This hardcover first edition of No Time to Spare is autographed by Ursula K. Le Guin.

From acclaimed author Ursula K. Le Guin, and with an introduction by Karen Joy Fowler, a collection of thoughtsalways adroit, often acerbicon aging, belief, the state of literature, and the state of the nation.

Ursula K. Le Guin has taken readers 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 voicesharp, witty, as compassionate as it is criticalshines. 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 ninety and believe I'm forty-five, 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 lapI 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.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR:

URSULA K. LE GUIN was born in Berkeley, California, in 1929. Among her honors are a National Book Award, five Hugo and five Nebula Awards, the Kafka Award, a Pushcart Prize, and the Harold D. Vursell Memorial Award from the American Academy of Arts and Letters. She lives in Portland, Oregon.

REVIEWS:

Praise for NO TIME TO SPARE
Winner of the Hugo Award for Best Related Book
Winner of the PEN/Diamonstein-Spielvogel Award for the Art of the Essay
A TimeOut Book to Cozy Up to This December
A Real Simple Best Book to Read in December
A Bustle Best Book to Read in December
One of Southern Living's Unputdownable Reads to Curl Up with in December
A Harper's Bazaar Best New Book to Read in December
A Most Anticipated Title of the Fall from Vulture
A PopSugar Must-Read Book for December
A Book Riot Must-Read Book for December
A Wired Must-Read Summer Title

The trivially personal is a chief pleasure of this collection...The pages sparkle with lines that make a reader glance up, searching for an available ear with which to share them...Words are my skein of yarn, my lump of wet clay, my block of uncarved wood,' [Le Guin] explains, and then quietly astounds us with the carving.
Melissa Febos, The New York Times Book Review

This delightful book [is] inquisitive and stroppily opinionated in equal measureIn even these miscellanies, composed in [Le Guin's] off hours, the sentences are perfectly balanced and the language chosen with care. After all, she writes, Words are my mattermy stuff.' And it's through their infinite arrangementsthat Ms. Le Guin's extraordinary imaginary worlds have been built and shared.
Wall Street Journal

"Witty, often deeply observed...Le Guin has a well-ordered mind...If she's arrived at a 'crabby old age,' as she puts it, it's inspired her to be engagingly mindful of everything around her."
USA Today

There are shades of Adrienne Rich hereAt the end of No Time to Spare,' having enjoyed all the Annals of Pard and the Steinbeck anecdotes, the stories about the Oregon desert and the musings on belief, all I could think was: I want Le Guin to keep going, on and on. I want to read more.
Michelle Dean, The Los Angeles Times

No Time to Spare,' deriving from Le Guin's online essays, covers just about anything that crosses her mind, from 'lit biz' to cats to the Oregon landscapeMight 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.
The Washington Post

"The pages pop with life, even as Le Guin, ever sassy, reckons with the toils of aging. She finds herself busier than ever, cramming in as much as she can. The best bits are the interludes for Pard, her new black-and-white cat. Young when she's old, spry when she's stiff, he exists in twinkling counterpoiseespecially when he's time-traveling through her whirring external hard drive to, Le Guin suspects, cosmic parts unknown."
Wired

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No Time to Spare