No Time to Spare

By: Ursula K. Le Guin

Narrated by: Barbara Caruso

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)

Wonderful!

Insightful and delightful, often funny, sometimes poignant. Ms. Caruso was a perfect choice as narrator.

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?”

Work from a master storyteller

I have read and listened to a lot of Ursula Le Guin. Her mastery of the descriptive sentence is unparalleled and these non-fiction essays are delightful. Especially if you love cats.

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.

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!

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.

Delightful

I’ve enjoyed Le Guin for years, but had not read her blogs. The language and performance combined to create a lovely conversational style. While it will be enjoyed by all ages, those of us with more life experiences will hear it even more richly.

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.

Blog thoughts

Interesting to hear her thoughts on a number of things. I’ve read her from early on, loving her science fiction/fantasy. A quote I took to heart from the Telling , “Hate eats the hater.” She talks about hate and anger in this book too and I think she was right on spot.