I have a ridiculous amount of highlights, my Kindle equivalent of 'mm-hmm' affirmations. Parts One, Two and Three are all followed by 'The Annals of Pard,' brief pieces about her latest cat. 'Part Four: Rewards' shines, with writing beautiful enough, polished enough to remind me why she's a master. 'Part Three: Trying to Make Sense' of it is the most topical section. 'Part Two: The Lit Biz' is in theory about literary stuff and contains some insight into the life of the writer -readers' questions and awards-as well as discussion on things like ubiquitousness of swearing, and narration. 'Part One: Going Over Eighty' is one of my favorite sections. The book comes with an introduction by Karen Joy Fowler and a note from Le Guin about her purpose and the informality of the writing. You think I leap at my age? What am I, a frog?) At any rate, I absolutely loved her in short-form, her words seemingly a little less crafted than her novels, sounding more like her voice, talking about everyday things- 'The point of a soft-boiled egg is the difficulty of eating it, the attention it requires, the ceremony'-writerly things and general opinion pieces. However, her writing has also felt somewhat laborious to me, so when I saw this book of blog-style posts, I leapt at the chance to read it (figuratively, naturally. When I was a teen, The Left Hand of Darkness did more to challenge my conception of gender identity than anything I would read or hear for years.

Which is, to say, hardly at all, but her writing has often astounded me, literally impacting how I perceived the world. Ursula Le Guin is one of my heroes, in as much as I have them. The Hainish Cycle reflects the anthropologist's experience of immersing themselves in new strange cultures since most of their main characters and narrators (Le Guin favoured the first-person narration) are envoys from a humanitarian organization, the Ekumen, sent to investigate or ally themselves with the people of a different world and learn their ways. Her interest in non-Western philosophies was reflected in works such as 'Solitude' and The Telling but even more interesting are her imagined societies, often mixing traits extracted from her profound knowledge of anthropology acquired from growing up with her father, the famous anthropologist, Alfred Kroeber. She was known for her treatment of gender ( The Left Hand of Darkness, The Matter of Seggri), political systems ( The Telling, The Dispossessed) and difference/otherness in any other form. Her recent publications include the novel Lavinia, an essay collection, Cheek by Jowl, and The Wild Girls. Le Guin published twenty-two novels, eleven volumes of short stories, four collections of essays, twelve books for children, six volumes of poetry and four of translation, and has received many awards: Hugo, Nebula, National Book Award, PEN-Malamud, etc.

No Time To Spare by Ursula K. Le Guin