No Time to Spare

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

Ursula Le Guin took readers to imaginary worlds for decades. In her last great frontier of life, old age, she explored a new literary territory: the blog, a forum where she shone.

The collected best of Le Guin's blog, No Time to Spare, presents perfectly crystallised dispatches on what mattered to her late in life, her concerns with the world and her wonder at it.

She brings her signature wit and wisdom to topics as diverse as ageing, imaginative literature, capitalism, her beloved rescue cat, classism, cultural perceptions of fantasy and the courage and resolution involved in eating an egg from the shell.

This is essential reading for Le Guin's myriad admirers, revealing new sides to a trailblazing and beloved author who influenced literary greats across genres and generations.

Review

The pages sparkle with lines that make a reader glance up, searching for an available ear with which to share them ― New York Times Book Review

Intelligence gleams in these essays ― New York Times

Might there be truth to the commonplace that science fiction writers are prophets? . . . A year ago I argued that Le Guin deserved a Nobel Prize in literature. In fact - what a fantasy! - she ought to be running the country ― Washington Post

There are shades of Adrienne Rich here . . . At the end of No Time to Spare . . . all I could think was: I want Le Guin to keep going, on and on. I want to read more ― LA Times

This delightful book [is] inquisitive and stroppily opinionated in equal measure . . . In even these miscellanies, composed in [Le Guin's] off hours, the sentences are perfectly balanced and the language chosen with care ― Wall Street Journal

[Le Guin's] clever observations and sharp, nimble prose provide a window into the interior life of the award-winning novelist ― Harper's Bazaar

Erudite, witty and . . . wise . . . Deep down there: that is where Le Guin has taken readers for decade after decade, and where, these essays show, she is capable of taking them still ― Chicago Tribune

The pages pop with life, even as Le Guin, ever sassy, reckons with the toils of aging . . . Young when she's old, spry when she's stiff ― Wired

About the Author

Ursula K. Le Guin (1929-2018) was a celebrated author whose body of work includes 23 novels, 12 volumes of short stories, 11 volumes of poetry, 13 children's books, five essay collections, and four works of translation. The breadth and imagination of her work earned her six Nebula Awards, seven Hugo Awards, and SFWA's Grand Master, along with the PEN/Malamud and many other awards. In 2014 she was awarded the National Book Foundation Medal for Distinguished Contribution to American Letters, and in 2016 joined the short list of authors to be published in their lifetimes by the Library of America.