A collection of talks, essays, introductions, and book reviews (mostly from 2000-2016) in which Le Guin discusses genre, fantasy, science fiction, gender, aging, and the craft of writing, and reviews and introduces the work of writers including H. G. Wells, José Saramago, Italo Calvino, and Margaret Atwood.
Books mentioned in Words Are My Matter (107)
Brave New World by Aldous Huxley: “Huxley's Bad Trip: An introduction to the Folio Society edition of Aldous Huxley's Brave New World, 2013.”
The Dispossessed by Ursula K. Le Guin: “Le Guin's The Dispossessed, edited by Laurence Davis and Peter Stillman, Lexington Books, 2005.”
Don Quixote by Miguel de Cervantes: “Fiction, for Borges, thus includes history, journalism, biography, memoir, Cervantes' Don Quixote, Pierre Menard's Don Quixote...”
Blindness by José Saramago: “My friend the poet Naomi Replansky wrote me that she was reading a great novel, Blindness, by José Saramago.”
The Sword in the Stone by T. H. White: “White's The Sword in the Stone, the first book of The Once and Future King.”
People of the Book by Geraldine Brooks: “As soon as I knew it was the story of a book saved from the destruction of a library, I wanted to read Geraldine Brooks's People of the Book.”
Among Others by Jo Walton: “Jo Walton, Among Others.”
The Bone Clocks by David Mitchell: “David Mitchell, The Bone Clocks.”
The First Men in the Moon by H. G. Wells: “the early scientific romances... The Time Machine, The War of the Worlds, The First Men in the Moon, and The Island of Doctor Moreau.”
The Cask of Amontillado by Edgar Allan Poe: “A piece we might think we know almost too well, such as "The Cask of Amontillado,"...”
The Lord of the Rings by J R R Tolkien: “...such as Little Dorrit, War and Peace, To the Lighthouse, or The Lord of the Rings...”
To the Lighthouse by Virginia Woolf: “...such as Little Dorrit, War and Peace, To the Lighthouse, or The Lord of the Rings...”
The Country of the Pointed Firs by Sarah Orne Jewett: “Elizabeth Gaskell's Cranford and Sarah Orne Jewett's Country of the Pointed Firs are both about a single town and a few strong characters.”
Little Dorrit by Charles Dickens: “...such as Little Dorrit, War and Peace, To the Lighthouse, or The Lord of the Rings...”
Stone Mattress by Margaret Atwood: “Margaret Atwood, Stone Mattress.”
The Voyage of the Beagle by Charles Darwin: “...you could have read The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire, The Voyage of the Beagle...”
Tlön, Uqbar, Orbis Tertius by Jorge Luis Borges: “...as the end of the story "Tlön, Uqbar, Orbis Tertius" suggests, we are now living there.”
War and Peace by Leo Tolstoy: “...such as Little Dorrit, War and Peace, To the Lighthouse, or The Lord of the Rings...”
Invisible Cities by Italo Calvino: “Calvino's Invisible Cities derives in this same way from an idea, a notion...”
The Aleph by Jorge Luis Borges: “...as surely it should, not only modern astrophysics but Xeno's paradox, Borges's Aleph, and the Mad Hatter's tea party.”
Candide by Voltaire: “A favorite Enlightenment vehicle, the conte lends itself to satire and comedy; Voltaire's Candide is a masterpiece of the type.”
Cranford by Elizabeth Gaskell: “Elizabeth Gaskell's Cranford and Sarah Orne Jewett's Country of the Pointed Firs are both about a single town and a few strong characters.”
Green Mansions by W. H. Hudson: “When I was thirteen that song in Hudson's Green Mansions held all romance in it...”
His Dark Materials by Philip Pullman: “Philip Pullman's His Dark Materials trilogy is a long, richly imagined, and deeply incoherent work...”
The Metamorphosis by Franz Kafka: “I can't imagine Saramago writing "Metamorphosis" any more than I can imagine Kafka writing a love story.”
Mistress Masham's Repose by T. H. White: “White's Mistress Masham's Repose; according to them it involves not moving your tongue while squealing through the back of your nose.”
The Oxford Nursery Rhyme Book by Iona and Peter Opie: “I read it first in The Oxford Nursery Rhyme Book, by Iona and Peter Opie...”
Through the Looking-Glass by Lewis Carroll: “Lewis Carroll's Through the Looking-Glass begins with cats.”
