‘No Time to Spare: Thinking About What Matters,’ by Ursula K. Le Guin

Ursula K. Le Guin, the Hugo and Nebula award-winning author of “The Dispossessed,” “The Left Hand of Darkness” and the “Earthsea” series of children’s fantasy novels, seems to be enjoying a well-deserved “moment” in the latter days of her career.

Popular and critical interest in the work of the 88-year-old Berkeley native and Portland, Ore., writer was reinvigorated in 2014 when Le Guin received the National Book Foundation’s Medal for Distinguished Contribution to American Letters. She took that opportunity to deliver a fiery speech excoriating publishers who treat writers as commodities. It was a powerful performance that quickly went viral.

Since then, her early novels have been collected in deluxe editions from the Library of America, her short stories and novellas published by Simon & Schuster’s Saga imprint, and a documentary film about her life is in production, thanks in part to a Kickstarter campaign that raised more than $200,000 in pledges.

Although she has mostly retired from fiction, Le Guin hasn’t abandoned the craft of writing, publishing a collection of essays with Small Beer Press just last year. Now Le Guin has delivered “No Time to Spare,” distilled from her blog at www.ursulakleguin.com.

Although she has long maintained a Web presence, Le Guin writes that she was not initially interested in creating a blog. She didn’t even like the term. “I suppose it is meant to stand for bio-log or something like that ...” (For the record, it’s short for “Web log.”) In any case, it reminded her of rotting vegetation in a bog.

But in 2010 Le Guin was inspired by Jose Saramago’s “The Notebook,” a collection of posts written when the Portuguese writer was 85. What the Nobel laureate did with the form was “a revelation” for Le Guin, eliciting a response of “Oh! I get it. I see. Can I try it, too?”

Its contents having been originally distributed on the Internet, “No Time to Spare” is practically mandated to feature cats. Le Guin, the author of the “Catwings” series of children’s books, doesn’t disappoint. Three chapters are devoted to “The Annals of Pard,” the adventures of the author’s current animal companion. Pard brings to Le Guin’s home a sense of renewal, comfort and unpredictability. None of the incidents recounted in these entries are particularly dramatic, but Le Guin conveys her enjoyment of Pard’s winning ways and mysterious inner life.

Le Guin is, of course, interested in more than just feline cuteness. She is particularly concerned with the process of aging, and writes without sentimentality about growing older. In “The Diminished Thing,” she addresses the tendency of young people to brush off an elder’s longevity with the assertion that they’re not old. Le Guin knows better. She is not one to complain unduly, but she’s realistic about her physical and mental limitations.

She also writes about “the lit biz,” decrying the modern-day over-reliance on a certain four-letter Anglo-Saxon word, observing the futility of seeking The Great American Novel, marveling at the storytelling prowess of Homer. She addresses the questions readers ask, clearly preferring those letters that come from kids.

Le Guin has never been afraid of tackling political issues. Well before the era of Trump did she assert that the U.S. had lost its way. In a post from 2012 she writes, “I wish the ideals of respecting truth and sharing the goods hadn’t become so foreign to my country that my country begins to seem foreign to me.”

The pleasures of “No Time to Spare” are small-scale. None of the entries feel tossed off, nor do any feel labored. The best quickly capture the voice we’ve come to identify as Le Guin’s: wry, measured, insightful, accepting of life’s messiness while determined to act as morally as possible. Words and stories mean everything to her, and she sees her job as a writer clearly: “Art is what a writer does, not what an artist explains.”

The blog posts probably should not be read all in one go. Better to dole them out slowly, like favorite confections, perhaps one as an early morning pick-me-up and another as a reward for getting through the day.

Karen Joy Fowler, author of “We Are All Completely Beside Ourselves,” provides an introduction for the volume. Fowler writes of Le Guin, “She has been both prolific and potent. She has been both playful and powerful. She has, in her life and in her work, always been a force for good, an acute social critic, necessary more now than ever as we watch the evil turn the world is taking. We who followed her as both readers and writers are the lucky ones. We not only love her; we need her.”

It is good to see Le Guin receive the appreciation she so deeply deserves. As “No Time to Spare” demonstrates, she is a genuine American Master, one who offers hope and wisdom in dark times.

No Time to Spare

Thinking About What Matters

By Ursula K. Le Guin

(Houghton Mifflin Harcourt; 215 pages; $22)