Member: kaionvin

Hello! ^-^ I've hopped over from the FantasyFans group, mostly because I'm never quite sure I'll derail threads (I know, I know, it happens, but... It makes me feel bad). Anyway, I came over from your comment on A Wizard of Earthsea. I'm... quite new to Le Guin, but from what I understand one of the reasons she has such a high standing in fantasy is because she's a 'first'. By which I mean that she's the first to focus on and/or use certain themes. Secondary sources indicate that Le Guin was the first to do somethin challenging with gender conventions. Her The Left Hand of Darkness is one of the first major feminist scifi works, for example.

I don't mean to imply that 'prestige' is the only reason that such books remain well-read and well-loved because of course that'd be utter nonsense. Point is: whether one likes certain authors or not, they're too important to the genre as a whole to ever find themselves completely ignored. It's like... ignoring the very first novels when you're giving an overview of how writing styles have changed over the years, except possibly that it's a touch easier to study the influence of fantasy 'firsts'.)

Based on your library my best guess is that your interest in fantasy lies chiefly with the children's/YA books rather than the adult. (What I can see of adult books, at least, has very low ratings whereas your children's/YA books have pretty high ratings. Though that's undoubtedly aided by the fact that a lot of the books there are by the same author.) Which is an interesting note on its own and one you might find useful if you've not noticed it before.

If I knew what kind of books you're looking for in the genre, I'd be happy to try and give a few specific pointers, though I'm not sure how much help I can be since we don't have a lot of overlap in books. Offer's there if you want it, at least. ^-^

posted by Shanra at 4:17 pm (EST) on Aug 19, 2009