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No Time to Spare
- Narrated by: Barbara Caruso
- Length: 6 hrs and 33 mins
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Great story!
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Turned off...
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Ralph Elllison's Invisible Man is a monumental novel, one that can well be called an epic of modern American Negro life. It is a strange story, in which many extraordinary things happen, some of them shocking and brutal, some of them pitiful and touching—yet always with elements of comedy and irony and burlesque that appear in unexpected places. It is a book that has a great deal to say and which is destined to have a great deal said about it.
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How Did This Escape Me?
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Publisher's summary
From acclaimed author Ursula K. Le Guin, and with an introduction by Karen Joy Fowler, a collection of thoughts - always adroit, often acerbic - on aging, belief, the state of literature, and the state of the nation.
Ursula K. Le Guin has taken listeners to imaginary worlds for decades. Now she's in the last great frontier of life, old age, and exploring new literary territory: the blog, a forum where her voice - sharp, witty, as compassionate as it is critical - shines.
No Time to Spare collects the best of Ursula's blog, presenting perfectly crystallized dispatches on what matters to her now, her concerns with this world, and her wonder at it.
On the absurdity of denying your age, she says, "If I'm 90 and believe I'm 45, 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 her new cat: "He still won't sit on a lap. I don't know if he ever will. He just doesn't accept the lap hypothesis."
On breakfast: "Eating an egg from the shell takes not only practice, but resolution, even courage, possibly willingness to commit crime."
And on all that is unknown, all that we discover as we muddle through life: "How rich we are in knowledge, and in all that lies around us yet to learn. Billionaires, all of us."
Critic reviews
"Narrator Barbara Caruso delivers a collection of previously published reflections by Ursula K. Le Guin, who passed away in January. Caruso's wondrous ability to capture Le Guin's humor and energy gives listeners an unhurried experience." (AudioFile)
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Kenneth Trachtenberg, an eccentric and witty native of Paris, travels to the Midwest to spend time with his famous American uncle, a world-renowned botanist and self-described "plant visionary". After numerous affairs and failed relationships, the restless Uncle Benn seeks a settled existence in the form of marriage - but tying the knot again opens the door to a host of new torments.
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A great book
- By John A. on 03-16-22
By: Saul Bellow
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Patience with God
- Faith for People Who Don't Like Religion (or Atheism)
- By: Frank Schaeffer
- Narrated by: Frank Schaeffer
- Length: 7 hrs and 32 mins
- Unabridged
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Frank Schaeffer has a problem with Dawkins, Hitchens, Harris, Dennett, and the rest of the New Atheists—the self-anointed “Brights.” He also has a problem with the Rick Warrens and Tim LaHayes of the world—the religious fundamentalists. The problem is that he doesn’t see much of a difference between the two camps. As Schaeffer puts it, they “often share the same fallacy: truth claims that reek of false certainties.
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A Very Personal Book
- By Thomas on 09-24-10
By: Frank Schaeffer
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Conundrum
- By: Jan Morris
- Narrated by: Roy McMillan
- Length: 5 hrs and 12 mins
- Unabridged
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This remarkable memoir is the classic account of the transgender journey. It is all the more extraordinary because it is the life story of a figure who, it seemed, seamlessly and publicly charted a course through the English establishment - James Morris, outstanding journalist, historian and travel writer, famed for a peerless writing style. But all the while he was concealing a very different inner world: from the age of four he felt that, despite his body, he was really a girl.
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Great insight
- By Kelly Houske on 02-02-19
By: Jan Morris
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The Consolations of Philosophy
- By: Alain de Botton
- Narrated by: Simon Vance
- Length: 6 hrs and 3 mins
- Unabridged
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Alain de Botton has performed a stunning feat: He has transformed arcane philosophy into something accessible and entertaining, useful and kind. Drawing on the work of six of the world's most brilliant thinkers, de Botton has arranged a panoply of wisdom to guide us through our most common problems.
