In 2010, at the age of 81, the renowned fiction writer Ursula Le Guin, began writing a blog in which she examined a plethora of varied objects from aging, to her cats, to anger, to literature, to politics, to science, to travel, and the list goes on and on. Writings from that blog have been pulled together into the book No Time To Spare : Thinking About What Matters. The book was released December 5, 2017, and Mrs. Le Guin passed away on January 22, 2018, so the title has taken on a new and poignant meaning for me and it was an honor to both read and review this book. As a lover of books of all genres, I personally have always been a fan of her books, and as a 38 year librarian of students in grades K-8th, I have watched many students become fans of her work. Amazingly, she wrote for many different ages and did so quite well. Her books have been translated into more than 40 languages and have sold millions of copies worldwide. They have won notable awards, and been adopted as novels worthy of being added to many curriculums. They have created worlds that were fascinating to explore. The writer’s “pleasant duty,” she said, is to ply the reader’s imagination with “the best and purest nourishment that it can absorb.”
Some nuggets from the book on various topics:

On aging:

“Americans believe strongly in positive thinking. Positive thinking is great. It works best when based on a realistic assessment and acceptance of the actual situation. Positive thinking founded on denial may not be so great.
Everybody who gets old has to assess their ever-changing but seldom improving situation and make of it what they can. I think most old people accept the fact that they’re old —I’ve never heard anybody over eighty say “I’m not old.” And they make the best of it. As the saying goes, consider the alternative!
A lot of younger people, seeing the reality of old age as entirely negative, see acceptance of age as negative. Wanting to deal with old people in a positive spirit, they’re led to deny old people their reality. With all good intentions, people say to me, “Oh, you’re not old!”
And the pope isn’t Catholic.
“You’re only as old as you think you are!”
Now, you don’t honestly think having lived eighty-three years is a matter of opinion.
“My uncle’s ninety and he walks eight miles a day.” Lucky Unk. I hope he never meets that old bully Arthur Ritis or his mean wife Sciatica.
“My grandmother lives all by herself and she’s still driving her car at ninety-nine!” Well, hey for Granny, she’s got good genes. She’s a great example —but not one most people are able to imitate. “
Old age isn’t a state of mind. It’s an existential situation.
Would you say to a person paralyzed from the waist down, “Oh, you aren’t a cripple! You’re only as paralyzed as you think you are!
My cousin broke her back once but she got right over it and now she’s in training for the marathon!” Encouragement by denial, however well-meaning, backfires.
Fear is seldom wise and never kind. Who is it you’re cheering up, anyhow? Is it really the geezer?
To tell me my old age doesn’t exist is to tell me I don’t exist. Erase my age, you erase my life —me.”

On Homer:

“I was thinking about Homer, and it occurred to me that his two books are the two basic fantasy stories: the War and the Journey.
I’m sure this has occurred to others. That’s the thing about Homer. People keep going to him and discovering new things, or old things, or things for the first time, or things all over again, and saying them. This has been going on for two or three millennia. That is an amazingly long time for anything to mean anything to anybody.
Anyhow, so The Iliad is the War (actually only a piece of it, close to but not including the end), and The Odyssey is the Journey (There and Back Again, as Bilbo put it).
I think Homer outwits most writers who have written on the War, by not taking sides.
The Trojan war is not and you cannot make it be the War of Good vs. Evil. It’s just a war, a wasteful, useless, needless, stupid, protracted, cruel mess full of individual acts of courage, cowardice, nobility, betrayal, limb-hacking-off, and disembowelment. Homer was a Greek and might have been partial to the Greek side, but he had a sense of justice or balance that seems characteristically Greek —maybe his people learned a good deal of it from him? His impartiality is far from dispassionate; the story is a torrent of passionate actions, generous, despicable, magnificent, trivial. But it is unprejudiced. It isn’t Satan vs. Angels. It isn’t Holy Warriors vs. Infidels. It isn’t hobbits vs. orcs. It’s just people vs. people.
Of course you can take sides, and almost everybody does. I try not to, but it’s no use, I just like the Trojans better than the Greeks. But Homer truly doesn’t take sides, and so he permits the story to be tragic. By tragedy, mind and soul are grieved, enlarged, and exalted.”

