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Comment by roughly | Hacker News Reader

Becky Chambers’ “A Psalm for the Wild Built” is a nice dose of solarpunk fiction if you need a pick-me-up: https://bookshop.org/p/books/a-psalm-for-the-wild-built-beck...

(Chambers’ entire body of work is just generally a nice cup of tea and a warm blanket for the soul in sci-fi form - the Wayfarers series starting with “The Long Way to a Small, Angry Planet” is maybe the best collection of before-bed reading I’ve ever found.)

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> the Wayfarers series starting with “The Long Way to a Small, Angry Planet” is maybe the best collection of before-bed reading I’ve ever found.

I agree wholeheartedly and do, in fact, read them in bed. I transitioned to the Wayfarers after souring on The Expanse (I enjoyed most parts of those books, but the black ooze is not for me). The low-stakes, slice-of-life content is more up my alley.

I really didn’t enjoy The Wayfarers. But I absolutely adore the Monk & Robot books. I just wish she would write more. It does not feel finished after two books. That series is my warm blanket on a cold winter day book.

I quite enjoyed both series. They are not similar (as you implicitly suggest).

Wayfarer bugged me at first because each book is a massive departure from the next (somewhat like Ender 1 and 2). As much as it pained me to leave the characters of the first book, the following books were more meaningful and stayed with me much longer.

I also wish Chambers wrote more. Amazing author.

Same. You can clearly tell how much better of an author she got by the time the Psalm came out. It is a very solid book. The second one in the series seemed more confused, but the first one felt very thought though and intentional.

It's the other way around for me. "Psalm" and its sequel dialed up the coziness in exchange for anything resembling stakes. I feel the Murderbot series strike a better balance, where there's still some sort of conflict side dish to go with the hygge.

Sign me up for the cozy, man. In this shit timeline we're on it's more or less all I want to read. My hatred of other humans is at an all time high.

Braiding Sweetgrass, if you haven’t read it already.

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