The Unreal and the Real: Volume Two: Selected Stories of Ursula K. Le Guin: Outer Space & Inner Lands

Ursula K Le Guin is my favourite author, and I'd read at least eighty percent of these stories before, but it's a joy to have so many of her best gathered in one volume. The Direction of the Road, The Ones Who Walk Away From Omelas, Semley’s Necklace, The Rule of Names, and more than thirty more. I may not read it cover to cover every time, but I'll be dipping into this collection frequently for years to come.

A collection of short stories in which Le Guin once again imagines alternative civilizations, or in one case an alternative history, with a strong feminist bend. My favorite of them was "Solitude", about a girl who grows up on an alien planet studied by her mother, a Hainish observer, but ends up going so thoroughly native that she has trouble fitting into "normal" society again.

I used to have an "abandoned" goodreads shelf until I decided that was putting too much attention into the site... anyway, I've given up on this. There are many subtle and literary stories in the first part of the book and TBH that isn't what I'm here for.

Such variety in her stories. Eventhough she's known as a sci-fi writer most of these stories aren't about aliens in another world, or traveling with spaceships. They are still thought provoking stories though. I need to find Volume 1 of this selection now.

There’s a lot here, and much of it is not to my taste (by which I mean I found it lifeless, plotless, plodding, and dull). Every now and then, though, Le Guin blew the top of my head off with an amazing story (Buffalo Gals, Won’t You Come Out Tonight, for example).