TWOsday ~ two by Ursula K. Le Guin

Ursula K. Le Guin is one of my favorite writers. I've just requested two more of her books from my library:

(1)  No Time to Spare: Thinking about What Matters, 2017

• On the absurdity of denying your age:  “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 breakfast:  “Eating an egg from the shell takes not only practice, but resolution, even courage, possibly willingness to commit crime.”

Ursula K. Le Guin has taken readers to imaginary worlds for decades.  When she wrote for her blog, she was in the last great frontier of life, old age, and exploring new literary territory:  the blog, a forum for her sharp, witty, and compassionate voice.  No Time to Spare collects the best of Ursula’s online writing, presenting perfectly crystallized dispatches on what mattered to her in old age, her concerns with this world, and her unceasing wonder at it:  “How rich we are in knowledge, and in all that lies around us yet to learn.  Billionaires, all of us.”  She died a week ago, and I wrote about her on Thursday.

(2)  Words Are My Matter: Writings about Life and Books, 2016

This book 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.”

Le Guin is one of those authors and this is another of her moments.  She has published more than sixty books ranging from fiction to nonfiction, children’s books to poetry, and has received many lifetime achievement awards including the Library of Congress Living Legends award.