Product Description
Sixty Odd is Ursula K. Le Guin's fifth collection of poems. At turns wry, playful, and sharply critical, Le Guin eloquently explores themes ranging from finely observed details of her day-to-day life, to moving philosophical reflections on her childhood and growing older. Taken as a whole, the collection embodies the heart of Le Guin's best work: writing that is full of insight, humor, and genuine wisdom. ... Read more

Customer Reviews (1)

Beautiful at any age
Gorgeous, spare, searing poems of memory, loss, and perfect moments. You might have to be in your sixties to really appreciate these poems, but they spoke to me(in my sixties) deeply. ... Read more

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Customer Reviews (1)

What life was really like for one Southern woman
Magnolia LeGuin was a woman struggling to deal with daily life as it was post-bellum. This includes frequent childbirths, servant problems, and few if any modern conveniences. Yet it is also a testiment to the power of love between a husband and wife and a mother and her children. I found it far superior to many of the women's diaries put out for publication these days and would recommend it highly.-Marianna ... Read more

Product Description
This book critically examines Le Guin's fiction for all ages, and it will be of great interest to her many admirers and to all students and scholars of children's literature. ... Read more

Product Description
"Then came a child trotting to school with his little backpack. He trotted on all fours, neatly, his hands in leather mitts or boots that protected them from the pavement; he was pale, with small eyes, and a snout, but he was adorable."
--from Changing Planes

The misery of waiting for a connecting flight at an airport leads to the accidental discovery of alighting on other planes--not airplanes but planes of existence. Ursula Le Guin's deadpan premise frames a series of travel accounts by the tourist-narrator who describes bizarre societies and cultures that sometimes mirror our own, and sometimes open puzzling doors into the alien.


Winner of the PEN/Malamud for Short Stories
Amazon.com Review
At first, readers may find Ursula K. Le Guin's collectionChanging Planes rather light, if not slight. However, as thereader continues through its sixteen stories (ten of which are original to this volume), thecollection achieves considerable weight and power.

A punny conceit links the stories and provides the title ofChanging Planes. Conceived before September 11, 2001, thisconceit now, unfairly, looks odd. Trapped too many times in themisery of pre-terrorist airports, Sita Dulip discovered how tochange planes: not airplanes, but planes of existence. Now thepeople of Sita's earth travel between alternate universes.

The stories in Changing Planes are strong expressions of Le Guin's considerable anthropological and psychological insight.However, these tales don't follow traditional plot structures orcharacter-development methods. They read more like travelogues, orsocio-anthropological articles on foreign nations or tribes. Theyexplore exotic literary planes lying somewhere between Jorge LuisBorges's ficciones and Horace Miner's anthropological satireBody Ritual Among the Nacirema. However, unlikeMiner's parody, Le Guin's wise tales are rarely satirical,though "The Royals of Hegn" sharply skewers the absurdity ofroyalty-worship, and "Great Joy" rightly attacks the boundlesscorporate criminality familiar to anyone who's read a newspapersince 2001.

One of America's greatest authors, Ursula K. Le Guin has receivedthe National Book Award, the Newberry Award, the PEN/Malamud Award,five Nebula Awards, and five Hugo Awards. --Cynthia Ward ... Read more

Customer Reviews (22)

Anthropological Sci-Fi
3.5 stars, round to 4

I don't agree with the dystopia tag that someone has given this book.It is the same situation as for Watership Down.The book describes many different societies, and a few of them are dystopian.So it does have dystopian elements, but the book overall is not a dystopian genré novel since most of the societies are not dystopian.

It is a collection of short science fiction stories, all by the same author.They are tied loosely together by a scenario in which someone has discovered that while waiting in airports to catch a connecting flight, people can travel to other worlds by "changing planes," i.e.,by visiting other dimensions.Get it?Since the traveler is already "between planes," it is much easier to "change planes."This part of the novel is humor and satire.Some of the requirements needed for interplanetary travel are:indigestion (from bad airplane food), boredom, and tension (about catching your connection.)Very clever!

Most of the stories themselves, however, are serious.Each story describes the culture of a different plane of the universe.It's like reading a beginner anthropology textbook for other worlds.There is virtually no plot or character development at all.So there isn't any thrilling action or characters in whom the reader will become very emotionally invested.It makes for somewhat dry reading.

But I've always enjoyed anthropology, so I found it interesting. The alien civilizations allow for infinite possibilities - it must have been a hoot to write these stories!Ms. Le Guin is very creative, and there is much variety in the different beings and especially in their cultures.Although most of these stories were written in the 2000's - and none before the late 1990's - they have the feel of classic sci-fi from the 1950's - 1970's.

My favorite story was the bittersweet "The Fliers of Gy."A humorous one is "Great Joy" - Cousin Sulie cracks me up - don't we all know someone just like her?

Also included are whimsical, stylized - almost cartoonish - black and white drawings by Eric Beddows.

Changing Planes isn't Ursula Le Guin's best work.It doesn't even approach the quality of some of her other writing, with its extensive character and plot development.(The Beginning Place and Very Far Away From Anywhere Else, both Young Adult novels, immediately come to mind as examples of how moving and wise Le Guin can be; and she is probably best known for The Wizard of Earthsea series.)

But it is a quick read, and not a bad way to spend a few hours.

(246 pages)


Quotes from Changing Planes:

"[The words celibate or chaste] imply a forced or willed resistance to desire.Where there is no desire there is no resistance, no abstinence, but rather what one might call, in a radical sense of the word, innocence."

"By nothing I do can I attain a goal beyond my reach."- King Yudhishthira, quoted in Changing Planes

Review of Used Book
I know the book is a used paperback, and didn't expect it to be perfect, but I don't consider the condition to be sellable.The binder was very worn, and page had become completely separated!It was just loose, stuck into the place where it should have been attached.

