It was pretty awkward shit, to say the least. I mean, both the scene itself and immediately seeing a post about it. She has him drunkenly blow his wad all over the dress of some bald headed capitalist girl he’s infatuated with? A female writer portraying men as weak and sexually pathetic? Oh noes bros, do the online CHUD-MAGA crowd know about this? I mean they were silent about Rush having a female drummer now so…

Nobody at this board said it was their favorite book of all time–that was a blogger guy that I linked to who said that, a guy I’ve been chatting with online for about 25 years now.

I’m generally enjoying the book (and yeah, there’s several passages in it that play suspiciously like inversions and parodies of shit from Ayn Rand’s work, like that sex scene in The Fountainhead told from the woman’s point of view that is all about praising the male protagonist for taking whatever he wants from her) but it’s really good to see how talented Le Guin was at dealing with her philosophical ideas and world-building, because this book admittedly isn’t much about “plot,” no, and I’d already been thinking that while reading it. I thought the whole chase-oriented second half of Left Hand Of Darkness was fine to read, it just seemed weird how little of it had to do with the whole men-being-able-to-get-pregnant-one-sixth-of-the-time concept!! If I had to assign a Le Guin book to young people, I’d pick this over Left Hand.

As for how all these books tie together, I’m planning on reading more Le Guin but I doubt I’m going to end up keeping track of how all the books tie together any more than I could tell you how all of William Faulkner’s books tie together due to them all taking place in that fictional county of his.