Book Reviews

“A Psalm for the Wild-Built” by Becky Chambers

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For a while, Chambers’ book seemed to be on the front table of every indie bookstore in town, but I never picked it up. I am glad that it was chosen by Nadja Bester as the October 2026 IndieWeb Book Club pick. It’s one of those books that felt like a balm amidst all the craziness that is swirling about us these days.

book cover

A Psalm for the Wild-Built is a short read (only 151 pages), but it moves at such a steady, peaceful pace that time stretches out a bit and you feel like you’re floating in something intentional. The world-building is absolutely amazing. While the characters were fun to walk with (again, no big explosions or troubles), the history of Panga was fascinating. 

I don’t know if there is officially a cozy solarpunk speculative cli-fi category, but this would certainly be the best read to have on that shelf.

The premise follows a tea monk looking for personal meaning as they leave the comfort of their life, looking for more.This tea monk lives on a world that was ravaged by some kind of economic collapse or war that was so devastating that the whole planet now lives in a peaceful harmonious way with the nature around them. Part of that historic fallout was that the servant robots became sentient and ran away to the wilderness to live peacefully there. So we have generations of humans living peacefully, in cities, while robots roam the woods far away. It had been so long since humans and robots interacted that folks treated the idea of robots almost as a myth. Until…

Yep, the tea monk meets a robot who wants to learn about humans, and away we go. Not on a journey of sci-fi battles and lasers, but one of a slow pilgrimage through the wilderness, bouncing questions around about what it means to be human and what humans really want. The whole journey unfurls in the same slow manner tea leaves do when steeping (this book made me very thirsty, and I drank a lot of tea).

The ideas and questions are big for such a slim book. I loved the question about why, after 4 billion years of human growth going just right so that they can be alive, safe, and comfortable … why are they sad? Why do they have longings? Why are they not satisfied? Other animals (as the robot sees all humans) don’t have these issues.

A Psalm for the Wild-Built won the Hugo Award for Best Novella (2022), and was a  Nebula Award Nominee for Best Novella (2021). So it’s certainly known, and I am glad I read it. I know there is a second book in the series, and I’m waiting for the right time to pick it up.

The book did leave me wanting for a map of Panga (they travel so many places on the planet), a family tree of the Gods (all the symbols and relations sounded cool), and more tea!

This is a read for folks who like heartwarming characters that move at their own pace and think big thoughts. Panga was an enjoyable world to visit.

tea cup viewed from top
I did manage to brew more tea.

Alabama, Events, library

Right to Read in Alabama

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The folks at Read Freely Alabama are in Livingston, AL tonight at 6:00 p.m., in the Bell Conference Center and dinner is provided (it’s tacos!) The meeting itself is free and open to the public. On the agenda tonight is an open discussion about challenges to Alabama public libraries around the state and how you can get involved to defend your right to read as well defend libraries and Alabama librarians. It is shaping up to be a lively discussion.

If you are going they ask that you RSVP so they can make sure they have enough seats and food.

And if you can’t make it tonight, Read Freely Alabama is holding more events around the state this October. Hope you can make one of them.

Also, be aware that there is an online discussion planned for Oct. 14 in with the organizers of F.I.R.E. at 6:00 p.m.  So be sure to check that out as well.

Let Books Be Poster by Hyesu Lee

There is a lot going on this week, with it being Banned Books Week, and Saturday being Let Freedom Read Day. It’s nice to see folks in Alabama being fed up with some of our state and local leadership when it comes to out public libraries. Stand up and speak up!

Things to Read

Things to Read – Edition 0006

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This summer I intentionally took a month+ “off” of all things social media and screens. The heat this season has been real and I had lots of travel and offline work to do. So I fully embraced it. It was great. Now I’m starting to scrape the surface of what I missed and what everyone else has been up to. Plenty of news and books to work through in the coming days and I’m actually looking forward to it.

Now that I’m back online, I can say I really missed some of the folks on Mastodon as well as many of the blogs in my RSS reader. I’m enjoying catching up and commenting on the posts and sites that I follow.

In an effort to help shake off my digital cobwebs I wanted to take a minute to share three things that I thought were worth the read:

Time magazine published a piece highlighting the recent numbers showing the decline in adults reading. Plenty of words have been written about this trend, but this piece acknowledges the book as “one of our most effective technologies” and offers solutions to help folks pick up books more often.

This one is worth the click just to see the logo that Amazon has on the front door of one of their warehouses in Las Vegas. Yep, it’s a dinosaur devouring a book. Sign up for that site if you want to read the whole account, but it’s a scanning facility that tears up old books so they can be scanned faster and fed to their AI machines.

I was pleased to see that Kobo ereaders are now back in Best Buy stores. While the prices keep creeping up, I am a HUGE fan of buttons. Does that make me a luddite? Just old? I am not sure, but I do know that turning pages on an ereading device are so much easier when there’s a physical button under your finger. Kobo has one of the last ones.

Hope you all have had a good summer season. Fall is on the way (though that’s hard to believe when the thermometer read 102 degrees yesterday).

Alabama, Book Talk, Reading as Resistance

Uncle Tom’s Cabin in Alabama

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Today in 1851, Uncle Tom’s Cabin, by Harriet Beecher Stowe, was first published in The National Era newspaper.

It continued to run in the newspaper for the next 11 months, a few chapters at a time, helping people understand the evil of slavery until the columns were collected and published in book form on March 20, 1852. (Here’s a link to get a copy from Project Gutenberg.)

Title page from first paperback copy.

Once Stowe’s story was published as a book it helped the antislavery movement ramp up. It sold very well throughout the country, with reports of it selling 50,000 copies in the first six weeks. (If you are into stories from the history of publishing here is a amazingly detailed account of what it took to bring this book to print.)

This a great historical account of the power of books. One we need to remember here in Alabama, because in 1856, the South’s largest bookstore was in Mobile, Alabama…

Strickland & Co., had been in business at the corner of Dauphin Street and Water Street for many years when the local Vigilance Committee (a legal group of locals charged with squashing antislavery efforts) nabbed the bookshop’s two owners and drilled them about their books.

text from old newspaper
The story was even reported on by the NY Times.

It turns out they were guilty of selling a single copy of Frederick Douglass’ Autographs of Freedom as well as having had 50 copies of Stowe’s Uncle Tom’s Cabin on hand. The booksellers were told they were “…“dangerous to the community” and that, unless they and their families left within five days, their safety could not be guaranteed.” There is a good write-up with even more details here in The Mobile Bay magazine. The Vigilance Committee was publicly praised by government officials and local media for running the booksellers out of town and closing down the bookstore. 

It was gross. We should all be embarrassed by this incident. But, sadly, it’s not too far from where we are these days with Alabama voting districts being redrawn and funding being pulled from Alabama libraries over book banning.

It is gross, and we should all be embarrassed. 

All that to say if you are around the Birmingham, AL area, then check out the Read Freely Alabama group and keep up with the events and news they share. It’s important.

*Also, buy books. Read physical books. Have them at home. Digital books are fine (I did link to Project Gutenberg earlier). It’s just that digital media be deleted/changed/tracked in a way that a printed book cannot. It’s happened before (most famously in 2009) and just like the attack on that Mobile bookstore and libraries today, it will happen again. These stories need to be protected and remembered so we can do better. 

Books, Publishing, and Birmingham