Wayfarers - Tumblr Posts

Anything by Becky Chambers, but since I’ve already seen her Wayfarers series recommended, I’m going to toss one for her Monk and Robot series. It’s the best kind of utopian fiction: One where the central conflict - man vs. self, finding a purpose - fits naturally instead of being shoehorned in or running counter to the themes. And, of course, it’s beautiful.

As a person who is dying for book recommendations: What is a book you picked up randomly that you heard nothing about previously that blew you away?

I feel like we all have at least one hidden gem we stumbled upon.

Please reblog with your books in the tags :)

“Learning to be a Person”

Excellent take. There’s some crossover here with Wayfarers (Becky Chambers).

to the extent that becoming an adult is a kind of “learning to be a person” this is exactly what MB is doing in a very literal sense. As with the Aandrisk expression for coming of age, translated: “learning to be a person” MB’s task is not so much to turn into something it wasn’t before but to learn how to interact with others and itself on those unfamiliar terms, and to do so largely outside of a space that will leave room for it to do so slowly or safely.

for both MB and the Aandrisks - and in contrast to the incremental trial and error humans try to allow for adolescents - becoming its own independent person is a bit like trying to get on a merry-go-round spinning as fast as the other kids can turn it.

at least on Hashkath you’ve got a hatch family to provide a soft landing. In the CR though, MB’s facing the most gruesome of mulch-eating wipeouts if that jump misses.

Good thing it’s sturdy.

The Murderbot Diaries could be read as the coming-of-age story of a late teen/young adult.

(Spoilers for basically the entire Murderbot series)

-At the end of the first book, Murderbot strikes out on its own for the first time.

-It adapts to its new, wider world, tries out a few jobs, and learns about itself in the process.

-Eventually, it sees something that reminds it of its family and starts to miss them.

-It returns home, having learned a lot along the way.

-It experiences a family crisis that puts a new burden of responsibility on it.

-It begins its formal career, this time with help from friends and family.

-It meets someone and they decide to move in together, but Murderbot knows it can always visit its family.

A journey much like the one many of us experience in life. Maybe this is part of what makes Murderbot such a sympathetic character.

Uuuh love your answer like the Odyssey?? Hell yeah reading it in its entirety would be so cool !! ( I've studied it in middle school but we only read extracts, also I was a child so I really didn't care for it )

And Lord of the rings!! I'm super curious about it but I never find the time to read it

( also you're so right about captive princeI bought it a couple of years ago bc I kept hearing about it and then I read it without checking the TW first .... Let's just say that I now check the trigger warnings for EVERYTHING)

1 mmmh I'll say the dreamer trilogy, bc it's just so good. The protagonist is one of my favorite characters ever , the magic system is amazing and the series saw me through a time so dark that I was holding on only bc I needed to make it so that I could read the last book of the trilogy when it came out. Some specific quotes from these books spin in my brain forever bc they make me feel so seen !!!

2 there's so manyyyy, just on my shelf I have at least 10 books I've yet to read akksks buuuut something that I don't own and I've always been curious about is The sorrows of young werther bc we talked a little about it in school and it appealed to me a lot but again, haven't found the time to read it yet

3 uh uh I don't know if it changed me per se but the Wayfarers series really gave me a whole new perspective on having children ( and on how it really has to be your choice ( yeah I know that should be a given but is it always? ), and how it would make so much more sense if people actually studied and were competent enough to raise children, how maybe it shouldn't be all left to chance ), also the world building in these books and the way racism is tackled it's just really really good, I'm normally not into sci-fi but this series is just that good

4 physically impossible for me NOT to recommend the Six of Crows duology to everyone and anyone who I encounter. It's just so good??? The world building?? The complex characters?? One of the protagonists being such a mastermind that sometimes you have to stop and be like " how the fuck did he even come up with that?" ?? THE DELICIOUS FOUND FAMILY?? the softest bestest love stories subplots ?? Really really amazing books I would give up any organ to read them again for the first time

5 uh hands down Rick Riordan, when I was in middle school I devoured most of his books, Percy Jackson, Magnus chase , the trials of Apollo ( <- these ones I never finished bc I heard a rumor about Jason's death and tiny me said NOPE, and I never went back lol ) and more recently the sun and the star, the chalice of the gods it's all just really good stuff , pjo was the reason I became a real bookworm and it accompanied me for so long I just couldn't help but jump back I'm when I head about chalice of the gods. Good soup

Trying super hard to come up with a good question and this is the best I got I fear

Four books? ( One of your all time favourites , one you really really want to read, one that fundamentally changed you and one you'll never stop recommending) ( book series are also good)

Morninggg yeah questions can be really hardbut this is a good one

let's see....mh...