Thank you Houghton Mifflin Harcourt and NetGalley for the Advanced Reader’s Copy of this book and for allowing me the honor of reviewing it. I enjoyed reading Le Guin’s erudite musings on the varied and timely topics she addressed in her blog.

[NOTE: Full review up at The National Book Review. Please see the link.]

No Time to Spare, a collection of essays and musings from her blog is in that clarified, distinct voice and with all the insight, humor, truth, and deftness which her longtime readers will enjoy.

Le Guin has often said how she came late to feminism with her fiction because she believed she had to "write like a man.” That feminism, however, underpins everything written here — even when a topic is not explicitly related to gender issues. The other big theme that braids itself through several pieces here is her firm stance on belief versus knowledge and science versus religion. She had participated in these debates throughout her life, whether expressly through the writing or in interviews/discussions. And, finally, to a somewhat lesser extent, she revisited her ideas of freedom, belonging, aging, governance, the value of the natural world, capitalism, humanity’s capacity for war/destruction/peace, and, of course, the art and craft of writing.

All these weighty issues have been handled with a witty touch so that, while we are sure of her position, we are not goaded into taking any particular side. We are able to simply admire the workings of a well-honed mind with its myriad perspectives and romp about with ideas and objects as playfully with her as her cat, Pard, who has also received plenty of love and attention in these pages. As Karen Joy Fowler writes in the introduction: “Le Guin is not the sort of sage who demands agreement and obeisance.”

She had always shied away from the blog form because of both its interactivity and her own reluctance with its close relative, the personal essay form. Then she read The Notebooks (2010) by José Saramago, one of her longtime favorite writers. He had turned to blogging at age 85 or 86 and this book was a selection of his posts. It helped her see the form as a more freeing writing approach. That sense of freedom also shines through in the writing here.

All the time while I read this, a few weeks ago, I found myself wondering how much longer we’d have Ursula Le Guin. I wonder if the title, No Time to Spare, was intended to be so on the nose. It’s a wonderful collection, full of Le Guin’s personality: her thoughts on ageing, on genre, on books in general, and on her own work. And also her thoughts on her cat, Pard, and one rather mindful piece on the correct way to eat a boiled egg.

It was a quiet moment when I needed one, and I hadn’t even known I needed it, and now there’s a finite amount of Le Guin’s work left in the world for me to find that feeling in again. Thank goodness for rereading and the fact that Le Guin’s work always merits it.

I had just started reading this essay collection when Le Guin's death was reported so it felt very timely. I have many of Le Guin's books on my shelves but not read them so it was interesting to read her thoughts on the world without being coloured by her other writings. I found the essays interesting and challenging - in no way do I agree with all of her viewpoints but all of the essays made me think and look into the ideas more.

I'm still reading Ursula Le Guin's No Time to Spare. Slowly. When Le Guin was eighty-one, she started blogging, and the essays in the book were selected from her blog posts. She died at eighty-eight on Jan. 22.

I mentioned on my other blog, that I was about half-way through the book when Ursula Le Guin died. I stopped reading the essays for a while, but have returned to them, reading one or more every day or so. Some essays are light and charming--there are several dealing with her new kitten and his personality.

However, her thoughtful commentary about aging, literature, men and women, the environment, capitalism, advertising/propaganda, and politics--these are the essays that engage me. They make me think and question. They require some time spent reflecting or ruminating and probably require more than one reading.

Le Guin's place in the world of speculative fiction is unquestioned; her works are classics that have won award after award and have influenced many other writers of science fiction and fantasy. About her fiction, Le Guin once said something to the effect that entertainment if well and good, but "does it make them think?" I've certainly been thinking about her nonfiction essays.

NetGalley/Houghton, Mifflin, Harcourt

Nonfiction. Essays. December, 2017. Print length: 215 pages.

