A Wizard of Earthsea

[Elentir]

I am so pleased to hear that the next Mythgard book is "A Wizard of Earthsea". For those of you who haven't read it, you're in for a treat.

 

[Jim Deutch]

I've read it so many times that my paperback has no cover at all. This may be the last reading of this copy: it's falling apart as I go.

Having read nearly every story that LeGuin ever wrote about Earthsea, I am very interested in how the concepts changed over the 40+ years between AWoE and the latest writings. The role of women; the very slow reveals about Dragons and about the Land of the Dead; the retcon about wizards and sexual behavior (feels like a retcon, anyway) . . . and lots more. Corey, of course, isn't going to do much of that: he likes to stick to the actual text in front of him, which is absolutely appropriate.

For those who haven't read A Wizard of Earthsea, my advice is: don't stop there! If you get bogged down by Tehanu (originally subtitled "the last book of Earthsea" but no longer, since it wasn't), don't despair: that's the only one of them that's depressing and ought to have trigger warnings.

 

[RaineJen]

In case you all didn't know, this Thing. of. Beauty. exists, and it also got a Hugo in the one-off "Best Art Book" category this year! If anyone is looking to buy A Wizard of Earthsea and all its sequels, I highly recommend this stunningly gorgeous hardback.

 

[Elentir]

Shut up and take my money!

 

[Elentir]

In case you all didn't know, this Thing. of. Beauty. exists, and it also got a Hugo in the one-off "Best Art Book" category this year! If anyone is looking to buy A Wizard of Earthsea and all its sequels, I highly recommend this stunningly gorgeous hardback.





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I got mine now. An impressive book.

 

[Elentir]

I just found this, Ursula LeGuin reading from "A Wizard of Earthsea", for your enjoyment:

 

[tzigi]

Regarding the pronounciation of Ogion which was discussed/the topic of a poll in Session 2: Le Guin actually adressed this several times and had a strong opinion about it:

So Ged is Ged not Jed, Ogion rhymes with “bogey on.” (...) And in the American film “based on” A Wizard of Earthsea, Ogion became oh-JYE-on.

(from her webpage)
and

I withdrew my offered pronunciation guide (so Ogion, which rhymes with bogy-on, is "Oh-jee-on" in the film).

(from the Locus)

So the intuition was correct and the Robert Inglis audiobook is incorrect here.

 

[NotACat]

I've been trying to formulate my observation that the epigraph works just fine if you read it in waltz-time, i.e. with a steady three-fold beat, but I haven't been able to come up with a properly coherent post, so here you go…