Wildly imaginative worlds and people
The framing device for these connected short stories from sci-fi/fantasy legend Ursula Leguin is that bored air travelers can slip out of airport lounges into alternative worlds or planes.So, while travelers are waiting to change planes, they can take little side trips by changing planes.The collection is one traveler's accounts of her visits to alternative planes.

Reading Changing Places is like getting a series of letters from a traveling friend with newsy reports of her latest stops.But these are not your usual colorful locals and odd customs.The narrator meets people who are mostly human (and part plants and animals), entire populations who migrate north to breed and return south when their young are grown, people compelled to build stone structures that no one uses, people cursed with flight where flyers are considered deformed, and others--each more outlandish than the last.

The collection showcases LeGuin's world-building talent.Sixteen stories each present a unique world with one or more species of cool, outrageous, thought provoking, or weird sentient beings.It's good these various being we meet are interesting because not much actually happens in any of the stories.This gives the collection something of a contemplative mood, like a series of miniature studies in extraterrestrial sociology.

So, for LeGuin's fans, this collection offers two things she does best:build worlds and examine their social structures.Few writers come up with so many and so varied new ways to imagine life.And few make it interesting enough you want to keep turning the pages to see what the next plane change will bring.

Gulliver's (Le Guin's) Extraterrestial Travels
Just an opinion, but a book whose very title is a pun is off to a mighty good start.The premise of Changing Planes is that a traveler in a U.S. airport becomes so mightily disturbed by flight delay, food that could double as a petro-chemical, and airline attendants that could easily be outperformed by a Tickle Me Elmo doll, that she is able to access interstellar planes, making travel twixt the numerous civilizations in our universe quite accessible.

Daughter of a writer and an anthropology professor (Berkeley), LeGuin's earliest writings often involved imaginary civilizations.What does a writer whose career spans more than four decades,has garnered numerous awards, and gathered a significant band of devoted readers choose to write about in her mid-70's?Well, whatever she damn well pleases, is what.Which, with qualifications (more on this in just a bit), is much to our benefit.

The influence of LeGuin's anthropologist/writer genome is strong in Changing Planes.Some books, to be fit into a nutshell, would require a coconut.The kernel, but not all the richness, of Changing Planes can be fit into a sunflower seed:Think Gulliver's Travels on an intergalactic basis.In a series of short stories, each reflecting a trip to a different plane/planet, our neo-Gulliver (who goes by Sita Dulip)visits civilization after civilization, exploring whatever themes haunt the intelligent and agile mind of Ursula K. LeGuin.Genetic manipulation gone wild, clashes between cultures that differ in technological expertise, tales of the consequences of abandoning rituals that are tuned to the rhythms of nature, a planet turned into an extreme version of Disney's "Happiest Place on Earth": Le Guin simply lets fly, with largely intriguing results.My own favorite story?A planet is which everyone dreams a new, but shared, dream every night; a communal dream that includes the longings, fears, joys, and horrors of every citizen.

Changing Planes, absorbed at a measured pace, and with a bit of patience, is richly provocative.It could (in Berkeley, but not likely in Sarah Palin's home town) be used to great effect as an entire high school course, with sufficient depth of material to consume an entire semester.Is it worth your time?Let me get back to those qualifications I mentioned above...

If you like your sci-fi chock full of nano-tech warfare, spaceships whose guns are projecting blue trans-dimensional disrupter beams at sinister aliens, and scientific underpinnings as hard as diamonds (I do like all these things)....go play somewhere else.If you are ideologically in the Bush/Cheney camp (ideological implies ideas, admittedly a bit of a stretch for these two gentlemen), spare yourself some Pepcid/antacid purchases, pick up a Clancy novel instead.But if, on the other hand, you'd like a book that you could leave on your bedstand in order to graze on a story/plane, and subsequently drift off to sleep thinking "Hmmmmm.Interesting.Very, very interesting", well then!Time to change planes!

Seductive torture
I'm a big fan of Ms. Leguin. The pun/premise of this book is provocative, but the individual sections are so brief that they seem like experiments in setting up the complex cultures for which she is rightly renowned. There's just not enough room for the contextual stories to evolve as we've learned to love from her. I hope she'll develop at least some of them further. ... Read more

Customer Reviews (1)

Fascinating book of street photography/stories/poetry
There's something about the cover of this book that seems uninspiring, but once you get past the cover, its a treasure.

Ursula K Le Guin, a professional writer, lived on Thurman Street, Portland, OR, for more than 30 years. Later meeting another Portland resident, photographer Roger Dorband, they decide to chronicle life on Thurman street which stretches the city width.With Roger doing candid photographs in lovely BW of the various Thurman Street neighborhoods, Ursula supplements the photographs by writing poems for each photograph, but then later shifting to transcribing quotes and stories heard off the street. To answer questions about specific scenes, there's an index in the back that provides detailed background for most photographs.The entire collaborative project took 7 years

Its very entertaining and easy to read. At the end of this creative book, one is left hungry and wanting more.If you like street photography, poetry and/orsociological studies, it works on any of those levels.Would make a great present to oneself or those you love.I've loaned my copy out several times to relatives and fellow amateur photographers.

... Read more

Product Description
Aqueduct Press is pleased to announce the release of Cheek by Jowl, a collection of talks and essays on how and why fantasy matters, by Ursula K. Le Guin. In these essays, Le Guin argues passionately that the homogenization of our world makes the work of fantasy essential for helping us break through what she calls ''the reality trap.'' Le Guin writes not only of the pleasures of her own childhood reading, but also about what fantasy means for all of us living in the global twenty-first century. ... Read more

Customer Reviews (6)

Love anything Ursula!
As a fan of LeGuin and a fan of fantasy I really enjoyed this book.

vintage Le Guin
Le Guin continues to write lucidly, perceptively and with her trademark combination of gentle humor and firm opinions in this series of essays on writing for children (of all ages).The title essay is an expansion of previous lectures and essays and makes me want to head for the children's section of the library to reread old classics and get acquainted with new ones.The first essay on fantasy writing for children is succinct, the essence of how she writes, and should be required reading for everyone.

