The Left Hand of Darkness is very good - about androgenous aliens, very big on the way cancelling gender issues out of a relationship really changes a lot of things. And not, at the same time.

I'm a little confused as to why anyone would go looking for anything else in books. Maybe it's because I'm such a heavy fantasy reader but to me that was mostly the point. Stepping through into another world and soaking it up. Granted, the really good ones will leave you a little changed (I can't even BEGIN to rave about how much Charles de Lint has opened my eyes to the possibility of magic all around) but that's just an added bonus. But maybe that's why I've developed a hate-on for Terry Goodkind. His increasingly frequent preaching. Who knows. I've been typed to check out Ursula K. Le Guin before and now I think I will. Eh... eventually. When my "to read" pile is smaller.

Geez. Fair enough.

I haven't read Earthsea, I saw the movie a little while ago. B-class, but one of the best fantasy b-class movies I've seen in a long time.

Kristen Kreuk must DIE!!

I don't know about that... although perhaps the fact that no one really had to come up with anything was why it didn't suck as badly as the others I've seen lately. ONe was called "Westender." Great cinimetography of Oregon in it, but so many bloody plot holes. And the last Forty Bloody Minutes consisted of NO DIALOGUE. Just this guy walking through a desert, collapsing, having a vision of a wolf running or a battle, getting up all energized, more walking, more collapsing, more visions. It was all his quest to find a ring that he lost in a card game - and he never gets it. Characters come and go without completing thier stories. One just up and leaves, one dies a few minutes after meeting the guy having gone from unconscious or dead to nearly knifing the main character to best pals on an epic quest to dead in less than 3 minutes... For some reason the main character is loved by everyone at home but is hiding from them, with NO explanation why - and even though his countrymen are losing a war and he runs away from them whenever they spot him, they still go, 'Westender! Is that you! Man are we ever glad to see you! Court Martial? Bah! Come and give us a hug!'
It was like watching a dramatisation of someone playing Dungeons and Dragons BY HIMSELF.