
No Time to Spare
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Narrated by:
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Barbara Caruso
About this listen
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 BooksListeners also enjoyed...
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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)
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- Narrated by: Amy Landon, Grover Gardner, Will Watt
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Overall
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Story
Tembreabrezi is like Eden - a beginning place. There, Hugh and Irena assume they have merely discovered an escape from the dull monotony, even the terrors of their regular lives. But Tembreabrezi has a secret, a dark fear that is threatening the very life-blood of the kingdom. Hugh and Irena were led there for a purpose, selected for an impossibly hopeless mission. If they accept the challenge, they may lose everything - their new-found paradise, and possibly their lives.
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Really needed an editor and some clear point
- By starling01 on 03-09-21
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The Language of the Night
- Essays on Writing, Science Fiction, and Fantasy
- By: Ursula K. Le Guin
- Narrated by: Alyssa Bresnahan, Michael Crouch
- Length: 10 hrs and 45 mins
- Unabridged
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Le Guin’s sharp and witty voice is on full display in this collection of twenty-four essays, revised by the author a decade after its initial publication in 1979. The collection covers a wide range of topics and Le Guin’s origins as a writer, her advocacy for science fiction and fantasy as mediums for true literary exploration, the writing of her own major works such as A Wizard of Earthsea and The Left Hand of Darkness, and her role as a public intellectual and educator.
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Changing Planes
- By: Ursula Le Guin
- Narrated by: Gabrielle de Cuir
- Length: 7 hrs and 53 mins
- Unabridged
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Sita Dulip has missed her flight out of Chicago. But instead of listening to garbled announcements in the airport, she discovers a method of bypassing the crowds at the desks, a nasty lunch, whimpering children, their punitive parents, and the blue plastic chairs bolted to the floor: she changes planes—literally. Sita discovers entire planes of existence and visits societies not found on Earth—bizarre societies that share similarities with Earth's cultures and sometimes open doors into the alien.
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Lovely
- By Laura Sharp on 12-07-23
By: Ursula Le Guin
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Words Are My Matter
- Writings About Life and Books, 2000-2016, with a Journal of a Writer’s Week
- By: Ursula K. Le Guin
- Narrated by: Laural Merlington
- Length: 13 hrs and 17 mins
- Unabridged
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A must-listen collection, Words Are My Matter is a manual for investigating the depth and breadth of contemporary fiction - and, through the lens of deep considerations of contemporary writing, a way of exploring the world we are all living in. "We need writers who know the difference between production of a market commodity and the practice of an art. Developing written material to suit sales strategies in order to maximize corporate profit and advertising revenue is not the same thing as responsible book publishing or authorship."
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One of Le Guin's best collections
- By Cameron on 05-11-19
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The Unreal and the Real
- Selected Stories of Ursula K. Le Guin, Volume One: Where on Earth
- By: Ursula K. Le Guin
- Narrated by: Tandy Cronyn
- Length: 11 hrs and 44 mins
- Unabridged
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The Unreal and the Real is a major event not to be missed. In this two-volume selection of Ursula K. Le Guin's best short stories--as selected by the National Book Award winning author herself--the reader will be delighted, provoked, amused, and faced with the sharp, satirical voice of one of the best short story writers of the present day. Where on Earth explores Le Guin's earthbound stories which range around the world, from small town Oregon to middle Europe in the middle of revolution to summer camp.
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Shame on you, Audible
- By Audrey McCombs on 07-03-20
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A Wizard of Earthsea
- The Earthsea Cycle, Book 1
- By: Ursula K. Le Guin
- Narrated by: Rob Inglis
- Length: 7 hrs and 17 mins
- Unabridged
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When Sparrowhawk casts a spell that saves his village from destruction at the hands of the invading Kargs, Ogion, the Mage of Re Albi, encourages the boy to apprentice himself in the art of wizardry. So, at the age of 13, the boy receives his true name - Ged - and gives himself over to the gentle tutelage of the Master Ogion. But impatient with the slowness of his studies and infatuated with glory, Ged embarks for the Island of Roke, where the highest arts of wizardry are taught.
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A little gem, excellently narrated.