I ;ve read it four times.
You may or may not be enthralled by LeGuin's fiction, but this engaging collection of her thoughts on fantasy, the imagination, children's literature (she lists some of the best!!!) andthe Young Adult category devised by publishers ("require a ptotagonist who is over 12 and under 20:") is worth every penny you pay for it. Make sure your kids have been exposed to the masterworks (and I do not exaggerate) on her list. Ann of Rhode Island

Valuable Collection
Ursula K. Le Guin shares her wisdom in this collection of original essays, previously published articles, and revised or expanded versions of talks she's given over the past five years to organizations like the American Library Association. I appreciate finding the essays collected all in one volume.

Great insight
Ursula K. Le Guin is not only one of the greatest writers of our time, but also a very aware of why and what she writes, and this collection of essays and lectures proves it.
I found this book enlightening and informative. The short essay "A message about messages" helped me clarify some doubts I had as a narrator myself, and "Cheek by jowl: animals in children's literature" (the longest chapter) made want to read some of the books reccommended in it. Overall, the books makes you ponder about the value of fantasy and the so-called "realistic" literature, and what role does meaning play in that.
I liked the fact that she chose a painting from my country to exemplify some concepts and to illustrate the cover!
It disaponted me a bit that I already had read some of the chapters, but I think is an advantage to have them all complied.
Ursula must be the wisest fantasy writer alive. ... Read more

Product Description
In one of her most deeply felt works of fiction, Le Guin explores the dreams and sorrows of the inhabitants of Klatsand, Oregon, a beach town where ordinary people bring their dreams and sorrows for a weekend or the rest of their lives, and sometimes learn to read what the sea writes on the sand.Searoad is the story of a particular place that could be any place, and of a people so distinctly drawn they could be any of us. ... Read more

Customer Reviews (3)

Storytelling at its best
As an avid fan of Ursula K. Leguin and of female-authored fantasy literature in general, I expected great things from "Searoad" and was not disappointed.I was surprised though, that there isn't a hint of fantasy in this book.In fact, it's quite the opposite - painfully real.Leguin captures the nuances of sadness, joy, disappointment with gut-wrenching accuracy.Right after I read it, I bought two more copies for friends.Enjoy! sp

Wonderfully captivating character studies
This is my first foray into Le Guin's work.
I should mention that I read fantasy, but am very picky about my tastes in the genre and I generally don't read scifi (I plan to read her scifi work soon!). However, I've read a lot of literary novels and short stories while studying for a creative writing degree (Richard Ford, Raymond Carver, etc.) and I'm comfortable in that genre.

Searoad is definitely in the literary novels/short story collections genre. The stories are all tied together by the setting, in particular, a small seaside town in Oregon. As is often the case with the literary genre, these stories tend to be more character studies than plot-driven novels. From what I've read about Le Guin's scifi work, these characteristics also accompany her other works, differentiating them from other books in the scifi genre.

Remember, these are character-driven, not plot-driven. So if you're used to reading crime, thriller, horror novels, you should prepare yourself for a different type of reading altogether.

That said, I highly recommend Searoad. In it, you'll find compelling, charismatic, interesting characters across different periods of time dealing with all of the things most of us deal with every day.

Superb fiction from a master of science fiction
I read SEAROAD a year ago and was immensely taken with it.Recently, in browsing through the Amazon web-site, I noticed that it had not received any reviews.That is a glaring omission, which these comments are intended to begin addressing.

It should be stated up front that SEAROAD is NOT a work of science fiction or fantasy, the genre for which Le Guin is best known.Instead, it is a collection of a dozen short stories that most definitely qualify as conventional literate fiction.All but one of the stories originally were published in magazines or journals over a four-year period.But the stories make for a very compatible collection inasmuch as they share the same setting -- a small oceanside community on the rugged Oregon coast named Klatsand -- and several share characters as well.With regard to both the physical setting and the characters, Le Guin demonstrates that, in addition to science fiction and fantasy, she is quite skilled at writing literate, sensitive, and captivating fiction of a realistic nature. In particular, she has an uncanny ability to get inside and inhabit the minds and souls of her characters.

If you appreciate excellent literate short stories, please don't pass over SEAROAD simply because it is by Ursula Le Guin and you are not a fan of science fiction; you will have deprived yourself of something special.On the other hand, if you are a fan of Le Guin's works of fantasy, you still might give SEAROAD a try; it's very good stuff.

... Read more

Product Description
In the light of the declining sun, amid the muffledsounds of grazing cattle, a Southern California cowgirl considers herlife.The language of November Grass, concise yet evocative,transports readers to the coastal hills of San Diego County, wherehawks and jays, calves and kittens, and an assortment of backcountryeccentrics bring clarity to questions of birth, death, and love.

