 |
| Hardcover, 215 pages Published 2017 (contents: 2010-16) Acquired April 2018 Read June 2018 |
by Ursula K. Le Guin
This was a delightful, charming book, a collection of blog posts Ursula Le Guin wrote from 2010 to 2016. Unlike in last year's Words Are My Matter, there's little about science fiction here; most of them concern life, especially growing old, and also Le Guin's cat. Maybe I'm just biased to like anything she writes, but there's a quiet wisdom here, about growing old, about nature, about capitalism, about storytelling, about cats. We get glimpses of her home life and glimpses of her youth and glimpses of her working process. One of my favorites was about an alumni survey Le Guin received from Harvard on the eve of her 60th reunion, and she demonstrates a sharp sense of humor when it comes to the inane assumptions the survey makes. But many others were also good, like why she doesn't interfere when her cat kills mice, and her thoughts on not receiving awards.
Like the best writers of wisdom, Le Guin is able to link small moments to big ideas. I enjoyed almost every essay in some way, and I can see myself returning to this book to savor individual pieces of it in the future. Not just the world of science fiction, but the whole world is the poorer for having lost her.
No comments:
Post a Comment