- By Marjorie on 05-14-12
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Always Coming Home
- A Novel
- By: Ursula K. Le Guin
- Narrated by: Yareli Arizmendi, Isabella Star LeBlanc
- Length: 23 hrs and 10 mins
- Unabridged
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Always Coming Home is Ursula K. Le Guin’s fictional ethnography of the Kesh, a people of the far future living in a post-apocalyptic Napa Valley. Having survived ecological catastrophe brought on by relentless industrialization, the Kesh are a peaceful people who reject governance and the constriction of genders, limit population growth to prevent overcrowding and preserve resources, and maintain a healthy community in which everyone works to contribute to its well-being. This richly imagined story unfolds through a series of narrated “translations” that illuminate individual lives.
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A favorite Ursula K. Le Guin
- By Michael on 03-30-24
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Dancing at the Edge of the World
- Thoughts on Words, Women, Places
- By: Ursula K. Le Guin
- Narrated by: Gabrielle de Cuir
- Length: 14 hrs and 27 mins
- Unabridged
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From modern literature to menopause, from utopian thought to rodeos - in this classic collection of essays, Ursula K. Le Guin roves with her customary audacity over the intersecting arenas of literature, feminism, and social responsibility, exploding any received notions she comes across and revealing visionary possibilities in their stead.
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Not my favorite Le Guin collection, but...
- By Cameron on 05-11-19
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Gifts
- Annals of the Western Shore, Book 1
- By: Ursula K. Le Guin
- Narrated by: Jim Colby
- Length: 6 hrs and 3 mins
- Unabridged
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In the Uplands, people have magical and fearsome gifts. Orrec, a boy growing into his powers, can destroy any living thing with simply a glance. But he refuses to use his ability, and wears a blindfold to protect others from his devastating gaze.
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Book 3 won the 2008 Nebula Award
- By K. Danielson on 11-10-11
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The Complete Earthsea Series & The Left Hand of Darkness
- 3 BBC Radio Full Cast Dramatisations
- By: Ursula K. Le Guin
- Narrated by: full cast, Toby Jones, Kobna Holdbrook-Smith, and others
- Length: 7 hrs and 50 mins
- Original Recording
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Ursula K. Le Guin was one of the most revered and influential writers of the 20th century. Her Earthsea books have sold millions of copies and been translated into numerous languages, while her trailblazing novel The Left Hand of Darkness was a landmark in feminist science fiction and ranks among the greatest SF novels of all time. This BBC collection brings together the magical radio retellings of both these seminal classics.
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Too much fluff and interruptions.
- By KDSC on 01-20-22

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The Unreal and the Real: Selected Stories of Ursula K. Le Guin, Volume Two: Outer Space, Inner Lands
- By: Ursula K. Le Guin
- Narrated by: Tandy Cronyn
- Length: 13 hrs and 55 mins
- Unabridged
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Outer Space, Inner Lands includes many of the best known Ursula K. Le Guin nonrealistic stories (such as "The Ones Who Walk Away from Omelas," "Semley' s Necklace," and "She Unnames Them") which have shaped the way many listeners see the world. She gives voice to the voiceless, hope to the outsider, and speaks truth to power - all the time maintaining her independence and sense of humor.
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chapter names
- By Evan Goldsborough on 01-18-20
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The Found and the Lost
- The Collected Novellas of Ursula K. Le Guin
- By: Ursula K. Le Guin
- Narrated by: Alyssa Bresnahan, Jefferson Mays
- Length: 34 hrs and 3 mins
- Unabridged
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Every novella by Ursula K. Le Guin, an icon in American literature, collected for the first time - and introduced by the legendary author - in one breathtaking volume. Ursula K. Le Guin has won multiple prizes and accolades, from the Medal for Distinguished Contribution to American Letters to the Newbery Honor, Nebula, Hugo, World Fantasy, and PEN/Malamud awards. She has had her work collected over the years but never as a complete retrospective of her longer works.
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You gotta be kidding me.
- By Spam on 07-02-19
Wonderful!
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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?”
Wit and Wisdom and Daily Life
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Work from a master storyteller
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I enjoyed this book!
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words for living
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Words of enchantment and wisdom
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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.
Le Guin's blog posts magnificently narrated
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Delightful
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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.
A look inside the mind of a wonderful writer
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Blog thoughts
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