In the new introduction Ursula K. Leguin writes, "Van der Veer givesus a rural landscape as deeply known and lived in as Willa Cather’sNebraska or Sara Jewett’s Maine. The valley ranches of JohnSteinbeck’s Red Pony and East of Eden are natural comparisons, butVan der Veer’s picture is truer, I think, to the patient obscurityof the lives and deaths of those who live on and from this austereland...Pain, suffering, grief, are intense in her story, but not moreintense than tenderness and praise." ... Read more

Customer Reviews (1)

San Diego's finest writer
In 150 years of American history, San Diego has produced many competent and a few highly successful writers, Max Miller, Oakley Hall and others. Judy Van Der Veer outclasses them all. Her work is pure and fine. It seizes your attention and your heart. It is true, more true than most fiction and nonfiction. You don't just read her books, you experience them, unforgettably. She has waited too long for this first reprint. ... Read more

Product Description

Ursula K. Le Guin, renowned author of the Newbery Honor and National Book Award-winning Earthsea sequence, as well as the Catwings series for younger readers, crafts a gentle tale of unlikely friendship and tame adventure. Readers will smile with relief when they discover, along with Tom, that Ms. Powers is not the kind of person to "scream and stand on the seat" when she sees a rodent. As it happens, she's the kind of person who doesn't mind a pocket-sized companion as she travels the world. Julie Downing, who also illustrated Le Guin's A Ride on the Red Mare's Back, captures the small-scale pleasures of molasses cookie crumbs and big-city exploration. (Ages 5 to 8) --Emilie Coulter ... Read more

Customer Reviews (4)

beautiful smart and sensitive
I love the world and want to share it with my little one.He's 5, and we both loved this book and it's gorgeous illustrations.Teaches a bit about adventure, art, Chinese culture and geography.Highly recommended.Also, The Snail and the Whale (by the team that did the Gruffalo) is another book that this reminds me, which we both recommend.

Wonderful enough to make a mouse dance
Tom Mouse by Ursula K. Le Guin is the story of Tom, a brave young mouse who dares board a train for the thriving city of Chicago. Tom befriends a young woman who, unlike most, does not shriek or shoo at the sight of a mouse; a friendship blossoms, that is wonderful enough to make a mouse dance. The soft color illustrations by Julie Downing add a friendly touch to this thoughtful and highly commended picturebook for young readers.

Tom Mouse is Captivating!
What a wonderful story that captivated my children!!Not to mention that Julie Downing once again makes every story come alive with her illustrations. You can see the mouse dance and how she captured the twinkle in his eye was so fabulous!!!Any child will just love this book!!!Many thanks!

See the World with a Friend.....
"Tom Mouse grew up in a hole in the wall of the diner in the station.His family was content with their cozy nest and the doughnut crumbs and bits of bacon they picked up in the diner.But Tom watched the great trains come into the station and leave again, and he wished he could go with them..."So begins Ursula Le Guin's sweet and lovely tale about a little mouse who yearns to leave home and see the big wide world he's heard so much about, and finds a companion to share his travels with.Tom kisses his family good-bye, scurries aboard a train headed for Chicago, and is off on what he hopes will be the beginning of a lifetime of adventures.Fortunately, he makes himself at home in Roomette Nine, along with its paying guest, Mrs Powers, an interesting and remarkable woman who, he finds, is not afraid of mice.In fact, she seems happy to have the company, and shares her snacks and conversation with Tom.As the trip continues these two form a special alliance, and decide together, that seeing the world would be even more fun and exciting with a friend.....Told in four short chapters, Ms Le Guin's simple, gentle text is complemented byJulie Brown's charming and expressive illustrations rendered in warm and soft, subdued tones.Together word and art bring this endearing little rodent and his story to life, and you can almost feel the motion of the train, and see the world rush by outside the window, as the train speeds on toward Chicago.Perfect for early readers, or as a read-aloud story the entire family can share together, Tom Mouse is a heartwarming and engaging tale of friendship and adventure that shouldn't be missed, and one of the best new pictures books of 2002. ... Read more

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Customer Reviews (12)

Before Pandora, There Was Athshe
"Forest" started as a 1972 novella by Le Guin, published in Harlan Ellison's "Again Dangerous Visions." The novella won the 1973 Hugo award. Le Guin re-worked the novella into a slightly longer book, published in 1976.

"Forest" seems to have been a principle, if uncredited, influence on James Cameron's mega-hit, "Avatar" (James Cameron's Avatar: The Na'vi Quest). A linked, planet-wide life form, an environment under attack by resource-extracting Earthlings, and an intelligent humanoid species who fight back. Unlike Cameron, Le Guin had the courage to make the leader of the fight a native; Cameron's is an Earth man, of course. There's even more than a little of the dream-state of the Athsheans in the rocking/chanting of the Na'vi. And, as in "Avatar," the sympathetic anthropologist is killed, almost by accident.

But "Forest" is the better story, if only because it doesn't involve the over-the-top explosions that Cameron favors. Le Guin's spare, plain style makes the violence more vivid, somehow, than all of the super-stereo explosions. Her "shared dream" trope is much better thought out than Cameron's Gaiian organism, as well.

"Forest" has been criticized as reflecting too much of the Vietnam War, still under way when the novella was written. Points to Cameron for demonstrating that, 38 years (!) on, the problem is still real.

Highly recommended.

Heavy, boring and sadly predictable
The human words for their world all amount to the same thing - dirt. But, the Athsheans word for their world is "forest." Athshe is a heavily forested world, and when the Terrans arrive, they found the planet to be ripe for economic exploitation. Seizing control of the peaceful but economically backward population, the Terrans have begun a policy of merciless economic and environmental destruction that goes beyond the natives' imagination. But, when the push goes on too far, one Athshean begins to dream of something previously unknown to his people - war!

This book was originally published in 1976 (though it was based on a 1972 novella), immediately after the end of the Vietnam War, and it shows. Ms. Le Guin was an outspoken critic of that war, and this book is written as a no holds barred denunciation of not just that war, but of Western imperialism in general. The story is written in a black-and-white, good guys vs. bad guys manner. In fact, that is my entire problem with the book.

In general, I must say that the author created a very interesting milieu for her story, and filled it with interesting people, places and things - a recipe for science-fiction success. Unfortunately, she treated the moral of the story in such a ham-handed manner that it made the story heavy, boring and sadly predictable. No, this should have been a good book, even a great book, but given the treatment that it got it is no better than a mediocre one. I definitely do NOT recommend this book.