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Cheering, empathic, helpful
- By Austin on 11-11-09
By: Alain de Botton
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Reading Like a Writer
- By: Francine Prose
- Narrated by: Nanette Savard
- Length: 8 hrs and 59 mins
- Unabridged
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In her entertaining and edifying New York Times bestseller, acclaimed author Francine Prose invites you to sit by her side and take a guided tour of the tools and the tricks of the masters and discover why their work has endured. Written with passion, humor, and wisdom, Reading Like a Writer will inspire listeners to return to literature with a fresh eye and an eager heart.
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Practical, literate, generous
- By Gare on 04-13-08
By: Francine Prose
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Where the Past Begins
- A Writer's Memoir
- By: Amy Tan
- Narrated by: Amy Tan
- Length: 14 hrs and 32 mins
- Unabridged
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Moving from her childhood in Oakland and growing up with her Chinese parents through her success as a novelist, Amy Tan delves into her creative interests in music, the paralysis of beginning a new project, journal writing, and travelling. Where the Past Begins chronicles the making of a writer. With characteristic humor and poignant observation, Tan weaves a nontraditional introspective narrative that is as complex and vibrant as this beloved American novelist's fiction.
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Narration Issues
- By Sara on 12-14-17
By: Amy Tan
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Outline
- The Outline Trilogy, Book 1
- By: Rachel Cusk
- Narrated by: Kate Lock
- Length: 7 hrs and 17 mins
- Unabridged
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A man and a woman are seated next to each other on a plane. They get to talking - about their destination, their careers, their families. Grievances are aired, family tragedies discussed, marriages and divorces analyzed. An intimacy is established as two strangers contrast their own fictions about their lives. Outline is a novel in 10 conversations. Spare and stark, it follows a novelist teaching a course in creative writing during one oppressively hot summer in Athens.
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Excruciating
- By Devoted Online Shopper on 03-15-23
By: Rachel Cusk
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Life Beyond Measure
- Letters to My Great-Granddaughter
- By: Sidney Poitier
- Narrated by: Sidney Poitier
- Length: 10 hrs and 2 mins
- Abridged
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Sidney Poitier is one of the most revered actors in the history of Hollywood. He has overcome enormous obstacles in extraordinary times and is a role model for many Americans because of his convictions, bravery, and grace. Poitier reflects on his amazing life in Life Beyond Measure, offering inspirational advice and personal stories in the form of extended letters to his great-granddaughter.
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Mix of family history and life advice.
- By Adam Shields on 10-31-19
By: Sidney Poitier
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Fifth Business
- The Deptford Trilogy, Book 1
- By: Robertson Davies
- Narrated by: Marc Vietor
- Length: 9 hrs and 59 mins
- Unabridged
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This first novel in The Deptford Trilogy introduces Ramsay, a man who returns from World War I decorated with the Victoria Cross but who is destined to be caught in a no man's land where memory, history, and myth collide. As we hear Ramsey tell his story, we begin to realize that, from childhood, he has influenced those around him in a perhaps mystical, perhaps pernicious way.
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Been waiting for this
- By Vinity on 12-10-11
By: Robertson Davies
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My Life with Bob
- Flawed Heroine Keeps Book of Books, Plot Ensues
- By: Pamela Paul
- Narrated by: Eileen Stevens, Pamela Paul
- Length: 6 hrs and 55 mins
- Unabridged
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Pamela Paul has kept a single book by her side for 28 years - carried throughout high school and college, hauled from Paris to London to Thailand, from job to job, safely packed away and then carefully removed from apartment to house to its current perch on a shelf over her desk - reliable if frayed, anonymous-looking yet deeply personal. This book has a name: Bob. Bob is Paul's Book of Books, a journal that records every book she's ever read.
