Ursula K. Le Guin

From acclaimed author Ursula K. Le Guin, a collection of thoughts--always adroit, often acerbic--on aging, belief, the state of literature, and the state of the nation

Thinking about what Matters

No Time to Spare

fira

And there are no splendid final salutations, such as "Sensrle," which had me stumped, until “San serly" and "Sihnserly" gave me the clue. Or "Yours trully," also spelled "chrule." Or, frequently, echoing young Jane Austen. “Your freind.”

It's been two months since I blogged. Considering that I am on the eve of my eighty-fifth birthday, and that anyone over seventy-five who isn't continuously and conspicuously active is liable to be considered dead, I thought I should make some signs of life.

Jeremy Wang

she is magnificently ornery and inane and irrelevant in her old age! quite funny all around, though i’m not quite sure that she’s in fact always talking about what matters. certainly insightful nonetheless!

Andrew Louis

A loose collection of blog posts of varying degrees of gravity, polish, and interestingness.

i'm not used to reading non-fiction (for leisure); i have a tendency to prefer books i can breeze through, and something about the writing style in most of the non-fiction i have tried to pick up were monotone and a little droll. but there is so much personality in le guin's blog posts. she could talk about the most melancholic, bittersweet topics while effortlessly injecting her infectious brand of dry wit. 

Sarah Hudson

"Tell you true, I've never heard a woman say "the great American novel" without a sort of snort. … Art is not a horse race. Literature is not the Olympics. The hell with The Great American Novel. We have all the great novels we need right now…"

It may come as a shock, especially with my love for fantasy, that I have never read one of Ursula K. Le Guin's novels. Looking at you, Earthsea. Her short stories, essays, and poems – yes. In college, a professor had us read one of her essays. I can't remember what it was about or what it was titled. I only remember her unique name and that I was struck by the power of her words. I jotted her name in a journal of mine... "to read later".

Well, now, several years later I finally picked up No Time to Spare at my library. I saw it available while browsing online, recognized her name, and snagged it along with one of her books on writing Steering the Craft. I'm happy I did. I'll have to purchase my own copy of each along with her other novels. I dog-eared half this book (apologies to the next reader, I tried to lay them flat again), my hand twitching as I ached to highlight every other paragraph.

This book is a lovely, eclectic collection of posts from Le Guin's blog, which she started in 2010 when she was 81 years old. She has since died – at age 88 in 2018. You can read other blog posts on her website, but the posts included in this book have been removed. The topics included in this collection: aging, stories of their adopted cat, feminism, writing, making sense, politics, and rewards. That hardly scratches the surface of what Le Guin writes. She examines what makes life worth living.

"Upholders and defenders of a status quo, political, social, economic, religious, or literary, may denigrate or diabolize or dismiss imaginative literature, because it is – more than any other kind of writing – subversive by nature. It has proved, over many centuries, a useful instrument of resistance to oppression."
Le Guin is painfully honest, quirky, and wildly intelligent. I've never considered myself someone to have a role model, but if I had to choose one – it would be her. She looked at life, writing, philosophy, religion, government, everything with critical eyes and thought. Something I need to remember to do more often. Nothing is to small or too big to write about. Perhaps if I make it to 80 years old I will possess the same warm wisdom as she had.

"Only now is a whole generation maturing that didn't grow up in the alluring stability of steady inflation, but has seen growth capitalism return to its origins, providing security for none but the strongest profiteers. In this respect, the experience of my grandchildren is and will be very different from that of their parents, or mine. I wish I could live to see what they're going to do about it. But this still doesn't quite take me to whatever it is about that request of old Harry's [Truman] that intrigues me so, and that, when I think about it, makes me feel as if the America I'm living in is somebody else's country."
Reading this book was like being curled up at my grandparent's home and listening to them talk. Speaking wisely of the years they have seen pass by. The type of knowledge you can only gain over time and experience. I'm deeply grateful for my family, for the encouragement from all sides to read and be a strong, intelligent woman. For those who read as feverishly as I do and inspired me to read more. I wish I could have known Ursula. Reading this is like listening to a grandmother talk about the intricacy of life. How is it that no one has ever plopped Earthsea or The Left Hand of Darkness into my lap? I suppose I have no time to spare. I'll move on to other books for now. We'll meet again, Le Guin.


  How rich we are in knowledge, and in all that lies around us yet to learn. Billionaires, all of us.

Sarah Escorsa

Actual rating: 4.5 stars. 

It's clever it's funny it's sad it's honest it's witty as fish it's touching it's erudite it's wise it's full of feline shenanigans (and adoration). Oh, and also, it's Slightly Very Good (SVG™).

Jas Wang

4.5 stars, would definitely revisit, again and again, beautiful wise words on small little things.

Nat Welch

I loved this book so much. It's a collection of blog posts by the famous Ursula K. Le Guin. Funny stories about her cat, how she writes, her views on the world, feminism, the environment, and everything else.

No Time to Spare Thinking about what Matters

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