I recently decided to re-visit Ursula Le Guin’s Earthsea series, primarily because of reading an interview with her in The Third Alternative No.37. It must be 20 odd years since I read the trilogoy of a Wizard of Earthsea, The Tombs of Atuain and The Farthest Shore (collected here) and it is still magical (pun intended). Le Guin’s writing is superb at once conveying the ‘other’ worldliness of Earthsea and the hopes, thoughts and feelings of the principle characters. These are novels for a young adult audience but they lose no of the wonder for this. The story of Sparrowhawk and his transition from a goatherd on the edge of the world to Archmage on the magical island of Roke is a emotional tale, one told with great sympathy for the characters, and interestingly Ged is not the central figure in the second two books.
My joy at re-discovery the tales is now enhanced by discovering fourth, fifith and sixth books in the series. I hope to get to these soon.
An interesting comparison to Harry Potter in terms of an outsider gaining magical powers and scaring on the face caused by evil powers however different settings and styles. I mention this as I am reading The Goblet of Fire to my daughter and went to see Prisoner of Azkaban at the cinema yesterday. Also very enjoyable but in highly different ways.
Where is human nature so weak as in the bookstore?
Henry Ward Beecher
Oh how true…
My update: Where is human nature so weak as when browsing Amazon?
I haven’t finished reading Broken Angels by Richard Morgan yet but I thought I would let you know that its is fantastic Sci Fi well worth buying and is a fantastic follow up to Altered Carbon. Violent in the extreme, funny, inciteful and an excellent critique of war, messing with things we don’t understand and an advertisement for virtual sex…
I will post a full review in time but if you like Sci Fi you need this book - go buy it!!!!!!!!
P.S. Gollancz or Mr Morgan - if you are reading this - can I have a review copy of Market Forces?
I am back feeling just about better! I’ve added some posts which were outstanding from last week (below somewhere) and hope to catch up with a few further articles today.
In the meantime I’ve finally finished Redemption Ark 
which was a bit different to the Sci-Fi I normally read but still good none the less. Its a large space opera which can sometimes meander here and there but generally hits the mark as it describes characters that seem to have appeared in previous Reynolds novels (but as I haven’t read them I’m not sure). Its main focus is really on human relationships which considerig the setting is quite interesting. While I may sound a little sceptical about the book it has made me buy some other Books by Alastair Reynolds and I would recommend it but I think it would be better to read one of the earlier books like Revelation Space 
first.
BBC NEWS | Wales | Setting free the books
To take part, people register their books at a website then set them free “in the wild” for other people to read, review and release once again.
Good Beeb article about book crossing. I like the idea of sharing books in this way. My only problem is that I have a fierce collectors streak and would be reluctant to let go of any books I own. My wife gets very annoyed about it…
Anyway I’d be interested to hear if anyone has a) done this or b) can’t let the books go free (like me)
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