No Time to Spare

By: Ursula K. Le Guin

Narrated by: Barbara Caruso

Length: 6 hrs and 33 mins

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."

©2017 Ursula K. Le Guin (P)2018 Recorded Books

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)  

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!

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.

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.

 

words for living

I loved this - the writing and the narration, perfect fit. Words from a master.

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!

"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.

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?”

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.

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.

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.