I've been on a Becky Chambers kick. I enjoyed this novella of hers, although it didn't work for me quite as well as To Be Taught, If Fortunate. This one had a very small cast of characters -- basically just the two main characters -- and I would have welcomed a slightly broader group. The plot was quiet and gentle rather than propulsive. The book also felt a bit incomplete to me somehow, but there is a sequel which I will read, A Prayer for the Crown-Shy.

A bonus Becky Chambers novella that might be of interest to you. If not, no worries in the least! Feel free to release it or pass it along in any way that you see fit, read or unread. Thank you!

Thanks for thinking of me for this book! I have read it already. It was part of a free Tor.com download. I quite enjoyed it!

This book will make an excellent addition to Round 3 of the To the Stars: A Sci-fi bookbox. Round 2 is currently traveling, so it will be a while before this one makes the trip!

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Sent as a surprise wishlist!
Enjoy!
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This arrived while I was out of town - thank you so much!

I had dinner with Melydia at her home last night and we were talking about books and stuff. She mentioned that she was reading this book and enjoying it and I told her how much I had loved The Long Way to a Small Angry Planet by the same author and was hopeful of reading this book when she finished it. Turns out she was doing one of the things she frequently does (I have done it a bit myself and will continue to do so because it is effective) where she takes a book on her shelf that she wants to read and gets the audiobook version and listens to it in her car. She grabbed this off her shelf and told me to take it home because she knew it would not take me long to finish it. I had a book that I was reading yesterday, but I finished it about 30 minutes ago. I am going to try to be good and wait for at least another 30 before I start reading this one.

This is one of THOSE books. The ones you want to keep to yourself forever and to share with everyone you love. The ones that are big and amazing and yet small and intimate. The ones that you want to tell everyone about and yet have no words for it. It is a parable, a simple yet complex tale about what life is and what life means and a nice mug of tea. It's about how people are different and how they are the same, how life is hard and how it is full of goodness. It is about finding yourself and losing yourself. It is also the story of a tea monk who one day makes an impulsive choice and ends up meeting a robot who has made an impulsive choice and how they figure out how to be friends.

This book was shared with me by a friend who is currently reading it on audiobook. I can already picture myself acquiring multiple copies to share with multiple friends as a means of saying what is written between the lines and cannot be otherwise expressed. I want to send it to a couple of my nieces -- incredibly different humans -- to several different friends -- and to my therapist. And I want to get a copy for myself to keep on my shelf and reread. But this copy is being saved for the holiday First Line game because it starts off with a bang. :)

This book will be used in the First Line Game at the BCinDC Holiday Party.

Any future reader or recipient of this book is encouraged to leave a journal entry here on the BookCrossing site to let prior readers know the fate of the book. You can make an anonymous entry without joining the BookCrossing movement, but if you are interested in joining, it is a free and spam-free community where your contact information is not shared with others. Best of all, members receive private messages via e-mail from books like this one when those books are journaled, allowing for long-term relationships between books and readers.

I picked this book from the First Lines exchange at today's BC-in-DC holiday gathering. The first line is "If you ask six different monks the question of which godly domain robot consciousness belongs to, you'll get seven different answers."

This was the book I didn't know I needed until I was reading it. In a sense it is a first-contact story, but not quite in the human meets extra-terrestrial kind of way, but more in the human meets mythical creature kind of way. In a world where robots long ago gained sentience and chose to leave, disappearing into the wilderness, their very existence has faded from consciousness, so that when a traveling tea monk meets one, it is the first contact between humans and robots since they left. The interactions between these two reflect the challenges of encountering and learning about the alien other, but in ways that are quiet and generous. It is a reminder that encounters with others don't have to be based on fear and mistrust, but can be generous and welcoming.

The conversations between the characters here delve deep into philosophical territory, as they grapple with the Big Questions, including trying to understand the purpose of life, if, indeed, there is one. I found myself wanting this discussion to continue, to keep going, as these two unlikely companions continued to get to know each other. The tone of the entire book is so calm and gentle, that I found it really sad when I reached the end. The feeling of wanting more is strong, which is an indication of just how good this book is.