Status Updates From Denizyolu

maybe my favorite writing from her yet

Really struggling w this one

Quoits was incredible. I did cry

wow the characters in hand,cup, shell are so good

Tän kirjan lukeminen on kiehtovaa, koska novellit ovat enimmäkseen kertomuksia tavallisten ihmisten tavallisesta elämästä pikkukaupungissa. Mitään ei tapahdu, ja samaan aikaan tapahtuu pienissä hetkissä ja paloissa koko elämä.

I'm being drawn into this more and more. It's got an Alice Munro feel to it... Also an Ursula Le Guin feel, of course...

I’m so normal about this 😵‍💫

WOMEN

Women 😌

Text

This would be much more enjoyable as an interconnected narrative if I didn’t take a month off btwn each story

WOMEN

This last chapter was so full of emotion and stress and tension, but in that wordless way that can only be found in one’s thoughts. It was the type of story where everyone is acting normal on the outside, but inside, and in their secret glances and interactions, deep tension and instability is found.

Really liking it. Le Guin’s style is fluid and abrupt, clear and rambling, a perfect balance of opposites at just the right moment. It really helps you get into the minds of these characters, even for the short while that you know them. And the setting, a sleepy coastal North Pacific town, is simply wonderful.

This is really heavy into the matters of women. I need a break.

Think I need a break. Not sure if I'm going to be able to finish if I break though. It's just a little bit rambly and self-indulgent though.

I'm not so sure about this long last chapter.

I think quite possibly there are very few, if any, fantastical elements to this collection of shorts.

Still waiting to see if it becomes more "fantasy"

Interestingly, given the way this is marketed it's a collection of short stories about people in a sleepy seaside village; there's no fantasy or sci-fi in sight. Which, to be clear, is absolutely fine by me but I wasn't expecting it given all the allusions to Hugo awards on the cover.
Le Guin is one of those writers I need to read the complete works of. Gorgeous.

She knew then that that image had been there all along, all week, but it was what she had seen listening to Barbara’s long, loud, widely spaced last breaths, and that now it was the image of her self, the shape she was in her soul.

We were uneasy people. I was self-conscious about having lunch with him and about my unkempt hair, and afraid of boring him. I could tell he was self-conscious, too, whatever his reasons were, by the set of his body and the way his eyes flicked. I don’t think there was much sexual tension, certainly not on my part, since I go through the same strain with anybody I don’t know well, including infants and toddlers.

A woman unmated but contented generally learns to hide her contentment so as not to shock her friends. There’s no use defying whatever orthodoxy your culture has adopted. You just end up as a witch. I realize now that that is really why I got married: better to marry than to burn...but the fact is that sexual practice merely diverts my erotic energies into an artificial form provided for them by my civilization.

Jilly knew what she had asked and answered. Why had her daughter not come at her invitation, when she said it was warm and lovely here? Because she could no longer invite. She couldn’t say, “Come in.“ She could only demand, “come here!“ Or beg, “Come to me!“ And her daughter did not want to come. All right.

“Phil is a saint, Mag,” his mother had said to her shortly before they were married, and she had agreed, laughing, thinking the exaggeration quite forgivable; but it had not been a burble of mother love. It had been a warning.

I thought I was diving into science fiction. Turns out this is one of her only books that isn't scifi, plus it's short stories.

With that being said, it's pretty interesting, and I'll look for her scifi after this.

"What can you do to evil but refuse it? Not pretend it isn't there, but look at it, and know it, and refuse it."

"Indignation, the great middle-class luxury."

"Doing something wasn't just a kind of practice for something that would keep happening, but was what would happen, was what happened. You didn't get to practice."

Hmm, återigen intressant - nog den historia som fick mig att fortsätta läsa mest av de som fanns i den här boken. Trots detta inte riktigt min storts historier.