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Summary
Summary
Ursula K. Le Guin on the absurdity of denying your age: "If I'm ninety and believe I'm forty-five, I'm headed for a very bad time trying to get out of the bathtub."
On cultural perceptions of fantasy: "The direction of escape is toward freedom. So what is 'escapism' an accusation of?"
On breakfast: "Eating an egg from the shell takes not only practice, but resolution, even courage, possibly willingness to commit crime."
Ursula K. Le Guin took readers to imaginary worlds for decades. In her last great frontier of life, old age, she explored a new literary territory: the blog, a forum where she shined. The collected best of Ursula's blog, No Time to Spare presents perfectly crystallized dispatches on what mattered to her late in life, her concerns with the world, and her wonder at it: "How rich we are in knowledge, and in all that lies around us yet to learn. Billionaires, all of us."
Reviews (5)
Publisher's Weekly Review
Fantasy and SF author Le Guin (The Lost and the Found) mines her blog in these short, punchy, and canny meditations on aging, literature, and cats. Prompted by an alumni survey from her alma mater, Radcliffe, that asks how she occupies her spare time, she takes issue with the idea that any time occupied by living-whether that means reading, writing, cooking, eating, cleaning, etc.-can be considered spare. Moreover, with her 81st birthday fast approaching, Le Guin declares, "I have no time to spare." One of the most personal pieces lovingly describes Le Guin's adoption of a kitten from the local Humane Society, describing how the "vivid little creature" eventually settled in the house and became her "pard" (partner.) On literary topics, Le Guin contests the preoccupation with finding the next Great American Novel-"We have all the great novels we need and right now some man or woman is writing a new one we won't know we needed till we read it"-and responds to a reader's question about the meaning of one of her books by responding that its meaning is up to the reader. In a prescient 2012 essay on lying and politics, she wonders whether America can "go on living on spin and illusion, hot air and hogwash, and still be my country." Le Guin reveals no startling insights but offers her many fans a chance to share her clear-eyed experience of the everyday. Agent: Ginger Clark, Curtis Brown. (Dec.) © Copyright PWxyz, LLC. All rights reserved.
Kirkus Review
Spirited, wry reflections on aging, literature, and America's moral life.Inspired by blogs that Jos Saramago wrote when he was in his 80s, the prolific, multiple award-winning Le Guin (Words Are My Matter: Writing About Life and Books, 2000-2015, with a Journal of a Writer's Week, 2016, etc.) became a blogger herself. In an entertaining collection of more than 40 posts written from 2010 to 2015, she offers opinions on a wide range of topics: politics, age and youth, confounding questions from readers, creativity, public and private expressions of anger, a splendid opera by Philip Glass, the serene ritual of breakfast in Vienna, and, most charmingly, her cat. The collection begins with the author's mystification over a questionnaire from Harvard, on the occasion of the 60th reunion of the graduating class of 1951. One question "really got me down," she confesses: "In your spare time, what do you do?" There followed a list of 27 occupations, beginning with "Golf." If spare time is the opposite of occupied time, Le Guin maintains that all of her time is "occupied by living." And at the age of 81, when the piece was posted, she observed, "I have no time to spare." She is at her most acerbic when writing about politics: in 2012 she learned that in 1947, President Truman asked the nation to give up meat on Tuesdays and poultry on Thursdays so that grain could be sent to starving Europeans. Such a request would be laughable today, she reflects sadly: "When did it become impossible for our government to ask its citizens to refrain from short-term gratification in order to serve a greater good?" Even in 2012 she felt in exile: "I used to live in a country that had a future." Le Guin is at her most tender in posts about her cat, "a vivid little creatureutterly sweet and utterly nutty." Thoughtful musings from a deft and sharply insightful writer. Copyright Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.