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An uncanny mirror and a celebration of book love
- By Cherilyn Parsons on 07-28-19
By: Pamela Paul
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American Philosophy
- A Love Story
- By: John Kaag
- Narrated by: Josh Bloomberg
- Length: 8 hrs and 3 mins
- Unabridged
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In American Philosophy, John Kaag - a disillusioned philosopher at sea in his marriage and career - stumbles upon a treasure trove of rare books on an old estate in the hinterlands of New Hampshire that once belonged to the Harvard philosopher William Ernest Hocking. The library includes notes from Whitman, inscriptions from Frost, and first editions of Hobbes, Descartes, and Kant. As he begins to catalog and preserve these priceless books, Kaag rediscovers the very tenets of American philosophy.
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Awesome Book! But..
- By Kye Sonne on 04-02-17
By: John Kaag
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One of Le Guin's best collections
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Follow the development of U K Leguin through well chosen short stories.
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The Birthday of the World
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Only worth it for Paradises Lost
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Great story!
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Highly acclaimed author Ursula K. Le Guin lends a resonant voice to a pivotal yet often overlooked character of Vergil's The Aeneid. Born into peace and freedom, Lavinia is stunned to learn that she will be the cause of a great war - or so the prophecies and omens claim. Her fate is sealed, however, when she meets a man from Troy.
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Fascinatingly well written
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The Lathe of Heaven
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In a future world racked by violence and environmental catastrophes, George Orr wakes up one day to discover that his dreams have the ability to alter reality. He seeks help from Dr. William Haber, a psychiatrist who immediately grasps the power George wields. Soon George must preserve reality itself as Dr. Haber becomes adept at manipulating George's dreams for his own purposes.
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Amazing!
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The Beginning Place
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Tembreabrezi is like Eden - a beginning place. There, Hugh and Irena assume they have merely discovered an escape from the dull monotony, even the terrors of their regular lives. But Tembreabrezi has a secret, a dark fear that is threatening the very life-blood of the kingdom. Hugh and Irena were led there for a purpose, selected for an impossibly hopeless mission. If they accept the challenge, they may lose everything - their new-found paradise, and possibly their lives.
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Turned off...
- By Amazon Customer on 05-11-20
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The Unreal and the Real
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The Unreal and the Real is a major event not to be missed. In this two-volume selection of Ursula K. Le Guin's best short stories--as selected by the National Book Award winning author herself--the reader will be delighted, provoked, amused, and faced with the sharp, satirical voice of one of the best short story writers of the present day. Where on Earth explores Le Guin's earthbound stories which range around the world, from small town Oregon to middle Europe in the middle of revolution to summer camp.
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Shame on you, Audible
- By Audrey McCombs on 07-03-20
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Lao Tzu: Tao Te Ching
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- Abridged
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In this landmark modern-day rendition of the ancient Taoist classic, Ursula K. Le Guin presents Lao Tzu’s time-honored and astonishingly powerful philosophy like never before. Drawing on a lifetime of contemplation, she offers an unparalleled window into the text’s awe-inspiring, immediately relatable teachings and their inestimable value for our troubled world.
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I wanted to love this
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Always Coming Home
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Story
Midway through her career, Ursula K. Le Guin embarked on one of her most detailed, impressive literary projects, a novel that took more than five years to complete. Blending story and fable, poetry, artwork, and song, Always Coming Home is this legendary writer’s fictional ethnography of the Kesh, a people of the far future living in a post-apocalyptic Napa Valley.
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Anyone who would give this a bad score is boring
- By Josh on 09-18-23
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Changing Planes
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Sita Dulip has missed her flight out of Chicago. But instead of listening to garbled announcements in the airport, she discovers a method of bypassing the crowds at the desks, a nasty lunch, whimpering children, their punitive parents, and the blue plastic chairs bolted to the floor: she changes planes—literally. Sita discovers entire planes of existence and visits societies not found on Earth—bizarre societies that share similarities with Earth's cultures and sometimes open doors into the alien.
