The Left Hand of Darkness

I knew Ursula K LeGuin was seen as one of the top scifi/fantasy minds of the 20th century, but hadn't really read anything by her as an adult, so I was excited to give this a chance and was not disappointed. This genre always does best when it provides a mirror/comparison to our own world, and this certainly does that. It gets a lot of attention for its novelty around gender, and rightly so, especially for when it was published, but I appreciated it most for thinking about difference in general. How do we communicate/collaborate with others who are very different from us? How do we build trust and friendships? At its heart, the book feels almost like a platonic love story of two people who are very different from each other. There's an emotional heart of beauty and intimacy to the story, and it's one that everybody should give a chance.