Saturday Rave: The Farthest Shore by Ursula Le Guin.

I don't think you can judge a book by its cover, but I do think you can almost always judge it by its first line.

In the Court of the Fountain the sun of March shone through the young leaves of ash and elm, and the water leapt and fell through sunshine and clear light.

And already you can be pretty sure that this book won't be an easy read, but that it will be full of beauty and poetry (check out the buoyant rhythm of that sentence), and a long clear sight of something beyond our world.

And you, dear reader, would be absolutely right.

Word To Use Today: fountain. This word has come to us through the French from the Latin word fons, which means spring or fountain.