Waterless Mountain by Laura Adams Armer: “...the children's book Waterless Mountain, by Laura Adams Armer, with its tender picture of a young soul...”
The Time Machine by H. G. Wells: “The Time Machine was published in 1895, and has never been out of print.”
The Man in the High Castle by Philip K. Dick: “The Man in the High Castle was published at the end of 1962...”
Kingdom Come by J. G. Ballard: “Ballard's motive in writing Kingdom Come may have been much akin to Saramago's in The Cave...”
Oryx and Crake by Margaret Atwood: “To my mind, The Handmaid's Tale, Oryx and Crake, and The Year of the Flood all exemplify one of the things science fiction does...”
Pride and Prejudice by Jane Austen: “For instance, Pride and Prejudice is, to me, an absolutely beautiful work of art.”
Baltasar and Blimunda by José Saramago: “...the first of these, Baltasar and Blimunda, was an international success...”
Black Beauty by Anna Sewell: “...the twelve-year-old weeping as she reads Black Beauty?”
Harry Potter and the Philosopher's Stone by J. K. Rowling: “This was liberally proved when the first Harry Potter book came out and literary reviewers ran around shrieking about its incredible originality.”
The Once and Future King by T. H. White: “White's The Sword in the Stone, the first book of The Once and Future King.”
A Christmas Carol by Charles Dickens: “The Odyssey, Don Quixote, Pride and Prejudice, A Christmas Carol, The Lord of the Rings, Honey in the Horn, The Jump-Off Creek: none of those stories is factual.”
Alice's Adventures in Wonderland by Lewis Carroll: “Even in America many of us give our children imaginative books to read—Alice in Wonderland, Charlotte's Web.”
All the Names by José Saramago: “...soon after that, All the Names, perhaps the most Kafkaesque of his novels, with its satire of a monstrous bureaucracy.”
Angle of Repose by Wallace Stegner: “He took the setting, characters, and story of his novel Angle of Repose from her autobiography...”
Cosmicomics by Italo Calvino: “It's a compendium of the volume Cosmicomics (published in English in 1968)...”
Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep? by Philip K. Dick: “The 1982 film Blade Runner, nominally based on Dick's 1968 novel Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep?...”
Doctor Zhivago by Boris Pasternak: “Fifty years ago this September, Boris Pasternak's novel Doctor Zhivago came out here in English.”
Flush by Virginia Woolf: “In her novel Flush, Woolf gets inside a dog's mind...”
Ivanhoe by Walter Scott: “I like knowing that a hard-bitten Wyoming cowboy carried a copy of Ivanhoe in his saddlebag for thirty years...”
Life of Pi by Yann Martel: “In Martel's best-selling Life of Pi, the author-within-the-story tells us that he went to India...”
Lolly Willowes by Sylvia Townsend Warner: “Her first novel, Lolly Willowes, reprinted from time to time, is a dazzling display of the extraordinary wit and tough-mindedness of her fantasy...”
Nineteen Eighty-Four by George Orwell: “He wrote to George Orwell when Nineteen Eighty-Four was published, generously praising it...”
Orlando by Virginia Woolf: “I was seventeen when I read Orlando.”
Roadside Picnic by Arkady and Boris Strugatsky: “Roadside Picnic is a "first contact" story with a difference.”
Tehanu by Ursula K. Le Guin: “Here is a character in my novel Tehanu expressing her belief in gendered knowledge.”
The Catcher in the Rye by J. D. Salinger: “Identification with the child's point of view all too often leads to the whining falsities of The Catcher in the Rye...”
The Double by José Saramago: “A reader who shares that fascination will find this (and later The Double) a treasure.”
The Invisible Man by H. G. Wells: “The Time Machine, The First Men in the Moon, The War of the Worlds, The Invisible Man, The Island of Doctor Moreau—these are what the name H. G. Wells means to most people.”
The Notebook by José Saramago: “Saramago will tell us what the book is about—though when he wrote this in The Notebook he wasn't talking about his novel, but about the world he saw in May 2009.”
The Odyssey by Homer: “The Odyssey, Don Quixote, Pride and Prejudice, A Christmas Carol, The Lord of the Rings, Honey in the Horn, The Jump-Off Creek: none of those stories is factual.”
The Princess and the Goblin by George MacDonald: “The Princess and the Goblin is an old book now, but it was written for young readers.”
