The Left Hand of Darkness

I started this book in a mood maybe indisposed to be fully appreciative, and it didn't really shake that mood from me; it didn't "wow" me. It took a chapter or two for me to find something interesting, and by the end I was invested, but still a little bored. The Left Hand of Darkness is clever and intricate, but at the same time I wish it were a little bolder. There were a couple of times it seemed to build up a caricature of gender, and then find something to shatter that impression, as if to chide the reader for gendering the characters that way. Each time I would sigh a little, because the author was the one who described them in a gendered way, so it felt a bit transparent. I found the language rather dry, and the pacing a bit numb. I didn't enjoy spending time with the main character, but the few sections from other points of view were better. It did have some great philosophical ponderings — I'm a sucker for a good rumination — and it does some interesting things with the narrative, breaking traditional structures and whatnot. While my time with the book wasn't very successful, I think someone coming at it from a different starting point would really enjoy it. By no means poorly made, just not made in a way that I liked.