deleted by creator

I've only read left hand of darkness, but I really enjoyed it? I get the dry writing, but it was good idk?

I loved that short story as well. If you want something a bit different but also in the same untraditional but critical vein I would suggest Solaris by Stanislaw Lem. I also read an edition of Roadside Picnic which Le Guin wrote a foreword to and it was great.

I've only listened to The Lathe of Heaven on audiobook at work. I enjoyed it well enough. I went in expecting a bad philosophical work so when it turned out to be a classic science fiction story complete with

I was amused. But I can understand how that may be boring to some.

I can't speak about her books since I have never read them, but I have heard only good things about them, especially in any leftist circles. Then again, I will fully admit that I prefer the book equivalent of Marvel movies, so I'm not even sure if Ursula K. Le Guin would be something for me.

What do you think of John Scalzi's writing? How about Terry Bisson's? Whose writing do you like?

I read The Dispossessed like a decade ago, and I feel like I had the same reaction to it. It was the situation where I just thought that maybe I wasn't intellectual enough to understand it...But thinking back on it the concepts that she was trying to illustrate didn't even seem that novel or complex..

Is Asimov this bad too? I've read Starship Troopers from Heinlein and it was about as bad but it at least had some suspense and violence to keep things wet.

Asimov is defiantly similarly dry and curt. This is just a common writing style of mid-century sci-fi, to be very sparce and let you fill in the blanks about the character's personality and motivations. I don't find it boring, but it's definitely a deliberate stylistic choice. You can just kind of tell if you're reading something from around the 1960s, just like you can kind of tell if you're reading something from around the 1860s - authors are reading their contemporaries, and end up kind of writing in a similar way.

If anyone has read Rand and Le Guin, I'd love to hear a comparison.

Rand's writing is sort of the opposite of Le Guin in a lot of ways. Atlas Shrugged is a cudgel of prose all formulated to advance her political philosophy, and all character motivation can be boiled down to "I want to act in a way that demonstrates this point that Rand is trying get across". The Dispossessed is a story about people in a place with motivations to advance their own interests, and in doing so they prod the reader into thinking about the political and societal ideas that LeGuin is interested in exploring. That they both have kind of a dry writing style and wooden characters is, I think, more of a reflection of the writing styles of the day - these were both people writing sci-fi (I do consider Atlas Shrugged a sci-fi novel) to be published and make money in the middle of the 20th century, to an audience who has certain expectations.

It's okay to not like an author's writing, don't feel obligated to read their stuff even if it's a Well Regarded Classic. But do circle back to them a decade or two later and try again, your tastes might have changed.

I remember reading the Earthsea saga after finishing One Hundred Years of Solitude. And while the plot kept me engaged enough to finish all the books. I just found her writing and characters... ¿dry? I think that is the word.

While I try to remember the plot and the setting, that is what comes to mind first. The "dryness" of her writting and worlbuilding. On the other hand, I remember far more clearly the nostalgic and colorful world of One Hundred Years. And the characters too.

I guess it is just a matter of "taste". I still want to read The Dispossessed tho.

This is probably a worthless unnecessary comment but I started Foundation Trilogy by Asimov once and it was the driest most emotionally stunted shit I've ever read. But then this is pretty much how I feel about most sci Fi fantasy. The first five or so Lethem novels are really awesome though, I'd reccomend those.