Great Book Different Cover
Great Book Thanks! It did have a different cover than what was pictured which matters to me when I am looking for a specific edition.

A childhood favorite.
I read this in highschool, and it has stayed with me for (ahem) almost 30 years.THAT is staying power.An intelligent, demanding dream.

Not Free SF Reader
Apart from the fabulous title, a pretty interesting book.

A planet of aliens that are similar but different to humans is a target of exploitation.

The forests hold the whole ecology together in a more important way than on Earth.The natives know nothing of violent conflict, but when brutality and violence is used by the invaders to try and get what they want, the locals learn quickly.


... Read more

Customer Reviews (3)

Excellent collection of short stories
I bought this book for the first story "Semley's Necklace" however; all of them will surpass your expectations. Ursula has a unique way with words that rival her tales.
The Winds Twelve Quarters Ursula K. Le Guin (Harper & Row, 1975, hc)
Foreword
Semley's Necklace ["The Dowry of Angyar"] - ss Amazing Sep '64
April in Paris - ss Fantastic Sep '62
The Masters - ss Fantastic Feb '63
Darkness Box - ss Fantastic Nov '63
The Word of Unbinding - ss Fantastic Jan '64
The Rule of Names - ss Fantastic Apr '64
Winter's King - nv Orbit 5, ed. Damon Knight, G.P. Putnam's, 1969
The Good Trip - ss Fantastic Aug '70
Nine Lives - nv Playboy Nov '69
Things ["The End"] - ss Orbit 6, ed. Damon Knight, G.P. Putnam's, 1970
A Trip to the Head - ss Quark #1, ed. Samuel R. Delany & Marilyn Hacker, Paperback Library, 1970
Vaster Than Empires and More Slow - nv New Dimensions I, ed. Robert Silverberg, Doubleday, 1971
The Stars Below - ss Orbit 14, ed. Damon Knight, Harper & Row, 1974
The Field of Vision - ss Galaxy Oct '73
Direction of the Road - ss Orbit 12, ed. Damon Knight, G.P. Putnam's, 1973
The Ones Who Walk Away from Omelas - ss New Dimensions 3, ed. Robert Silverberg, Nelson Doubleday, 1973
The Day Before the Revolution - ss Galaxy Aug '74
A little about Ursula:
Legal Name: Le Guin, Ursula Kroeber
Birthplace: Berkeley, California, USA
Birthdate: 21 October 1929

Received Nebula Awards for the novels "The Left Hand of Darkness," "The Dispossessed," and "Tehanu"; for the novella "Solitude"; and for the short story "The Day Before the Revolution."

Excellent collection of short stories
I bought this book for the first story "Semley's Necklace" however; all of them will surpass your expectations. Ursula has a unique way with words that rival her tales.
The Winds Twelve Quarters Ursula K. Le Guin (Harper & Row, 1975, hc)
Foreword
Semley's Necklace ["The Dowry of Angyar"] - ss Amazing Sep '64
April in Paris - ss Fantastic Sep '62
The Masters - ss Fantastic Feb '63
Darkness Box - ss Fantastic Nov '63
The Word of Unbinding - ss Fantastic Jan '64
The Rule of Names - ss Fantastic Apr '64
Winter's King - nv Orbit 5, ed. Damon Knight, G.P. Putnam's, 1969
The Good Trip - ss Fantastic Aug '70
Nine Lives - nv Playboy Nov '69
Things ["The End"] - ss Orbit 6, ed. Damon Knight, G.P. Putnam's, 1970
A Trip to the Head - ss Quark #1, ed. Samuel R. Delany & Marilyn Hacker, Paperback Library, 1970
Vaster Than Empires and More Slow - nv New Dimensions I, ed. Robert Silverberg, Doubleday, 1971
The Stars Below - ss Orbit 14, ed. Damon Knight, Harper & Row, 1974
The Field of Vision - ss Galaxy Oct '73
Direction of the Road - ss Orbit 12, ed. Damon Knight, G.P. Putnam's, 1973
The Ones Who Walk Away from Omelas - ss New Dimensions 3, ed. Robert Silverberg, Nelson Doubleday, 1973
The Day Before the Revolution - ss Galaxy Aug '74
A little about Ursula:
Legal Name: Le Guin, Ursula Kroeber
Birthplace: Berkeley, California, USA
Birthdate: 21 October 1929

Received Nebula Awards for the novels "The Left Hand of Darkness," "The Dispossessed," and "Tehanu"; for the novella "Solitude"; and for the short story "The Day Before the Revolution."

The wind's twelve quarters by Ursula K. Le Guin
An excellent collection of short stories from this master (mistress?) of Science Fiction and Fantasy literature.

Ursula is a cut above the rest in terms of intellectual involvement, poses moral and spiritual questions, always tells a ripping good yarn.

Fans of The Dispossessed will be entranced by the story of Odo - founder of the Odonian movement which led to settling of the moon Anarres by the anarchists. ... Read more

Customer Reviews (1)

Hard words to read, in any case.
Ursula K. Le Guin, Hard Words and Other Poems (Harper and Row, 1981)

Every time I pick up a book by Ursula Le Guin, I'm excited. And somehow, every time, I wind up disappointed. I know the woman has legions of fans, and she probably deserves them, but there's something about her style that just drives me right up the ceiling with the spiders and the flies. I usually can't put my finger on it. And I once again forgot when I discovered she'd written a book of poetry (at least two, actually, as this was her second) and approached it with the same enthusiasm. Then came the inevitable "what the hell is this?" moments, but since I was dealing with poetry, the finger-putting began in earnest. In fact, it's been kind of hard to keep this review to a thousand words (anyone who's ever seen me when I get rolling on a poem critique will understand why), so this may be a bit disjointed. My apologies. Why is it so long? Because I can't talk about this book highlighting a single poem. I have to talk about three.