Ursula K. Le Guin was a gift and will be dearly missed. This collection of musings from her blog is well curated and organized, and her voice carries through clearly and beautifully. I was as captivated by her thoughts on egg spoons as her thoughts on living and aging. It's sharp and incisive and, due to its blog format, highly readable. A great way to reflect on Le Guin's work and lasting influence. Also, every word she says about her cat is delightful.

I've always liked Ursula K. Le Guin's books, even though I probably started reading the Earthsea cycle at an age a little too young to really appreciate them. So yes, I'm definitely biased when it comes to her writings. That said, I thoroughly enjoyed this book, which is a collection of blog posts but reads like a series of conversations over coffee or drinks with an incredibly smart, witty and dryly sarcastic friend.

I think my favorites were "The Inner Child and the Nude Politician," "About Anger," and "The Horsies Upstairs". Her posts on ageing were also especially impactful to me since I live with and take care of my 95-year-old grandmother, but the entire collection is a good read. There's a little something to take away from each section for everyone, not just those who are interested in the life and thoughts of a writer.

I'm sad that we're never going to get another post or book from her, but I'm glad this was the last. It felt like a good coda to all that's she's done before.

A beautifully written collection of essays, originally published as blogs. From thoughtful commentaries to delightful tales of her cat to memories, each is crafted in style. A good reminder to polish everything we write.

A big thank you to NetGalley and Houghton Mifflin Harcourt for the ARC. I am voluntarily reviewing this book. I have been a big fan of Ms LeGuin since the 70's. I started this book and put it aside, to read a little at a time. I enjoyed the book, but was saddened to hear of her passing. Her zest for life comes out in the book. Her acknowledgement of her age. She said it is absurd to deny your age. An interesting woman with fascinating ideas.

Thank you to NetGalley and Ursula K. Le Guin for allowing me to read and review this book. I was just starting this book when I heard that she had passed away. Rest peacefully, Ursula K. Le Guin. 5/5

While I still had 10% of this book left to read, I heard that Ursula Le Guin had died, which made the rest of my read an opportunity to mourn our loss of a wise, deep thinker and excellent writer. Though she had little patience for literary vs genre divisions, she was often counted among "literary" writers, and the primary reason is, I think, that her work combines close observation of the ordinary with a deep interiority. Her work would be hard to film, just because most of the interesting stuff is happening slowly, and inside the characters.

It's not, I'll be honest, a style that I'm always in the mood for, and it took me a while to finish reading this book, too, for the same reason. It's made up of blog posts, but because this is Le Guin, they're blog posts that rise to the level of essays. And, also because this is Le Guin, a lot of them are more observation or memoir than argument, though there are certainly some that take a point of view and argue it.

As Karen Joy Fowler's introduction says, "Le Guin is not the kind of sage who demands agreement and obeisance", so I will include here a minor criticism.

Nobody is wise all the time, as Le Guin demonstrated over the Amazon/Hachette kerfuffle. At the time, I felt that she had committed the inverse error of libertarianism: some libertarians assume that all corporations are good, while she seemed to assume, just as blindly, that all corporations, and all their works, are always and inevitably evil. In one of the pieces here, she claims that Hugh Howey called her a liar in the context of that controversy.

Now, Hugh isn't always wise either, by any means, but that didn't sound like him; I spent a few minutes on Google and concluded that this was almost certainly based on a misattribution of another person's words to him in a <a href='https://www.salon.com/2014/10/14/amazons_selfish_defender_hugh_howeys_short_sighted_ayn_rand_ian_argument_harms_book_culture/'>poorly-written Salon article</a>, which conflates two quotes from <a href='http://bits.blogs.nytimes.com/2014/10/12/amazon-and-its-missing-books/?_php=true&_type=blogs&_r=0'>a piece in the New York Times</a>. Le Guin, understandably though erroneously nettled, goes on to sarcastically misrepresent Howey's position. (What he'd actually said was that trad-pub authors who were defending Hachette had been lied <i>to</i>, a situation that the Salon article perpetuated.) In another chapter - speaking, no doubt, from personal experience - she wisely remarks that "Anger continued on past its usefulness becomes unjust, then dangerous," a lesson that may be applicable here.

