Ms. Le Guin’s brilliance lies beyond nomenclature. Few writers have been so conscientious of the ways that societies are defined by the nuances and omissions of their language ... This delightful book, inquisitive and stroppily opinionated in equal measure, assembles stray pieces from her recent adventures in blogging. Despite her reservations with the hideous word 'blog'—which sounds like it should refer to 'an obstruction in the nasal passage'—she takes to the digressive form with ease, ruminating on the value of literary awards, the Great American Novel (her pick may surprise you), the 'existential situation' of old age and her outsize love for a newly adopted black-and-white cat called Pard. In even these miscellanies, composed in her off hours, the sentences are perfectly balanced and the language chosen with care. After all, she writes, 'Words are my matter—my stuff.' And it’s through their infinite arrangements, 'the endless changes and complexities of their interrelationships,' that Ms. Le Guin’s extraordinary imaginary worlds have been built and shared.
...feels like the surprising and satisfying culmination to a career in other literary forms ... A running theme is the life of her cat, Pard. Between each of No Time to Spare’s four topical sections are essays entitled 'Annals of Pard.' Devoting such time and interest to the observation of a cat might seem to represent the commonest impulses both of internet culture and old age; but, as always, Le Guin wades into her new genre to deepen and expand it...Even in the familiar relationship of an old woman and her cat, Le Guin finds an ambit for challenging moral insight and matter for an inquisitiveness that probes the deep time of evolution. She represents an artist unimpeded by old age or acclaim. She continues to look for new sources of otherness in her life, and to give us glimpses of the otherness she inhabits ... even in a diminished form of writing, the spirit of Le Guin’s work remains.
The new book is a well-selected record of her electronic musings and a masterful lesson on the importance of the practice of writing. Le Guin finds inspiration in the everyday and makes it sparkle with her prose ... Le Guin, in step with her legacy, challenges us to reconsider what we automatically accept ... But what resonates throughout No Time to Spare is Le Guin’s unwavering belief in the power of art — literature in particular — as the vehicle to imagine an alternative to our current reality.
...[an] erudite, witty and (dread word) wise new collection ... There are essential pieces here on the nature of fantasy and the genesis of the utopian and dystopian novels ... 'Sometimes I notice a teenager in the family group,' she writes early in the book, 'present in body — smiling, polite, apparently attentive — but absent. I think, I hope she has found an interstice, made herself some spare time, and is alone there, deep down there, thinking, feeling.' What a lovely moment of sympathy, of attention. 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.
Le Guin’s narrative persona in No Time To Spare is complicated: a self-labeled 'old crabby pants,' a worrier...caring, funny, eloquent, and of course, audacious ... Old age is not sentimental or romanticized in No Time To Spare. The crone might be compassionate, sensible, and wise, able to explain the complexities of human life to an alien species, but any such gained wisdom is threatened by the natural consequences of physical and mental aging. What this book isn’t, however, is an aging memoir, one that might explore an elderly writer’s compunctions, age-related medical issues, or fear of mortality ... Le Guin remarked that old age 'gets written about by people who aren’t old and they imagine what it’s like to be and they don’t get it right.' In No Time to Spare, Le Guin seems intent on getting it right.
No Time to Spare presents the best of Le Guin's blog: sharp-eyed, big-hearted, idiosyncratic and highly enjoyable. Both Le Guin's eye for detail and her dry wit are on full display here ... There is much to think about in this wise and eloquent collection.
The dominant theme, beyond cats and books, is worry. Worry about a ruined environment and worry about the vagueness of the modern obsession with the ‘inner child’ and a worry about the proper uses of anger … I’m not sure how I feel, in the end, about the existence of this book. It is not that these are ‘blog posts’ that bother me. Famous writers’ diaries are published as standalone books all the time all the time...all I could think was: I want Le Guin to keep going, on and on. I want to read more. But of course, in a blog post, there wasn't time for that.
No Time to Spare, a collection of nonfiction drawn from Ursula K. Le Guin’s blog, draws its title from a statement she made at the very beginning of her first full post: 'I am going to be eighty-one next week. I have no time to spare' ...a better political thinker than the great Saramago, and even the essays she worries are most 'trivially personal' are so animated and so entertaining that no reader can skip them ... Le Guin, in short, is a good essayist who would make a terrible internet controversialist. She values uncertainty, accepts disagreement — even disagreement with herself — and has never, to my knowledge, written a hot take ...is itself proof of that statement.
Le Guin champions genre fiction — but not blindly. 'It Doesn't Have to Be the Way It Is' from No Time to Spare sharply examines the traditional function and substructure of fantasy literature, a place where 'imagination and fundamentalism come into conflict.' Her point is that fantasy is not, as widely assumed, a form of fiction where anything goes. Uncertainty is an important building block in fantasy literature, but the genre largely fails when it has no internal causality ... One of her most powerful qualities is her ability to frame contemporary concerns within the far-flung speculation of science fiction, but essays like No Time to Spare's 'A Band of Brothers, a Stream of Sisters' highlights just how adept she is at writing about the real world ... [her nonficton] is a complement to her fiction, definitely, but it's also one more window through which Le Guin's sage voice — alternately academic and homespun — rings.
...a pleasing read and an engaging look behind the curtain, into the life and mind of award-winning author Ursula Le Guin ... No Time to Spare is a collection of Le Guin’s blogs, featuring witty and insightful commentary on subjects ranging from art and literature to politics and felines ...brings life to even the smallest details of daily existence, even as it asks readers to ponder new perspectives, fall in love with Pard the tuxedo cat, and reexamine the little details of their own lives ...a well-loved look into her lucid musings on subjects small and large. For readers new to Le Guin, No Time to Spare is a wonderful introduction to her work and thinking.
A blogging octogenarian is the kind of thing we’re trained to see as endearing and cute...that’s the kind of sentiment Le Guin is eager to swat away in her witty, often deeply observed collection of posts, No Time to Spare ... Le Guin comes at these assertions gently at first — her posts often kick off with an anecdote in the paper or a letter she received, before getting at more substantive matters ...if her blog has a recurring theme, it’s her eagerness to question the words we often take for granted or dismiss ... At her fiercest, she’s fully persuasive at how consequential and dangerous such word choices are ... Le Guin has a well-ordered mind, but No Time to Spare is a more casual rummage sale of a book.
She is particularly concerned with the process of aging, and writes without sentimentality about growing older. In 'The Diminished Thing,' she addresses the tendency of young people to brush off an elder’s longevity with the assertion that they’re not old. Le Guin knows better. She is not one to complain unduly, but she’s realistic about her physical and mental limitations ... The pleasures of No Time to Spare are small-scale. None of the entries feel tossed off, nor do any feel labored. The best quickly capture the voice we’ve come to identify as Le Guin’s: wry, measured, insightful, accepting of life’s messiness while determined to act as morally as possible ... It is good to see Le Guin receive the appreciation she so deeply deserves. As No Time to Spare demonstrates, she is a genuine American Master, one who offers hope and wisdom in dark times.
Possessing some of the same flinty spirit as Diana Athill's late-in-life writings, the 88-year-old Le Guin adopts a take-no-prisoners approach in brief essays traversing topics as diverse as literary criticism, contemporary politics and the antics of her cat ... Interspersed among the serious pieces are more lighthearted ones... Reading No Time to Spare feels like opening the window in a room full of stale air to usher in a fresh spring breeze.
...short, punchy, and canny meditations on aging, literature, and cats ... Le Guin reveals no startling insights but offers her many fans a chance to share her clear-eyed experience of the everyday.
Image by Gerd Altmann from Pixabay[/caption]