This is odd in the world of poetry. Authors, at least since the time of Auden being the king of the hill, have striven for at least a loose thematic unity in full-length poetry collections (save, of course, books of the Selected/Collected variety, for obvious reasons). I can usually grab a piece at random and trust it to be representative of the whole collection. Two at best for an inconsistent poet. Not so Le Guin, who ranges all over the map not only thematically but stylistically as well. There are a lot of experiments in this book, and most of them don't work all too well, in part because they're rootless. I'm all for the idea that sound is more important than sense in poetry, but that doesn't mean that sense is not important at all; only the best poets are capable of sound with no sense at all, and the only one I can think of who's pulled it off since the seventies is Timothy Donnelly. Which leads us to something like the title poem:

"Hard words
lockerbones
this is sour ground

dust to ashes
sounds soft
hard in the mouth

as stones
as teeth

Earth speaks birds
airbornes
diphthongs"

I quoted the entire poem mostly to illustrate that I'm not taking something out of context and pointing to it as meaningless (I had originally meant to just take the first strophe), but that the poem contains no real context in which to put things. It's kind of the opposite of imagism; there is the odd image to be found here, but the images one can find aren't anchored to anything. And what on earth is a lockerbone? Neologisms are wonderful, as long as you can ascertain what they're supposed to mean from what surrounds them. There's not enough substance here, however, for us to figure it out. What makes it all the more frustrating is that Le Guin is obviously getting at something here (well, perhaps "obvious" is not the right word, but "hard in the mouth/as stones/as teeth" points at something underlying this); the question is, what? I never thought I'd be saying it, as much as I'm a proponent of style over substance, but it doesn't work for me because I can't make heads or tails of it.

As much as the first section (from which "Hard Words" comes) is unintelligible, the second section, which I'm going to gloss over for purposes of brevity, makes it look like a model of clarity. This is the most experimental bit of the book; Le Guin took the rhythms of drumming and dancing and worked with them, trying to turn them into intelligible language in much the same way Antonin Artaud did in the last few years of his life. Suffice to say Artaud did it better, and thirty years before this.

The third section heads back to the idea of the first, though the section title ("Line Drawings") leads me to the conclusion these are ekphrastic pieces (poems based on arts and crafts); the dedications on some of them seem to bear this out, and I get the feeling that a number of these poems are too personal for the common reader to get a handle on. Le Guin, and the person for whom she was writing any given piece, probably get them clear as day.

All this changes in the fourth section, "Walking in Cornwall", which is exactly what it sounds like. And in the poetry of place, Le Guin finds what it is she's been looking for in all the poems leading up to this; her sonic experiments have a context, a firm ground on which to build--quite literally. This set of three poems, the three longest in the book, detail exactly what the section head tells us they do, and they do it well.

"Straight on from the standing stones
of the northwest gateway, past the view
to Morva and the dull gleam of the sea,
over the granite backbone of the land
to Chun Quoit. Here's a grave turned inside out.
They set the stone slabs up, set the great roofstone on,
laid the bodies in the room of rock,
piled the earth all over in a mound,
a rounded barrow....
The covering earth's
all gone, the bones are gone; the grave
itself stands up, grey granite in the wind.
There's not a soul, there's not a sound.
Sun's gold on the old stones."
("Chun")

The wordplay from the first and third sections cohabits with the rhythms from the second section, and everyone feels right at home. Would that travel guides were written thus.

Then comes the fifth section. You know how, in some Selected/Collected books, there's a section called "New Poems", which is basically a catch-all for stuff that hasn't gotten published elsewhere? That's section five here, which has a bit of everything we've seen before. The image and rhythm poems, though, are a lot better anchored, and the long piece here, "The Well of Baln", even outdoes the Cornwall poems; it's a fine little tale in the tradition, if not the style, of a good old-fashioned Ballad (in the classical sense). Compare this to "Hard Words":

"Mole my totem
mound builder
maze maker
tooth at the root
shaper of darkness
into ways and hollows

in grave alive
heavy handed
light blinded"
("Totem")

Again, the entire poem, but this time we've got what is, essentially, a statement of purpose in the first line, and suddenly everything makes sense. Rhythmically, the two poems are alike right down to the almost list form of the final two lines, but here those two items at the end have an obvious connection to everything else.

I've spent a whole lot of time on a book I'm only giving two stars; were the rest of it as accomplished as the final two sections (which are unfortunately only about a quarter of the content here), the rating would be a lot higher. It's worth checking out for those two sections, but you may have some trouble with the bits that come before. **
... Read more

Product Description
In the tradition of other groundbreaking Norton Collections, Ursula K. Le Guin and Brian Attebery's Norton Book of Science Fiction provides the first truly comprehensive and coherent look at the best of contemporary science fiction.

Successfully used at over one hundred schools nationwide, these sixty-seven stories offer compelling evidence that science fiction is a source of the most thoughtful, imaginative-indeed, literary-fiction being written today.

Readers will be introduced to some rarely anthologized gems from well-known authors-Poul Anderson, Margaret Atwood, Octavia Butler, Samuel R. Delany, Philip K. Dick, William Gibson, Joanna Russ, Theodore Sturgeon, James Tiptree, Jr., Gene Wolfe, Roger Zelazny-as well as starling work by today's rising stars. Students and teachers alike will appreciate the sophisticated range of voices exploring the nature of reality and the condition of the human spirit.