Booklist Review
The word blog, Le Guin writes, sounds like a sodden tree trunk in a bog or maybe an obstruction in the nasal passage. But then she discovers the blog written by José Saramago and, inspired, decides to begin blogging herself. A generous collection of the results makes up this eclectic volume. Written from 2010 through 2015, her blogs address a variety of subjects loosely arranged in four parts that range from meditations on old age (Le Guin is now well into her eighties) to those she calls Rewards, a section that includes one of the best entries in the book: her contemplation of a lynx she discovers in a museum. But then Le Guin seems to have a particular fondness for cats; three of her subsections deal with her beloved cat Pard, posts that provide a feast for feline aficionados. To Le Guin, though, what truly matters are the words she thinks about, rigorous in her examination. Her expression of these thoughts reads more like mini-essays than blog posts and invite close reading, which always reaps rich rewards, the true gift of this lovely book.--Cart, Michael Copyright 2017 Booklist
New York Review of Books Review
AN AMERICAN MARRIAGE, by Tayari Jones. (Algonquin, $16.95.) The lives of a young black couple in Atlanta are thrown into chaos after the husband, Roy, is imprisoned for a crime he didn't commit. As the couple grapple with their grief, they must also confront the failed hopes of a marriage and romantic love. The grave miscarriage of justice forms the core of Jones's deeply compassionate and heartbreaking novel. HOW DEMOCRACIES DIE, by Steven Levitsky and Daniel Ziblatt. (Broadway, $15.) Think beyond the coups d'état: The backslide from democracy into autocracy can be brought about by elected officials who upend the processes that empowered them. The authors, political scientists at Harvard, describe four criteria to identify authoritarian leaders. Donald Trump has met all of them. GRIST MILL ROAD, by Christopher J. Yates. (Picador, $18.) A gruesome act of violence connects three teenagers, who stay linked to one another for the rest of their lives. As more is revealed about the crime, this thriller raises questions of guilt, culpability and forgiveness. As our reviewer, Sarah Lyall, put it, "You have to work hard to follow the winding road Yates sends us down, and the drive is full of pleasantly unpleasant surprises." NO TIME TO SPARE: Thinking About What Matters, by Ursula K. Le Guin. (Mariner, $14.99.) Long revered as a master of fantasy writing, Le Guin turned to blogging late in life, writing about everything from feminism to aging to breakfast. This collection brings together some of her best blog posts. There's a lot that will delight fans of Le Guin, who died last year: "The pages sparkle with lines that make a reader glance up, searching for an available ear with which to share them," our reviewer, Melissa Febos, wrote. TEXT ME WHEN YOU GET HOME: The Evolution and Triumph of Modern Female Friendship, by Kayleen Schaefer. (Dutton, $16.) For generations, the importance of these relationships has been played down, taking a back seat to romantic partnerships and family bonds. Drawing on the evolution of female friendships in popular culture and her own experiences, Schaefer puts camaraderie among women on a pedestal. THE GHOST NOTEBOOKS, by Ben Dolnick. (Vintage, $16.) Facing career burnout and a stalled relationship, a young couple leave New York City for Hibernia, a tiny town upstate. As they settle into their new home, a historic house with a secret dark past, their romance becomes a ghost story: The relationship soon begins to unravel, and it's not clear whether psychosis or malevolent spiritual forces are to blame.
Library Journal Review
Le Guin, whose accolades include a National Book Award and five Hugo Awards, loves libraries for all the right reasons, and libraries love her back in equal measure. Since 2010, the distinguished novelist has expanded her literary repertoire by maintaining a personal blog, much to the enjoyment of her fans. Thoughtfully selected and neatly compiled here, Le Guin's entries provide pithy musings on old age, American politics, cat ownership, and being an author, among other topics. Throughout the collection, she makes the reader smile with her acerbic wit and poignant observations. Although without an intended direction or objective, the overall intimacy of the writings put readers in the same room with Le Guin, where she repeatedly provides valuable life lessons that have been slowly amassed over time and through experience. VERDICT If you love the imaginary worlds Le Guin has taken us to over the decades, this book will make you feel more connected to the author as a person. [See Prepub Alert, 6/12/17.]-Matt Gallagher, Univ. of the Sciences, Philadelphia © Copyright 2017. Library Journals LLC, a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.
Table of Contents
| Introduction | p. xiii |
| A Note at the Beginning | p. xix |
| Part 1 Going Over Eighty | |
| In Your Spare Time | p. 3 |
| The Sissy Strikes Back | p. 8 |
| The Diminished Thing | p. 12 |
| Catching Up, Ha Ha | p. 18 |
| The Annals Of Pard | |
| Choosing a Cat | p. 23 |
| Chosen by a Cat | p. 29 |
| Part 2 The Lit Biz Would You Please Fucking Stop? | p. 35 |
| Readers' Questions | p. 39 |
| Kids' Letters | p. 44 |
| Having My Cake | p. 48 |
| Papa H | p. 53 |
| A Much-Needed Literary Award | p. 59 |
| TGAN and TGOW | p. 63 |
| TGAN Again | p. 69 |
| The Narrative Gift as a Moral Conundrum | p. 74 |
| It Doesn't Have to Be the Way It Is | p. 80 |
| Utopiyin, Utopiyang | p. 85 |
| The Annals Of Pard | |
| The Trouble | p. 91 |
| Pard and the Time Machine | p. 95 |
| Part 3 Trying To Make Sense Of It | |
| A Band of Brothers, a Stream of Sisters | p. 101 |
| Exorcists | p. 105 |
| Uniforms | p. 107 |
| Clinging Desperately to a Metaphor | p. 111 |
| Lying It All Away | p. 115 |
| The Inner Child and the Nude Politician | p. 120 |
| A Modest Proposal: Vegempathy | p. 128 |
| Belief in Belief | p. 131 |
| About Anger | p. 136 |
| The Annals Of Pard | |
| An Unfinished Education | p. 147 |
| An Unfinished Education, Continued | p. 150 |
| Doggerel for My Cat | p. 154 |
| Part 4 Rewards | |
| The Circling Stars, the Sea Surrounding: Philip Glass and John Luther Adams | p. 159 |
| Rehearsal | p. 164 |
| Someone Named Delores | p. 166 |
| Without Egg | p. 173 |
| Notre-Dame de la Faim | p. 179 |
| The Tree | p. 184 |
| The Horsies Upstairs | p. 188 |
| First Contact | p. 197 |
| The Lynx | p. 201 |
| Notes from a Week at a Ranch in the Oregon High Desert | p. 210 |