4.0
funny informative reflective fast-paced

 Collection of interviews with Ursula K Le Guin from the 1970s to a final series of interviews between 2015 & 2018. Full of interesting little tidbits of info about Le Guin & her work. This book is probably as good as a biography, covering various parts of her life. The brief part in one of the final interviews in which she discusses the Berkeley she grew up in in the 30s & 40s made me think of my Grandmother who was growing up in San Francisco (then “an expedition, not a commute” away from Berkeley), around the same time. I often try to imagine what the Bay Area of that era looked & felt like. I was a little surprised & gladdened to find that Le Guin, like Bradbury, was another non-driver. Her perspectives on Philip K Dick were interesting, especially in the later interviews when she said she re read his work & found it dated. I also liked the tidbit that she and Dick corresponded, but that she was worried he would just show up at her house one day. Based on reading Dick’s collected short stories, I thought her opinion that his late life “mystical breakthrough” was “a breakdown” was spot on. The parts about her & Charles’s relationship in the later interviews were very cute.