For me, she's at her best when observing phenomena, and at her - not worst, perhaps, but certainly least good - when evaluating them, though with her trenchant observations, it's often a fine line between the two. She has a wonderful turn of phrase: speaking of feminism in the 70s, she remarks that "Terrified misogynists of both sexes were howling that the house was burning down before most feminists found out where the matches were," and on literary receptions: "If piano is the opposite of forte, graceful chitchat with strangers is definitely my piano."

She concludes the book, suddenly and unexpectedly, with a question that no doubt arises from her long study of Taoism: What is entity? It seems her life and work were, in part, an attempt to answer that question - an attempt that can inspire the rest of us to continue to pursue a deeper understanding and a greater connection with the world. Certainly, she's inspired me to imagine other worlds than these where the differences are not, or not only, technological or magical, but sociological and anthropological as well, and to really sink in to what such worlds might be like, in a way that perhaps can bring back insights for real, contemporary life.

This is my first experience with a book by Ursula K. Le Guin. According to the description, it contains the best of her writings. The essay are about her personal experiences and her viewpoints on a very large variety of subjects. I found that I agreed with some things she said, felt differently than her about others, and found she thinks deeply about some subjects I have never given a lot of thought to. For the most part, I enjoyed the book.

Since I am also a lover of cats, I found her stories about Pard to be extremely amusing. Cats are so original, all of them odd in their own little ways, that I could read about the eccentricities of another’s pet for hours.

Some of the essays are a hoot while others deserve some thoughtful consideration. This is definitely a book worth reading even if you feel you have all the time in the world to spare.

No Time to Spare is Le Guin’s book of essays, the majority of which appeared as posts on her blog between 2010 and 2012. Despite the informality of being a blog post, the essays all carry much significance as Le Guin weighs in on a variety of topics – her cat, old age, economics, social issues, etc. There isn’t much on writing or the creative process, so if that’s what you’re looking for, this book isn’t for you.

I had difficulty writing about this one. For some books, it would be better if I did a shorter review post, like some of those posts I see where folks bunch together reviews of books. I do that sometimes, at the end of the month, but I don’t count them as my actually reviews because they don’t include all that I thought of what I read. (Not that my reviews always include all my thoughts on the books, but they come close.)

I had difficulty with this one because though I was engaged in Le Guin’s essays as I read, they didn’t affect me much; so when done, it was easy to forget much of what was said. So basically, not much stuck with me after completing the book and now when I think on it, I draw a blank. The only thing that pops up is that I recall admiring the way Le Guin writes and wishing I could write half as well as her. Also, the essays about Pard, her cat, made me want a pet feline too.

Overall: ★★★☆☆ 1/2
Interesting and great while I read it, but not memorable in retrospect.

Buy | BORROW | Bypass
I think it is worth a read, especially if you are a fan of Le Guin’s.

P.S.: I’ll have to reread this one someday. I just can’t believe that I’m blanking on it.

Ursula K. Le Guin's collection of essays No Time to Spare is a delightfully written set. She covers topics from cats to the aging process. Always a wonderful writer, the medium of the essay is one that is accessible to all readers.

I’ve said for, well, what seems like forever now, that Ursula K. LeGuin is a national treasure. And so when she comes out with a collection drawn from her blog, I’m all in, even though normally I’d run like crazy from any such compendium. In fact, I’ve used the “sounds like a blog” line as criticism (the negative sort) of other collections of essays. And yes, there are several pieces about cats in No Time to Spare, seemingly a required subject for anyone posting online. But I’ll accept the occasional cat essay if it comes stringing a bunch of other LeGuin essays along behind it.

LeGuin was inspired to begin her blog by reading Jose Saramago’s own, written when he was 85/86 and published a The Notebooks. She calls her own attempts “more trivially personal,” but that’s only true in part. The pieces range from the aforementioned cat ones (all about her own cat Pard) to more literary ones looking for instance at fantasy as a genre to others more focused on culture and the environment. Structurally they’re divided up into four sections: “Going over Eighty,” “The Lit Biz,” “Trying to Make Sense of It,” and “Rewards,” each of the sections separated by the “Annals of Pard.”

