What I Liked About "No Time to Spare" by Ursula K. Le Guin

I liked this collection of 41 short essays written (and blogged) by Ursula K. Le Guin between 2010 and 2016 very much.

What I liked: 

• I liked that my spouse purchased this book for me at Munro's Books of Victoria, B.C. while we were on a trip to see good friends getting married on Dec. 17, 2017 in Craigdarroch Castle. I liked that my spouse somehow managed to purchase the book on the sly and then carry it around the store with him without my noticing (being much distracted by all the wonderful books) and then presented it to me right after we exited. I liked that I also received A Glorious Freedom: Older Women Leading Extraordinary Lives by Lisa Congdon as a gift from friends on this trip and so came away from the weekend with two books — quite a pair! — that I was looking forward to reading.
• I liked the design of the book jacket by Martha Kennedy, the pleasing weight of it in my hand, and the introduction by one of my favorite authors, Karen Joy Fowler. And I liked that the book reminded me of hearing Karen Joy Fowler read from the as yet to be published We Are All Completely Beside Ourselves (swoon!) at WisCon 35, hearing UKL at Potlatch 18 in Sunnyvale Calif. where the book of honor was her utopia Always Coming Home, and hearing UKL on a panel with Molly Gloss at the AWP Conference in Seattle.
• I liked all of this very much. I understand that all of this has naught to do with the contents of the book and so won't mean much to you or affect your enjoyment of the book as it did mine.
• I liked the essay "Utopiyin, Utopiyang" most of all because I have also thought about how to write a good utopia and UKL has helpful insights and perspectives on the matter that I hadn't considered. I liked her utopian novel Always Coming Home very much. But I still think we need more, and more utopias and I want to write one of the ones that is needed.
• I liked the essay "About Anger" because this is also something I have thought a lot about, whether anger can be useful and constructive and, if so, how, and I liked that, like me, UKL also seems not to have come to any firm conclusions about this.

• I liked that in her essays UKL often ends with questions and continues to consider and ponder ideas and does not always come to firm conclusions about them.
• I liked her essay "Lying it All Away" in which she writes about a perspective I was not aware of and had not considered on politics and leadership in America.
• I like that UKL is 88 years old, that she has embraced blogging, and wrote these essays and continues to share her ideas, thoughts and perspective. I like that she is long-lived and writes about aging and agism. She says it is not all roses, but she shows panache. I like examples of aging with panache as I hope to do it and it helps to think about it and see ways forward.
• I like that I did not always agree with UKL's essays and sometimes felt that I had considered some issues more than UKL (and/or had acted on my insight). Her essays "A Modest Proposal: Vegempathy" (Ack, false equivalence! No one wants to talk about animal suffering, and we ought to.) and "Without Egg" (a little bit about animal suffering, when there is so very, very much of it and hidden) were irksome. I liked her genuine consideration of plant and animal consciousness, but read shortcomings here. 
• I liked very much her essays about her cat, Pard, because cats. I also very much love everything my cat Mary Shelley does, and cats, and am delighted by appreciation for cats.
• I like that UKL continues to blog and I can read more on her blog at ursulakleguin.com including her poem written in 1991, "When the Soviet Union Was Disintegrating," which I really, really like. I also love Neruda and want to learn Spanish and hear what she says in that last line, "I will honor only my people, the powerless."

And so, I liked this book very much. Thank you Ursula K. Le Guin and, as always, happy writing.