The Thorn Birds by Colleen McCullough: “The New York Times obituary of Colleen McCullough, author of The Thorn Birds, included the same tasteful and relevant information.”
Tono-Bungay by H. G. Wells: “Even such a realistic novel of commonplace contemporary life as Tono-Bungay includes a haunting, terribly prescient vision of radioactivity...”
Ulysses by James Joyce: “Where was her copy of Ulysses?”
Vanity Fair by William Makepeace Thackeray: “That scene, ending in the death of an old man, carries a shock like the last sentence of the Waterloo chapter in Vanity Fair.”
We Are All Completely Beside Ourselves by Karen Joy Fowler: “Karen Fowler's novel We Are All Completely Beside Ourselves (shortlisted for the 2015 Man Booker Prize) handled the relationship of ape and human realistically...”
When the Sleeper Wakes by H. G. Wells: “He also wrote what may be the first genuine dystopia, When the Sleeper Wakes...”
Crazy Weather by Charles L. McNichols: “...and Charles McNichols's Crazy Weather, an introduction written for Harry Kirchner of Pharos Books.”
The Story of Doctor Dolittle by Hugh Lofting: “Three of the great works of children's literature and animal literature are Hugh Lofting's Doctor Dolittle, Rudyard Kipling's Jungle Books...”
Dorset Stories by Sylvia Townsend Warner: “The only one I changed substantially (mostly to update it) is the review of Sylvia Townsend Warner's Dorset Stories.”
The Jungle Book by Rudyard Kipling: “Three of the great works of children's literature and animal literature are Hugh Lofting's Doctor Dolittle, Rudyard Kipling's Jungle Books, and T....”
The Jump-Off Creek by Molly Gloss: “Davis's Honey in the Horn and Molly Gloss's The Jump-Off Creek have an implacable honesty about Western place and character.”
Life Amongst the Modocs by Joaquin Miller: “...and Joaquin Miller's Life Amongst the Modocs, which Dan Crommie lent me.”
Miss Marjoribanks by Margaret Oliphant: “Oliphant's work was wholly forgotten but for one novel, Miss Marjoribanks, not her best, mentioned by historians of literature but not kept in print.”
Uncle Tom's Cabin by Harriet Beecher Stowe: “The two great American novels of the oppressed, Uncle Tom's Cabin and The Grapes of Wrath, are saved from that minatory coldness by the authors' passion for justice...”
The Grapes of Wrath by John Steinbeck: “The two great American novels of the oppressed, Uncle Tom's Cabin and The Grapes of Wrath, are saved from that minatory coldness...”
Death at La Fenice by Donna Leon: “...I reread the first, Death at La Fenice, curious to see if there was a great difference.”
Honey in the Horn by H. L. Davis: “A Very Good American Novel: H. L. Davis's Honey in the Horn.”
A Secret Vice by J. R. R. Tolkien: “Tolkien's essay "A Secret Vice." It is a splendid and often very funny description, explanation, and defense of the creation of fictive languages.”
The Machine Stops by E. M. Forster: “Forster had written the amazing visionary story "The Machine Stops," which Huxley surely knew.”
On Such a Full Sea by Chang-Rae Lee: “Chang-Rae Lee, On Such a Full Sea.”
The Cleft by Doris Lessing: “Doris Lessing, The Cleft.”
Monsieur Pain by Roberto Bolaño: “Roberto Bolaño, Monsieur Pain.”
The Stone Raft by José Saramago: “My course of reading—The Late Ricardo Reyes (also published as The Year of the Death of Ricardo Reis), The Stone Raft, The Cave, and several other books...”
The Year of the Death of Ricardo Reis by José Saramago: “...The Late Ricardo Reyes (also published as The Year of the Death of Ricardo Reis), The Stone Raft, The Cave, and several other books...”
The Cave by José Saramago: “...The Stone Raft, The Cave, and several other books (of which more later)—was entirely successful.”
The Country of the Blind by H. G. Wells: “In 1939, in his discussion of his revision of what is probably his finest story, "The Country of the Blind," he wrote that he had lost his tolerance for the idea story...”
Two Years, Eight Months, and Twenty-Eight Nights by Salman Rushdie: “His new novel, Two Years, Eight Months, and Twenty-Eight Nights, assures us that reality has been crumbling more colossally than ever lately...”
Skylight by José Saramago: “José Saramago: Skylight”