Welcome to a new weekly column!

Thoughtful Thursday is dedicated to getting all of our readers talking. Each week I (that’s Ruth) will pose a question for all of us to discuss together, so pull up your favorite chair, get your beverage of choice, and join us for a little fireside chat each week. Remember, we’re all real people behind the screens, so while we may disagree with each other, we don’t need to be disagreeable.

If you have a topic you’d like to discuss, please contact me with the subject “Thoughtful.”

For this firWizard of Earthseast week, I’d like to start off with a light topic: sin. No, not murder or covetousness or anything like that; I want you to fess up to your biggest fantasy literature sin. What is your secret vice? Do you break the spines on paperbacks? Do you dog-ear pages in library books? Do you think Tolkien was a hack?

I’ll start out by confessing my sin: I don’t like Ursula Le Guin. When I admitted this to the other reviewers at Fantasy Literature, a few virtual shoes were lobbed in my direction, as she is widely considered a Mistress of the Genre, but I just don’t like reading Le Guin. While I understand why she is considered good, I just feel like she takes forever to get anywhere. When I read A Wizard of Earthsea, I yelled out, “Stop rowing the boat!”

It’s your turn now to confess: What is your fantasy literature sin?

~Ruth

Author

  • Ruth Arnell

    RUTH ARNELL (on FanLit's staff January 2009 — August 2013) earned a Ph.D. in political science and is a college professor in Idaho. From a young age she has maxed out her library card the way some people do credit cards. Ruth started reading fantasy with A Wrinkle in Time and The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe — books that still occupy an honored spot on her bookshelf today. Ruth and her husband have a young son, but their house is actually presided over by a flame-point Siamese who answers, sometimes, to the name of Griffon.