s just childish. There’s a lot of childishness around.
vulturetime's review against another edition
4.0
honestly, i'm not sure i agree with some of uklg's views/opinions and i didn't really resonate with the poetry section that much, but all in all, i think this was pretty good and has given me new thought as to how i'm going to approach writing as well as reaffirm how i've been approaching some aspects. i would definitely recommend.