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Christina

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Christina’s Bookshelves

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Christina is Currently Reading

Christina is currently reading

The Serviceberry: Abundance and Reciprocity in the Natural World

by Robin Wall Kimmerer

bookshelves: currently-reading, audiobook

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Jan 04, 2026 08:34AM

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The Left Hand of Darkness

by Ursula K. Le Guin

bookshelves: currently-reading

read in August 2020

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Christina said: " I was super excited to read this one, having not picked up a genuine sci-fi in a while, and this being one of the must-reads of the genre. I've loved Le Guin's short fiction since I was introduced to her in middle school, so let's just say this was a I was super excited to read this one, having not picked up a genuine sci-fi in a while, and this being one of the must-reads of the genre. I've loved Le Guin's short fiction since I was introduced to her in middle school, so let's just say this was a long time coming.

As a whole, I thought it was beautifully written, though surprisingly formatted—actually, I'd say that at least half of the book takes on the mantle of a travelogue/compendium of the landscapes and cultures and mythology of the planet Gethen, with a (perhaps too-long) portion of the book dedicated to a months-long trek across the near-inhospitable ice sheets covering much of the terrain. There are poignant reflections on what it means to build a friendship outside the bounds of gender, on the nature of love, and on the perils of nationalism, all of which resonated with special power to this American living in the time of Trump.

Here's my biggest caveat that distracted me throughout the entire book, however: in a book distinctly meant to interrogate the cultural, biological, and psychological impact of sex and gender, and in a world whose inhabitants are neither male nor female, becoming one sex or the other seemingly indiscriminately during their mating period...why the heck did Le Guin choose to refer to them as "men" with the pronouns "he/his"? Even Genly Ai, the human character, is referred to by the aliens as "Mr. Ai," and the ruler as a "king," despite the fact that gender-specific titles probably wouldn't exist on Gethen at all. If Le Guin can make up entire planets and civilizations out of the blue, why not invent a new pronoun that could be applied to these aliens, and that the aliens would certainly have used? I get that maybe we could argue that this can be attributed to Genly's narrow-mindedness as a permanently male human, or play into the dominance that gender can often wield in our human world, but it really does just seem to be a bizarre oversight on Le Guin's part. I kept imagining all these characters as having distinctly masculine features, throwing everything off.

The book's description also claims that there is almost no such thing as rape or seduction on Gethen, but I saw the potential for it at least a couple of times in the novel, with rules for relationships and bonds laid out, etc. (a child you give birth to as a mother seems to be considered more precious—at least in terms of royal families—than a child you father, for example). So sex obviously does play some role in power-mongering on the planet, even if not in the way it does on ours.

So anyway, I guess I saw more room for nuance and interrogation than Le Guin had time for in this book, and that was certainly frustrating. But all in all it was a beautiful story that really swept me away. Definitely recommended to anyone who wants more footing in the realm of science fiction literature. ...more "

Jan 03, 2026 11:18AM · see review

Christina’s Notes & Highlights

Book cover for Grammar for a Full Life: How the Ways We Shape a Sentence Can Limit or Enlarge Us

Grammar for a Full Life: How the Ways We Shape a Sentence Can Limit or Enlarge Us by Lawrence Weinstein

3 highlights

Novelists … have, on the average, about the same IQ as the cosmetic consultants at Bloomingdale’s department store. Our power is patience. We have discovered that writing allows even a stupid person to seem halfway intelligent, if only that ...more

Christina’s Quotes

“Providence has delivered me of every worldly passion, save this one; the desire to acquire books, new or old books of any kind, whose charms I cannot persuade myself to resist.”
― John Henry Newman

tags: books, books-reading, love-of-books, love-of-reading

16 likes

“Joanna Macy writes that until we can grieve for our planet we cannot love it—grieving is a sign of spiritual health. But it is not enough to weep for our lost landscapes; we have to put our hands in the earth to make ourselves whole again. Even a wounded world is feeding us. Even a wounded world holds us, giving us moments of wonder and joy. I choose joy over despair.”
― Robin Wall Kimmerer, Braiding Sweetgrass: Indigenous Wisdom, Scientific Knowledge, and the Teachings of Plants

tags: capitalism, consumerism, despair, grief, healing, nature, restoration, theft, wound

77 likes

“We are showered every day with gifts, but they are not meant for us to keep. Their life is in their movement, the inhale and the exhale of our shared breath. Our work and our joy is to pass along the gift and to trust that what we put out into the universe will always come back.”
― Robin Wall Kimmerer, Braiding Sweetgrass: Indigenous Wisdom, Scientific Knowledge, and the Teachings of Plants

74 likes

“O what we ben! And what we come to!”
― Russell Hoban, Riddley Walker

tags: civilization, human-condition, progress

7 likes

“In the Western tradition there is a recognized hierarchy of beings, with, of course, the human being on top—the pinnacle of evolution, the darling of Creation—and the plants at the bottom. But in Native ways of knowing, human people are often referred to as “the younger brothers of Creation.” We say that humans have the least experience with how to live and thus the most to learn—we must look to our teachers among the other species for guidance. Their wisdom is apparent in the way that they live. They teach us by example. They’ve been on the earth far longer than we have been, and have had time to figure things out.”
― Robin Wall Kimmerer, Braiding Sweetgrass: Indigenous Wisdom, Scientific Knowledge, and the Teachings of Plants

tags: evolution, human, native, native-american

152 likes

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