Customer Reviews (8)

Flawed, but worthwhile
As other reviewers mention this anthology fails as an introduction to science fiction. It somewhat succeeds as an introduction to the different moods, tones and flavors of science fiction, and it could be considered worthy in terms of its difference from other "greatest/most influential" collections, of which there are many.

After reading this very large collection I didn't know what to think. Many of the stories are good enough, but not great. Only a handful are the kind I find myself rereading willingly. In the end I was glad I made my way through because there are some genuinely fine pieces in here, and it was interesting to read a collection that was very obviously put together in defiance of the incredibly male-dominated statistics of sci-fi.

In the end this collection is worth picking up if only for one story: Cordwainer Smith's "Alpha Ralpha Boulevard". I am serious in this. The only other place you can find it, I think, is Smith's collection of shorts "The Rediscovery of Man". I was entertained by a lot of the stories (from memory: "For the Sake of Grace", "Speech Sounds" and "The Women Men Don't See") but this is hardly a representative collection of science fiction. I'd call it a hopeful presentation, showing what Le Guin believes science fiction is capable of.

Do not waste your money on this one
If you do not trust my opinion, go to the closest library, borrow it and see what you think. This is just a terrible collection. It is no way a good representation of what science fiction, as a genre, has to offer, which is a good thing. Otherwise, it would be really sad.

Dreadful. Just really awful.
The problem with this book is that it's a "Norton Book" and will be used as a teaching tool. Due to the prominence of Norton's stuff on college campuses, it's easy to imagine students who don't have much experience with written science fiction taking classes from professors who don't have much experience with written science fiction, using this book as a resource. They're going end up being very confused about the subject of science fiction.

There's an element of political correctness to the story selection, an element of pure feminism, and as element of weirdness and mystery. What can she possibly have been thinking? How can anyone be said to know anything about science fiction without going back a little further, to the so-called "golden age" of science fiction which a lot of these stories are reactions against? How can a study of science fiction not include Asimov, Heinlein, or Clarke? The most likely audience of this book is not well served by the story selection.

If none of the above bothers you, you'll find a mixed collection of stories, of which you're bound to enjoy a few. Do not pass judgement on any of the authors whose work seems crappy after a first reading from this book: some of the selections are not fair representations of the author's work in any way. All, or almost all, of the authors represented in the book have written very good stories, but the stories in this volume were chosen because of a mission of the author's which is articulated in the introduction. A simple, perhaps chronological collection of really good stories isn't on the menu, unfortunately.

I love LeGuin, but....
This anthology is certainly that: an "anthology", a collection of stories. What it is NOT, however, is a "representative anthology". As an introduction to SF it is terrible. As an intro to"mature" SF it is also terrible. By excluding everything writtenbefore 1960-in other words before LeGuin and her associates becameactive-an enormous number of the genres masterpieces were disqualified. Bylimiting the collection to American stories-and LeGuin is certainlyAmerican- the entire, and seminal, British and Continental contribution toSF goes unrepresented. This is historical revisionism of the worst, mostdestructive sort. And deeply manipulative.

There is also something fishygoing on in the word count. Avowedly feminist -and female- authors put farmore words into this volume than the male authors. This, in spite of thefact that most of the SF written today and yesterday is and was written bymen. The feminists' (and I have always considered myself one) strongest andlongest stories have been included while the shorter, less substantialstories of men are offered. This is suspiciously ideological.

I realizethat LeGuin has a vast reputation, and it is certainly as deserved asanybody's. Her fiction and her non-fiction both have an important place inmy heart and on my bookshelf. But... the publishers and co-editors have letthat reputation blind them to the ideological distortions of this book. AndI am here to tell you that the emperor has no clothes.

A fantastic collection of Science Fiction short stories.
This anthology is a great collection of short stories from some of the greatest Science Fiction writers of from 1960-1990.This collection was gathered by one of the premier Science Fiction writers of our lifetime,Ursula K. Le Guin.Each story takes you places you have never dreamed of,and truly makes you think about the world around you. ... Read more

Product Description

North to Orsinia and the boundaries between reality and madness ... South to discover Antarctica with nine South American women ... West to find an enchanted harp and the borderland between life and death ... and onward to all points on and off the compass. Twenty astonishing stories from acclaimed author Ursula K. Le Guin carry us to worlds of wonder and horror, desire and destiny, enchantment and doom.

Customer Reviews (7)

Twist-y
A collection of stories, mostly science fiction. The best are those which you begin assuming a certain set of circumstances: That the narrator is human, that the action takes place on earth, etc. and find near the end you are quite wrong and must read the story again with that twist in mind. Also included are interesting discourses on the subjects of animal linguistics, and the running out of time disguised as scientific studies.

The Compass Rose Points Every Which Way
THREE-AND-A-HALF STARS

"The problem with possessing prodigious talent," Dr. Jacobs said, "is that it means you can do just about anything." It was sleepy spring afternoon in Modern British lit class, one made all the more drowsy because we were discussing the notoriously difficult poetry of W.H. Auden. But despite my lethargy, I wondered at the incongruity of the statement. How could an excess of skill prove anything but a blessing? I didn't have to wait long for an answer. "Auden's dilemma," Dr. Jacobs continued, "was one of selection: How could he settle on a single style when he performed well in all of them?" This must have been the predicament Ursula K. Le Guin found herself in when collecting the short stories that compose The Compass Rose.

In the book's preface, Le Guin admits that "the stories it contains tend to go off each in its own direction." Indeed, the collection is written in a veritable riot of styles. A number point toward science fiction, and some of these would have made George Orwell proud. One describes how a tyrannical bureaucracy gets undone by mysteriously rising sea levels ("The New Atlantis") and another delves into the secret diary of a lab technician whose job of probing mental patients' minds secretly aids a despotic government ("The Diary of the Rose"). Others are more lighthearted. "Intracom" gives Star Trek the slapstick treatment, with a spaceship's incompetent crew trying deal with a stowaway alien and still deliver their cargo of breadfruit trees to a distant galaxy. "The Eye Altering" uses the travails of a sickly colonist on a hostile planet to show how beauty comes as much from the beholder as the thing beheld.

