I finished it last night

The Dispossessed has such an excellent title. How many things does it refer to? To the Annaresti, who have renounced possession, so that it's a little bit of a pun; the Urrasti, too, no longer have possession, if nothing else, of Annares. Each planet has lost the other, and is in some way poorer for it. And there are the poor of Urras, who feel this most keenly, as well as the other, more direct dispossession of their class; and the aliens, with their ancient sadnesses; and Tirin, mad, and rejected by his people; and Shevek himself, not only on Urras (though there most dramatically), but for much of his life on Annares, often voluntarily. Away, so often, from his family (and Rulag, too, has lost her son). Obligations, and what it is to have things even when you don't, and what Takver thinks when she watches Shevek sleep, near the end of the book. I was moved enough by that paragraph this time around that I typed it up and sent it to Rachel; now I wonder that that may nearly have been a spoiler (unlike this paragraph - go figure). That passage may be the heart of it all.

The other thing that struck me about the book this time around was how much Shevek loved and believed in Annares, and how much he and others were able to criticize what it was doing. I draw strength from that, because I'm aware that I've often been a little ginger about expressing dissatisfaction with some function of Windsor House. I don't want to give others cause to smile in triumph and say, "Ha! So, it is a failed experiment." I don't want to imply even indirectly that it's less wonderful and less important than it really is. I don't want to sound like I'm rejecting it; I don't want to actually reject it. What if this criticism, looked at straight, is a rejection? No, says the book, it's not. It has a lot to say about this. It may be a little bit hubris on my part, but the analogy seems almost eerily direct.

I think I may have to end up putting this on my list of ten, after all. If it would knock out any, it would probably be Fahrenheit 451; I'll have to think about it.