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Lovely
- By Laura Sharp on 12-07-23
By: Ursula Le Guin
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Worlds of Exile and Illusion
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- By: Ursula K. Le Guin
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These three spacefaring adventures mark the beginning of grand master Ursula K. Le Guin’s remarkable career. Set in the same universe as Le Guin’s groundbreaking classics The Left Hand of Darkness and The Dispossessed, these first three books of the celebrated Hainish series follow travelers of many worlds and civilizations in the depths of space.
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Changing Planes
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The misery of waiting for a connecting flight at an airport leads to the accidental discovery of alighting on other planes - not airplanes but planes of existence. Ursula Le Guin's deadpan premise frames a series of travel accounts by the tourist-narrator who describes bizarre societies and cultures that sometimes mirror our own, and sometimes open puzzling doors into the alien.
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Social Fiction
- By C. Little on 03-23-06
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Gifts
- Annals of the Western Shore, Book 1
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In the Uplands, people have magical and fearsome gifts. Orrec, a boy growing into his powers, can destroy any living thing with simply a glance. But he refuses to use his ability, and wears a blindfold to protect others from his devastating gaze.
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Book 3 won the 2008 Nebula Award
- By K. Danielson on 11-10-11
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The Unreal and the Real: Selected Stories of Ursula K. Le Guin, Volume Two: Outer Space, Inner Lands
- By: Ursula K. Le Guin
- Narrated by: Tandy Cronyn
- Length: 13 hrs and 55 mins
- Unabridged
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Outer Space, Inner Lands includes many of the best known Ursula K. Le Guin nonrealistic stories (such as "The Ones Who Walk Away from Omelas," "Semley' s Necklace," and "She Unnames Them") which have shaped the way many listeners see the world. She gives voice to the voiceless, hope to the outsider, and speaks truth to power - all the time maintaining her independence and sense of humor.
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chapter names
- By Evan Goldsborough on 01-18-20
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Catwings
- By: Ursula K. Le Guin
- Narrated by: Ursula K. Le Guin
- Length: 24 mins
- Unabridged
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Ursula K. Le Guin wrote this highly acclaimed novel about a very special litter of kittens. Mrs. Jane Tabby has always longed toget away from the cramped alleys of the city. She knows it is too late for her, but she thinks her longing may be the reason her litter of kittens was born with wings. When they are old enough to fly, she sends the four kittens, who become known as catwings, out into the world to find their home. But they find that danger does not lurk only in city alleyways.
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A Childhood Favorite
- By CSP on 11-14-17
What listeners say about No Time to Spare
Average customer ratingsReviews - Please select the tabs below to change the source of reviews.
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- Linda
- 02-13-18
What a delight!
I'm old and loved this book. And I'm recommending it to my children. So much wisdom. Being old has it's 'up' side. Barbara Caruso's performance was pitch perfect. Brava! A thoroughly enjoyable experience!
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63 people found this helpful
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- Linda Evans
- 02-22-18
I enjoyed this book!
I do not share her dogma or political views, but I enjoy her writings and I was sad when her story ended.
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48 people found this helpful
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- MJ Walters
- 08-01-18
Gorgeous book, wonderful audiobook
I've been a LeGuin reader for decades, having first encountered her in school, in a Science Fiction as Literature class. (h/t to Tom Hoberg for making SF a legitimate subject of study all those decades ago.) I loved her work right from the start. I loved what she said and how she said it. It was, for me anyway, what science fiction should be, human first of all.
Before she died in January of this year, she published a collection of her blog posts from the last few years, and I'd wanted to read it not just because I enjoyed her fiction but because there's something appealing to me, as I approach the end of my life, about the thoughts of those who have gone on before. I was not prepared to laugh, to mourn, to face hard truths, and to fall head-over-heels in love with the woman. I was not prepared to have my heart break again and again as I realized that this amazing creature was no longer with us. And yes, that's a really, really personal response, as was my occasional urge to go down on one knee and propose to her because she was one of those people you wanted in your life, not just as a name on the spine of a book, but as someone you could hang out with, laugh with, talk about the important things in life with.