The title comes out of that first section, which deals with aging. More specifically, from the first essay about filling out a questionnaire from Harvard for the class of 51, one of the questions being “what do you do in your spare time?” This offers up LeGuin’s trademark wit, as when she refuses to answer yes/no to the questions of “Are you living your secret desires,” writing in “I have none, my desires are flagrant.” Her section on aging is entirely realistic and clear-eyed, with LeGuin noting she has no “time to spare,” being in her eighties, and also disparaging the old cliché that “you’re only as old as you think you are,” pointing out if she moved around pretending/thinking she was 40 she’d be putting herself at risk. More sharply, she argues “to tell me my old age doesn’t exists is to tell me I don’t exist. Erase my age, you erase my life — me.” Don’t mess with LeGuin.

The literary section offers up insights into her mind as a writer, on the overuse of the word “fuck,” being asked to explain her work (“Meaning in art isn’t the same as meaning in science . . . Art isn’t explanation. Art is what an artist does, not what an artist explains.”), on her perception of her craft (“I work in my mind. What I do is done in my mind . . . If what I do, what I make is beautiful it isn’t a physical beauty. It’s imaginary.”) “Papa H” examines fantasy through the prism of Homer, Milton, and Tolkien, wondering if Homer doesn’t offer up the “two basic fantasy stories: the War and the Journey.” It’s an insightful essay about tragedy versus comedy, what happens at home while the Hero is “taking his Thousand Faces all round the world,” but my favorite parts are when LeGuin’s personality rises to the top, as when she admits to having a favorite side when it comes to the Greeks versus the Trojans. Two pieces dealing with The Great American Novel similarly offer a nice mix of critical insight and persona touch. “It Doesn’t Have to Be the Way It is,” one of my favorites in the collection, is more overtly and substantively literary criticism, exploring in wonderfully concise and thoughtful fashion the inherent subversiveness of fantasy.

The third section is sort of a cultural miscellany, with pieces on male/female solidary and their role in institutions, military uniforms, economic growth as a cancer, belief, anger, and a few others. These are all, of course, smoothly and efficiently written and worth reading, but this was probably the section that left the least impact on me.

The final section is the most consistently and overtly personal and emotional. A piece about the joy of opera/music, a long, moving essay on the woman who helped her with her fan mail, one on that year’s Christmas tree, encounters with a rattlesnake and a lynx. This section can best be summed up by the close of the rattlesnake piece: “a teaching, a blessing may come in strange ways, ways we do not expect, or control, or welcome, or understand. We are left to think it over.” One such blessing is another book by Ursula K. LeGuin. Which is also at times a “teaching,” and leaves us thinking things over. Here’s hoping her time (not “spare” time) continues to offer us more ways to fill our own.

Fantastic collection of essays from a wonderful wise voice. I will be buying my own copy to underline and refer to again, and again.

Illustrious fantasy author Ursula K. Le Guin tackles the topic that any mortal creature must come to terms with: growing old. A series of essays compiled from her blog, NO TIME TO SPARE: THINKING ABOUT WHAT MATTERS is thoughtful look at what it means to age gracefully in a world that glorifies all things youthful. The author doesn't shy away from the grimness at contemplating one's own mortality, taking a serious tone when necessary but imbuing it with humor and lightness when appropriate. Although you could tell the essays were not necessarily written to form a cohesive whole, rather plucked and pieced together from her blog, the bits of wisdom offered were well worth the read. And I learned far more about Ursula K. Le Guin's cats than I ever expected to know!

Ursula K. Le Guin is a wise woman. No one who has read any of her fiction could come to any another conclusion.

No Time to Spare: Thinking About What Matters is a collection of Le Guin's blog writings. She has been blogging since 2010, having taken up the practice after being inspired by José Saramago's blog.

She reflects on aging, leisure, anger, writing, genre, feminism, social media, opera. She has interesting opinions to share. She tells tales of her cat.

"Sometimes I notice that a teenager in the family group is present in body — smiling, polite, apparently attentive — but absent. I think, I hope she has found an interstice, made herself some spare time, wriggled into it, and is alone there, deep down there, thinking, feeling."

