Book Review: No Time to Spare: Thinking About What Matters by Ursula K. Le Guin

 

I first experienced the mastery and world building of Ursula K. Le Guin’s writing when I came across A Wizard of Earthsea in my school library. I was appropriately impressed and it looms large in my memory of the many wonderful fantasy and science fiction books I discovered there.

No Time to Spare: Thinking About What Matters was published in 2017, Le Guin passed away in 2018. She was 89. These were blog entries, but more like essays, that she wrote from about 2010 to 2016.

The title appealed to me as I feel I have decidedly moved into the second half of my own life and wonder what I want to accomplish with the time I have left, whatever that may be.

The exploration of ideas is widely varied, from pondering a toddler’s perspective of the vastness of a house, that might even seem small to a grown-up, to Le Guin’s experience staring, gazes locked, with a rattlesnake.

Each essay covers a great deal of territory, evolving from one thought into a much broader span, and covering that territory gorgeously through the language she uses. In fact, one of the things I loved about this book was Le Guin’s use of language. It is incredibly rich and varied.

In comparing a food bank warehouse to Notre Dame, she says, “As there should be, there are great doors to open into the sacred space. And as a sacred space will do, the first sight took my breath away. I stood silent. I remembered what the word awe means.”

Well, I am in awe of her language. My own writing tends to be rather action oriented and doesn’t use the full breadth of the English language to its fullest potential. Work like this book inspires me to dig deeper.

The hard part about reviewing a library book, in its hard copy form is that I cannot highlight and make notes the way I do on a Kindle book. I have friends who highlight and write in the margins of books that they purchase but I have never developed that habit because I have nearly always gotten most of my books from a library. It has both saved my budget and saved space wherever I lived.

I found a few of her pronouncements confounding, but that is about perspective. She finds tree farms “one of the dreariest sights in our farmlands, almost as soul-blighting as a clear-cut.” I find them lovely and cheerful, often a family run business, providing for their family while working at making Christmas merry or providing fruit trees for long term production for a family. There’s nothing dreary or soul blighting about that to me.

There is a great deal to ponder here and I highly recommend it to anyone. A book like this makes me feel as if I have been given time and a great gift of perspective by another writer.

‘…how incredibly much we learn between our birthday and last day – from where the horsies live to the origin of the stars. How rich we are in knowledge, and in all that lies around us yet to learn. Billionaires, all of us.”