1. This one is tough but I'd probably say All For The Game, I've read it about 6 to 7 times in the past 7 years or so years, something about it just hits right home

2. ...does the Odyssey count? I currently have a digital version and a german translation from 1939 that i found in an antiquity store but i wanna get an english hardcover version of both the odyseey and the illiad eventually-

3. Lord of the rings/tolkiens universe changed me and helped me through my first years of teen angst and gave me a home during a time where we just recently moved and all that

4. Mmmhhh... That changes honestly depending on what im currently obssesed with and who it asking me for it, but probably currently Captive Prince series, the worldbuilding is tough (i do recommend reading the TWs before unless you're confident in being fine with close to anything, its mostly book one; the other two in comparison are really tame)

BUT THEY'RE SO GOOD the writing is so good, the character's, their dynamic, the tension between them-

Ill add a 5. Because we already have most of my favorite books that i keep rereading and say "Author you've read the most from" because that would be Sarah J Maas, esp the Throne Of Glass series rly also touches smth in me and her stories themes of "dreamers brining the hope for a better world" rly touches me

Rb that with your favorites? 😄

2022 reading retrospective: summa cum laude

I've never done a reading retrospective blog post thingy before, but i started one for 2022 and it immediately spiraled out of control. we're breaking it into parts.

For structure, I threw together these categories:

Nonfiction

Fear and Fungi

Mystery

Romance

summa cum laude

This post is about my summa cum laude picks!

(Summa cum laude means "with highest honor," in case anyone is unfamiliar. Latin. Can't escape it.)

Here are the ones that I've already written about but that deserve to be on this here summa cum laude list:

Every single book on my mystery list (yep!)

Mexican Gothic (Silvia Moreno-Garcia) (horror)

The Heroine's Journey (Gail Carriger) (nonfiction)

The Duke Who Didn't (Courtney Milan) and The Perfect Crimes of Marian Hayes (Cat Sebastian) (capital-R genre Romance)

Here are the ones that are AMAZING and don't fit in those other categories:

The Galaxy, and the Ground Within, Becky Chambers

Nettle and Bone, T Kingfisher

the Echo Wife, Sarah Gailey

The Mountain the Sea, Ray Nayler

Spoilers & opinions below the jump

SCI FI: The Galaxy and the Ground Within (Becky Chambers) is the last(?) installment in her Wayfarers series, which started with the fantastic Long Way to a Small, Angry Planet, continued through the very different A Closed and Common Orbit, and then to the Record of a Spaceborn Few. In my opinion, The Galaxy and the Ground Within is something of a return to what I loved about Long Way to a Small, Angry Planet. It's a bottle episode and there's a cast of characters (not a single human in the bunch) who basically explore their similarities and differences. I really, really liked this one. There was some really neat worldbuilding, and I felt like there was some good work with theme and identity as well. Also, I can't talk about Chambers's writing without gushing about how her aliens feel really alien--you really get the bio vibe, they don't just feel like re-skinned humans.

FANTASY: Nettle and Bone (T Kingfisher/Ursula Vernon). This one was very gripping. Vernon can be very grim when she wants to be, but the grimness is in the world more than the story, if that makes sense? So the story itself has a satisfying ending, but some of the--okay so this one has big content notes for sexism, abuse, pregnancy and pregnancy loss, all that. It's really well done, but the themes are so so present.

Also the magic is very evocative and... numinous? Which is to say, not hard magic at all, but things Feel right in a "rooted in folklore" way while still being original in the actual mix. It's such good stuff. This book has it all; it's one of the ones I preordered as a hard copy because I was so, so excited about it, and I'm very pleased with my purchase.

Dramatic sci-fi: The Echo Wife by Sarah Gailey. This book is insanely good, it's gripping, it's disturbing. I wrote about it already so I'll just drop a link.

Near Sci-fi: The Mountain in the Sea by Ray Naylor. I also wrote about this one. I finished it a while ago, and I'm still thinking about it and digesting it. Link here.

In conclusion, that's 13 excellent books that I strongly recommend! Here's to 2023!

The angry way to a long small planet