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4.28 AVERAGE
4.28 AVERAGE
challenging
informative
inspiring
reflective
fast-paced
Plot or Character Driven:
Character
Strong character development:
Yes
Loveable characters:
Yes
Diverse cast of characters:
Yes
Flaws of characters a main focus:
No
adventurous
inspiring
reflective
medium-paced
First time reading Ursula K. Le Guin and I took it very seriously indeed. I always had a pencil at the ready and took care not to crease the spine of my paperback, which made it difficult to underline stuff.. and I was underlining a lot! This book is chock full of ideas, and it was so gratifying to finally read an author beloved by many, and understanding what the fuss is about.
In this book we follow Shevek, a scientist from Anarres, the moon of planet Urras. Anarres is an anarchist-communist society. There is no government, money, nor taxes. Meanwhile Urras is more reminiscent of our Earth with its capitalistic ways. Contact had been severely limited between the two worlds and Shevek is the first person from Anarres to visit Urras. Chapters alternate between his past on Anarres and his present on Urras. I liked the Anarres chapters the most, because it's unlike anything I've ever read before. Thinking about the What Ifs of our world tickled my brain in the best way.
I don't have any complaints about this book. I think it does perfectly what it set out to do. A perfect book, but not a perfect rating, because I'm learning that 5 star books need to move me in some way. As much as I enjoyed this one, there was nothing for my heart to latch on to, if that makes sense. Who knows, maybe this will change as I read more.
In this book we follow Shevek, a scientist from Anarres, the moon of planet Urras. Anarres is an anarchist-communist society. There is no government, money, nor taxes. Meanwhile Urras is more reminiscent of our Earth with its capitalistic ways. Contact had been severely limited between the two worlds and Shevek is the first person from Anarres to visit Urras. Chapters alternate between his past on Anarres and his present on Urras. I liked the Anarres chapters the most, because it's unlike anything I've ever read before. Thinking about the What Ifs of our world tickled my brain in the best way.
I don't have any complaints about this book. I think it does perfectly what it set out to do. A perfect book, but not a perfect rating, because I'm learning that 5 star books need to move me in some way. As much as I enjoyed this one, there was nothing for my heart to latch on to, if that makes sense. Who knows, maybe this will change as I read more.
This wonderful novel is a masterpiece of science-fiction story-telling; I loved pretty much everything about it, and my only disappointment is that I didn't read it decades ago. Le Guin crafted a wonderfully balanced story here, in which we see are shown--through both the plot and frequent flashbacks which, in time, come to shape how we understand the plot itself--the development of a society (the anarchist world of Anarres, which struggles over the years with both famine and its own internal bureaucratic tensions), a physicist (Shevek, a brilliant but also complicated and in some ways conflicted figure we see grow from child to man, most crucially in his journey to Anarres's corrupt, wealthy twin world, Urras), and an intellectual problem (that of time and how to make real the sense of simultaneity all temporal creatures have, a problem which Shevek solves through his General Temporal Theory), in ways that nigh-perfectly support and inform each other. It is truly beautiful writing and plotting. Given that I read this book (and Le Guin's short story collection, The Winter's Twelve Quarters) in part because I wanted to explore some more fantastic, less realistic fiction as a basis of conversations in my Honors Seminar, it was surprising to me find that The Dispossessed actually included plenty of material for thinking carefully about politics and economy. Truly, her depiction of an anarchist culture, and the kind of psychology which both is necessary to support it and which it produces, is fascinating. While I don't have the scientific or mathematical chops to determine if the same could be said for the physics and attendant speculation in the book, I wouldn't be surprised if the same could be said. Anyway, a book that completely deserves its label as a science-fiction classic.
Top 3 favorite book of all time. There is too much to say in this. Living inside a character to the perfect degree
adventurous
challenging
dark
funny
hopeful
informative
reflective
tense
slow-paced
Plot or Character Driven:
Character
Strong character development:
Yes
Loveable characters:
Complicated
Diverse cast of characters:
Yes
Flaws of characters a main focus:
Complicated
Content Warnings
Moderate: Confinement, Racism, Sexual content, Slavery, Excrement, Police brutality, Kidnapping, Colonisation, Classism
Minor: Sexual assault, Suicidal thoughts, War
The subtitle "An Ambiguous Utopia" is very fitting. Rather than portraying the anarchist society as some sort of perfect utopia, Le Guin actually grapples with potential problems that could arise in a social-anarchist society. Production on Anarres is depicted as communalized to the point that individuals become mere instruments to the community. Deviations from an established culture are suppressed, and power structures reassert themselves through acquisition of social credit & manipulation of social will.
In order to create more diverse & dynamic societies, tools that encourage competition as well as cooperation must be embraced; markets are tools that can help facilitate such relations. While there is no representation of a more individualistic-anarchist society in the book, it seems that Le Guin has at least taken seriously this particular line of critique against purely communalistic ways of organizing a society.
In order to create more diverse & dynamic societies, tools that encourage competition as well as cooperation must be embraced; markets are tools that can help facilitate such relations. While there is no representation of a more individualistic-anarchist society in the book, it seems that Le Guin has at least taken seriously this particular line of critique against purely communalistic ways of organizing a society.
slow-paced
Plot or Character Driven:
Character
I expected a thought-provoking political novel but to my dismay the political themes were very superficial and clichéd. There is really no idea raised in this book that I wouldn't come up with by contrasting anarchism with capitalism for a few minutes.
challenging
inspiring
reflective
medium-paced
Plot or Character Driven:
A mix
Strong character development:
Yes
Loveable characters:
Yes
Diverse cast of characters:
Yes
Flaws of characters a main focus:
Yes
adventurous
mysterious
reflective
medium-paced