But no sooner do you acquaint yourself with the futuristic tack than Le Guin swings you in fantastic and speculative directions. "The White Donkey" interacts with Indian mythology, while "Gwilan's Harp" turns the tragic destruction of a beautifully made instrument into a meditation on the ravages of aging. Some find Le Guin giving her internal academic full rein, pondering the nature of language ("The Author of the Acacia Seeds"), locale ("The First Report of the Shipwrecked Foreigner to the Kadanh of Derb") and the clock's ruthless advance ("Some Approaches to the Problem of the Shortage of Time").

And finally, lest we become too comfortable with genre, The Compass Rose leads to literary pieces, too. Two men ponder relatives' deaths with radically different results ("Two Delays on the Northern Line"). A theoretical physicist loses his mind trying to quantify the number of the earth's dead ("The Water Is Wide"). And an exploratory group composed entirely of South American women becomes the first expedition to reach the South Pole in 1909 ("Sur"). More impressive than Le Guin's range of vision is the skill with which she executes almost every story. That very range becomes both the collection's bane and blessing. The wildness of subject matter almost guarantees that many won't be to your liking -- and that a few may find your heart's true North.

a great writer getting by
For an author of Ursula Le Guin's talent and achievement, The Compass Rose is treading water. Even for that, Her Majesty treading water is more entertaining than most authors "swimming" their personal best. There are some mind-boggling stories here (The Author of the Acacia Seeds); some amusing stories (Intracom); a fair few toss-offs; and some mere sketches. All the same, it's entertaining reading. Like the best science fiction, some of these stories set the mind searching for how such a world could exist. Unfortunately, too few of these narratives are so provocative. But hey, even the best have their lesser moments.

Completists should not be detered. Novices would do better with The Left Hand of Darkness. But no one should doubt this woman's accomplishments regardless of genre.

You're a fantastically good captain, for a woman
I wasn't sure whether to give this four or five stars, since like most collections of short stories it's a bit uneven.But the good stories are just wonderful.My favorites are the two hilarious feminist ones, one of which isn't science fiction at all.That would be Sur, in which it is revealed that the South Pole was actually first reached by an all-women's expedition from South America.I don't remember the title of the other story, since I just refer to it as the one with the Insane Second Mate, but it is completely absurd and completely enjoyable."I told you poor Tom was a-cold.Now poor Tom's a-flipped."I love how all the female characters can't stop telling each other how great they are at their jobs - for a woman.Also the recurring joke about how our language is being destroyed - oops, I mean destructed.

The Pathways of Desire and The Eye Altering are both lovely, although the second one gave me a faint suspicion that I was being emotionally manipulated.Still, the manipulation was very skillful - I didn't notice it until my second or third reading.Then there are a bunch of dystopias - some are good, some are fairly incomprehensible.The rest I've forgotten, or blotted out from my memory because they disturbed me.

This sounds like a lukewarm review, but like I said, they're short stories.And my rule for short stories is that if you love at least three of the stories in a book - and I do in this case - then you pretty much love the book.I'm giving this four stars, but if I could I'd give it four and a half.

Le Guin and Bear It
Over the years I have always thought of Ursula Le Guin as a very brave and non-conforming sort of person.I have kept her photograph on my wall for the last 15 years.The reason for my admiration was that I felt (and feel) that she is a writer of major talent who decided to enter the field of science fiction and get labelled as a "sci-fi writer" when she could have won many honors and perhaps a more lasting place in history in mainstream literature.Her works do not cater to the broad popular tastes in fiction, but such novels as "The Left Hand of Darkness","The Lathe of Heaven","The Dispossessed" and "Always Coming Home" plus her works of juvenile fiction and collections of short stories add up to a body of spectacularly well-written material that is denied its place in the annals of American literature by the peculiar prejudice that segregates certain kinds of fiction into closed cells.I read most of Le Guin's books as soon as they hit the shelves, long ago, beforescience fiction became reality with the Internet and Amazon.com.For some reason, though I bought THE COMPASS ROSE fifteen years ago, I never got around to reading it till now.I must say that it was largely disappointing.There are some good stories in this collection, stories such as "The New Atlantis" and "The Diary of the Rose", also "The Pathways of Desire" which links exploration of space with dreams, but other stories seem hasty, `cute' or aimed at the readers of airport fiction.In general, Le Guin is at her best when she creates new worlds or postulates possible futures.Her blend of anthropology and fiction has always thrilled me.As she moves away from that, into more general fiction on the contemporary world, unless she crafts the story carefully, as with "Two Delays on the Northern Line"--a real gem--she loses her edge. Her stories become filled with sunshine, conversing rocks, and whispering leaves, but without much punch.There are twenty stories in THE COMPASS ROSE.Half a dozen are up to her fine standard, others-perhaps the humorous pieces-may please many readers, but a few probably should have been kept in the drawer.(Though if I had written them, I would have been quite proud, no doubt.We are talking quality control here.)If you are wondering where to begin Le Guin, this is not the place. Put it last on your list.But begin, of course. ... Read more

Customer Reviews (1)

Not the best poetry, but Ursula is still distinctive
Like her prose, Le Guin's poetry is thoughtful:every word is magical, reflecting the sort of dependency on words that exists in her Earthsea books.This belief in the primacy of language certainly makes her a betterwriter.I would never compare this poetry to any of the great"poets" (although her prose is a different matter), but there arein this book many beautiful nuggets that anyone could respect, not justsomeone who loves Le Guin like I do. ... Read more