I recently ordered this book for someone as a gift; it was only afterwards that I was lucky enough to see a review copy. Because of the nature of the collection, I think it is much more conducive to print than to e-publication (somewhat ironically, given its blogly origins). It's the sort of book you flip through, let something catch your eye, settle in to mull over an essay or two. As something to read cover to cover, it's a little disjointed.

What most impresses me is the spirit of the book, which the title captures well. Don't waste time, be mindful, think things through, do something.

Some quotable highlights
"Lying It All Away" (October 2012):
"I have watched my country accept, mostly quite complacently, along with a lower living standard for more and more people, a lower moral standard. A moral standard based on advertising. That hard-minded man Saul Bellow wrote that democracy is propaganda. It get harder to deny that when, for instance, during a campaign, not only aspirants to the presidency but the president himself hides or misrepresents known facts, lies deliberately and repeatedly. And only the opposition objects."

"The Inner Child and the Nude Politician" (October 2014):
"Children are by nature, by necessity, irresponsible, and irresponsibility in them, as in puppies or kittens, is part of their charm. Carried into adulthood it becomes a dire practical and ethical failing. Uncontrolled spontaneity wastes itself. Ignorance isn't wisdom. Innocence is wisdom only of the spirit. We can and do all learn from children, all through our life; but "become as little children" is a spiritual counsel, not an intellectual, practical, or ethical one."

"Belief in Belief" (February 2014):
"I don't believe in Darwin's theory of evolution. I accept it. It isn't a matter of faith, but of evidence. The whole undertaking of science is to deal, as well as it can, with reality. The reality of actual things and events in time is subject to doubt, to hypothesis, to proof and disproof, to acceptance and rejection — not to belief or disbelief. Belief has its proper and powerful existence in the domains of magic, religion, fear, and hope."

Think about what matters.

A few of Ursula K. LeGuin’s classic and much-lauded novels have been on my to-read list for quite a while, but unfortunately they have yet to make the leap onto my read list. In the meantime, however, I have enjoyed immensely this little collection of essays (originating as blog posts) from the well-regarded author. Her skill with the written word makes any topic she touches on one to savor and delight in.

Thanks to the first set of essays about aging (as she puts it, at over 80, she is not just “older” but truly “old”), I felt compelled to find the appropriate format of the book for my “older” mother to enjoy (but in large print? on a large Kindle? as an audiobook? Because reading itself can be a challenge with aging eyes).

And the “Annals of Pard,” her tales about her current cat, couldn’t help but amuse. Sure, anyone can share a cat photo or video online for a few quick and cheap laughs, but LeGuin’s observations about her “good cat with the bad paws” are utterly sublime.

She talks about the immense pleasure she takes in letters from young readers (but only if they are delivered in their original handwritten — and often illustrated — form) and her takes on Homer and John Steinbeck. (That she was acquainted with that author through a childhood friend who happened to be his niece is just the icing on that literary cake.)

Not surprisingly, she ventures into the territories of feminism, of the economy and growth, of the environment. She rhapsodizes over beautiful music and the talent of actors; she spends more time rhapsodizing over the satisfaction that comes from cooking and eating the perfect soft-boiled egg.

Now that I’ve sampled and savored LeGuin’s wordsmithing, I’ve a taste for more. Come, to-read list.

Rated: High. The book is a collection of essays, and one uses a lot of f- and s-words as it protests the surge in use of those two words in novels and movies and elsewhere. (As she says, “the imagination involved is staggering. I mean, literally.”) And in a later essay she uses the f-word phrase to make an ironic point. Aside from the one essay and that other use, the book is entirely clean.

As a collection of blog posts, I found this quite difficult to rate, not being the type of writing I would usually reach for. That being said, it's such a charming and eclectic mix that I flew through it. At times I was captivated by the beauty of her language, and found myself rereading and mulling over passages. It frequently felt like settling down for a chat with a friend. I would highly recommend this book whether you are a big fan of Ursula Le Guin or not. Definitely this is a book that I think I will revisit often.

Thanks to Houghton Mifflin Harcourt and Netgalley foy my copy in return for an honest review.