Ursula Le Guin

Poet Robert Bly, now 89 years old, is a radical, by which I mean he returns to the roots. Haydn Reiss has captured him in his new, moving film Robert Bly: A Thousand Years of Joy.

I've never read any of Ursula K. Le Guin's futuristic books, not The Lathe of Heaven, nothing from the Earthsea series, nothing from the Hainish cycle, not Hugo Award winners, The Left Hand of Darkness, The Dispossessed or The Word for World is Forest or any of the many others. After hearing her acceptance speech on radio at the National Book Awards this week (above), I decided to remedy that. In the speech-- a lifetime achievement award-- she went right after Amazon and its deleterious effect on literature through commodification.