Less personal, you say? Okay then I'd say Le Guin's insights on life are informed by a lifetime of observation of the deepest sort. They're informed by a love for life, and for the creatures she shared the world with, humans included. She writes tenderly and hilariously about her cat, Pard. She ponders things like questions from the alumni association at Radcliffe, and the meaning of "spare time" to a writer. She talks about the uses of anger and about how corrosive it can be when it's used improperly. She thinks deeply about life, and for me that is always irresistible. If she was an extraordinary writer, she is an astounding essayist.
The narrator of the audiobook sounded age-appropriate which made me very happy. And she did a terrific job, conveying a sense of the personality behind the words. I really can't recommend this audiobook enough.
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25 people found this helpful
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- DS Hearn
- 02-02-18
words for living
I loved this - the writing and the narration, perfect fit. Words from a master.
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22 people found this helpful
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Overall
- Kindle Customer
- 03-09-18
Words of enchantment and wisdom
She is a celebration of a woman...nice to read this on "National Woman's Day", especially when downloaded to a Kindle, when I had no other power, and was otherwise in dispair. Thank you! A truly wonderful book!
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19 people found this helpful
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- mpmkennedy
- 08-06-18
"It Doesn't Have to Be the Way It Is"
This collection of blogs is bringing me pleasure. Le Guin considers something - in her first blog an alumni survey, and takes it apart demonstrating the absurdity of the questions and the assumption that the recipient will agree with the assumptions of each question. One question is "what will improve the quality of life for the future generation...." and gives a list to be rated, including capitalism, health-care quality, exporting democracy, reducing US debt, etc, and she points out some missing items: climate destabilization, international politics, industrial pollution, control of government by corporations, human rights and more.
Her answer to the last question - what to do with spare time is "I'm going to be 81 next week. I have no time to spare."
She finds lots of things to talk about and I can agree or disagree, but it will be worth thinking about her subjects. She covers aging, storytelling, ("so much non-fiction is awful hokum....we can learn so much truth from reading novels..."), swearing ("I remember when swearing, though tame by modern standards, was quite varied and often highly characteristic"), readers questions, sexism, society in general, Homer ("the two basic fantasy stories: the War and the Journey.") the cat, Pard, (I'm a cat person so I enjoyed these alot) and much more.
Le Guin reminds us that "it doesn't have to be the way it is" and I feel encouraged by her musings.
I also very much appreciated the reader who becomes the voice of Ursula K. Le Guin.
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- Jefferson
- 10-07-19
Wit and Wisdom and Daily Life
Who wouldn’t want to read a selection of Ursula K. Le Guin’s most interesting blog entries? That’s what No Time to Spare (2017) is. After a fine introduction by Karen Jay Fowler that explains how Le Guin got into blogging late in her life, the book presents the entries, which range thematically rather than chronologically from 2010 to 2016, in the following sections: Going Over 80 (on aging), The Lit Biz (on fan letters, awards, the great American novel, utopia/dystopia, Homer, etc.), Trying to Make Sense of It (on gender, politics, economics, uniforms, exorcism, childhood, anger, belief, etc.), and Rewards (on opera, theater, her recently deceased fan-letter-answering-assistant and friend, soft-boiled eggs, her Christmas tree, the Portland foodbank, a rattlesnake, a lynx, and the Oregon high desert), and—in three different interludes—The Annals of Pard (on the antics of her last cat).
Le Guin’s wise and witty mind and pleasurable and precise use of language are on display in her blog entries. She likes to take some perceived conventional wisdom and then skewer it or correct it, as she does with sayings like, “You’re only as old as you think you are,” or “the Great American Novel,” or “fantasy is escape.” Even when she’s talking about something like aging, she is liable at any moment to insert a tart opinion or keen perspective on things like the American Dream, gender, or writing. And in her blog entries she prefers asking questions to answering them, as with her suggestion that we find a better metaphor for economics than constant unrestrained growth (which sounds to her like cancer) or as with her wondering whether it’s possible to find a constructive use for anger or to join a male institution like the military as a woman without being coopted by it.
