Books

When in doubt, I just go with publishing order.

She explores so many ideas.

Left hand of darkness explores our humanity through the lense of gender by removing gender from the society. It's an emotional exploration, and if you enjoy audiobooks the personal nature of the story goes well with the personal experience of it being told to you.

The dispossessed is probably my favorite book. It's more of a social / political exploration. You'll probably be thinking about it more where you'll be feeling about the left hand of darkness, so if you want something a little more externally focused and cognitive then it's a great place to start.

You can literally pick up anything she's ever written and have a great experience, but she's written some really hard hitters. Not in the sense of a baseball metaphor either. The story and the characters will just hit you really hard.

I posted this comment on a similar topic a while ago, for context it was replying to someone who wanted to pick 2 LeGuin novels to read to essentially get a survey of her work. I've liked her standalone novels as well, but I see them get less discussion generally. I think her work that I see referenced most often is the short story The Ones Who Walk Away from Omelas.

LeGuin is one of my favorite authors. I've read a lot, but not all of LeGuin's novels. She has 2 main multibook series that I've read, the Earthsea books and the Hainish cycle.

Earthsea is sort of YA fantasy, but grows up throughout the series. The first 3 are a self contained trilogy, and my favorite is Tombs of Atuan which is book 2, I think would be okay as a standalone title. My other favorite is Tales from Earthsea which is book 5, and is a collection of short stories set in the setting. You'd be missing a little context only reading Tales, but this could also be a standalone.

The Hainish cycle is scifi, and are only loosely connected by the setting and don't have a too firmly established chronology, or any shared main characters. My favorite from the Hainish Cycle is The Left Hand of Darkness and my 2nd favorite is The Dispossessed.

A Wizard of Earthsea and The Tombs of Atuan

There's a really nice edition of all the Earthsea books with illustrations by Charles Vess:

https://www.kardsunlimited.com/young-adult/p/the-books-of-earthsea-the-complete-illustrated-edition-by-ursula-k-le-guin-illustrated-by-charles-vess

Earthsea is very good. It's kind of YA, but from before the term existed, so it should be good if you find your mind wandering when reading. Plus, it gets progressively darker and weirder as the series goes on.

Love me some Earthsea and you u can't go wrong with that and the Heinish books, though if you're having trouble getting into the reading mood you could try one of the short stories like The Ones Who Walk Away from Omelas

I love The Left Hand of Darkness but it’s kind of a slow burn.

I know it’s neither of the authors you listed, but I’d honestly recommend The Hitchhiker’s Guide. It’s light, fast, and sure to help get your brain back into the groove of reading.

The Left Hand of Darkness is indeed a very good place to start!