Anyone who has read and loved Le Guin’s great work like The Left Hand of Darkness, The Dispossessed, or the Earthsea series would get a great, warm, provocative kick out of her blog entries (though I suppose you could also just go to her official website and read them there!). The audiobook reader Barbara Caruso is pretty much just right, a seasoned woman with the intellect and emotion to enhance Le Guin’s experiences and opinions and insights, though her voice gets a bit high when she’s emphasizing key words, a quality that at times rubbed me the wrong way (it may be a matter of taste).
This collection is some of the last writing that Le Guin did near the end of her long career, and it reveals some details of her daily life and many examples of her independent mind and heart. It ends on a sublime note, as with fine poetic and vivid nature writing Le Guin describes the high Oregon desert and its flora and fauna, like when she describes some vultures in flight, “quiet lords of the warm towers of the air,” and then a flock of black birds, “flowing down and away . . . and into the reeds and across the air in a single flickering particulate wave. What is entity?”
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- Waldo
- 08-11-18
Lovely, Endearing, Sincere.
I very much enjoyed getting to know Ursula Le Guin through these musings. Her writing style, her prose, the deliberate and delicate selection of just the right word, at just the right time... engages. It captures. It does not let go. I first read the Earth Sea "trilogy" when I was a high school senior in 1977. I fell in love with her stories and have read them off and on through the years. My mother is almost 92 now and has aged quite gracefully, but she does sometimes wrestle with her agedness; so naturally, when I found this book I was interested in Ursula's views on aging. I thought I might gain some insight to the challenges my mother faces, and I hoped it might be something fun for her to read.
I was not disappointed. The writing is nothing short of magical, just like we find in her novels; but in this collection of reflections, Ursula Le Guin invites us into her home. Here she shares her heart a little, her soul a little, how she lived and loved a little, what was important to her, what was not, and how it all fits together in her "golden years..." or should I say, "the sunset of her to it was her. Barbara read with the expression, intonation, delicacy and reflection of one who may have lived the words.
Thank you Ursula Le Guin for a life well-lived and sharing a precious glimpse of it with us. Thank you Barbara Caruso for reading with the love and care that Ursula poured into these stories.
I will share this with my mother. I hope she finds it as enjoyable as I did.
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- Luiz Rocha
- 08-06-19
Le Guin's blog posts magnificently narrated
I have a bias for Le Guin's work and for most of what she stands for and this book is aimed at people like me.
It's a collection of her blog posts, where she would poetically share whatever she had in her sharp mind. She's funny and thoughtful and thorough.
And it's perfectly narrated. Feels like Le Guin itself is with you sharing her stories.
Worth your time.
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- Elisabeth Carey
- 08-10-18
A look inside the mind of a wonderful writer
This is a collection of essays by Ursula K. Le Guin, who was one of our great American writers, and great science fiction and fantasy writers. Her many awards include being named a Grand Master in 2003, by the Science Fiction & Fantasy Writers of America.
The essays were written as blog posts for the Book View Cafe blog, and range over a wide variety of subjects, including fan letters from children, the differences among fact, myth, and lies especially when talking to children, eating an egg, her cat Pard, both when she first adopted him, and as he matured and become a real and important personality in her home.
She says very little directly about politics, but the basic outline of her views is clear, as are her views on eating an egg, or finding her way in places where the streets are twisty and untrustworthy. She talks about the somewhat uncomfortable experience of having to hire a secretary, when her career had reached the point where she unavoidably needed help managing her correspondence.
She doesn't talk much about her writing, here, but this is a fascinating look inside the mind of a wonderful writer. Throughout these essays, she's thoughtful, insightful, funny and kind.
Very much recommended.
I bought this audiobook.
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