Poured Over: Becky Chambers on A Prayer for the Crown-Shy
“The primary intent of these books is to take a break … have something you can just curl up with for an afternoon. This is a book that is not going to hurt you. And I think that that’s so vital in this day and age, to be able to just pause for a second. I want the book to feel like a cup of tea as well … But I wanted to give you the option of chewing on some of the stuff in there.”
Hugo Award-winning author Becky Chambers is arguably a master of the space opera, with her complex, hopeful characters and her compelling world-building. Sibling Dex and Mosscap return in A Prayer for the Crown-Shy, the latest book in the Monk and Robot series and Becky joins us on the show to talk about creating a story that incorporates the same comfort as watching your favorite TV show for the 10,000th time, how a good cup of tea can make a bad day better, what’s on her TBR list, and much more with guest host, Allyson Gavaletz. And we end this episode with TBR Topoff book recommendations from Marc and Becky.
Featured Books (Episode):
A Prayer for the Crown-Shy by Becky Chambers
A Psalm for the Wild-Built by Becky Chambers
Spear by Nicola Griffith
How to Do Nothing by Jenny Odell
Light from Uncommon Stars by Ryka Ayoki
Featured Books (TBR Topoff):
I, Robot by Isaac Asimov
A Boy and His Dog at the End of the World by C. A. Fletcher
This episode of Poured Over is produced and hosted by Allyson Gavaletz and mixed by Harry Liang. New episodes land Tuesdays and Thursdays (with occasional Saturdays) here and on your favorite podcast app.
Full transcript for this episode:
B&N: Hello, hello, hello. My name is Allyson Gavaletz. I am a bookseller with Barnes and Noble. I am so excited today to interview Becky Chambers, the author of A Psalm for a Wild Built which came out last summer. And the follow up, A Prayer for the Crown-Shy, which is out now. Becky, thank you so much for being here.
Becky Chambers: Thank you for having me. I’m excited to be here.
B&N: Thank you. I’m excited to talk to you. Before we get started, can you get us started? Can you just give a quick rundown of the book?
BC: A Prayer for the Crown-Shy, because I know the titles to my own books is the sequel to Psalm for the Wild-Built, the second of my Monk and Robot novellas. The premise of the books is they take place on a moon called Panga, which is where human beings live, and always have because they say so. And several centuries ago Panga was in a situation that might be familiar to us they are on the verge of of ecological collapse due to rampantly unsustainable production and consumption. And their factories are all staffed, for lack of a better word, by robots. And for reasons that to this day, no one understands. One day the robots all woke up on mass, they gained sentience. And to humanity’s credit. We were cool about it. And we invited them to become citizens, equal citizens of human society. But the robot said, no, no, thank you very politely. But they said, We’re not interested in that, we would like to see what the world is like, without you. We want to observe and understand the natural world. And so they left, all of them wandered off into the wilderness, have not been heard from since. Everybody knows this is history, but by this point, robots have become urban legend, kind of like nobody’s seen one, nobody’s interacted with one in centuries. There’s just this distant thing that doesn’t really affect your everyday life. The protagonist of these books is Sibling Dex. Sibling Dex is a traveling monk. And they go from village to village, dispensing tea and comfort. And in the first book, they encountered Mosscap, a wild built robot, who is seeking out humanity basically to see how we’ve gotten along without them and how society has evolved and what humans still need. The first book is largely about the relationship between Dex and Mosscap, they spend time in the wilderness figuring themselves out as as we all need to do from time to time. Prayer for the Crown-Shy takes place after that, no spoilers here, but they depart from the wilderness, they head into the villages of Panga and begin to interact with the various different communities there. So this book is kind of a road trip book in a way of them traveling through the world a bit. stories about the people they encounter there and the conversations they have along the way.
B&N: Excellent, thank you. So I have to say that you strike quite a tone from the first sentence in A Psalm for the Wild-Built by saying sometimes a person reaches a point in their life when it becomes absolutely essential to Get the eff out of the city. As a New Yorker, I get it. I was instantly in Dex’s mindset and fully felt that emotion. It is such a great beginning. Can you just talk to that?
BC: Absolutely. So I grew up in Los Angeles. I was born and bred there. And then I have lived in cities for most of my life since I went to school in San Francisco. I have lived in every everywhere I’ve hopped around to I’ve lived in a city. And six years ago, my wife and I moved to Humboldt County, California, which is the rural tippy top north of the states. For those of you who are watching on video, you can see the Redwoods out my window, it was very much that feeling. We had sort of a convergence of events in that we were losing the place we were renting because our landlord decided to sell and also I was in a place where I could go full time and writing books. And we just decided, What if we didn’t spend all of our money on rent anymore? Somewhere quiet. So we literally just got in the car and drove until we found somewhere we liked and we liked here. So, that was the impetus for that. I think that Dex’s hunger for something quieter, something a little more in touch with the world as it exists without us is something not everyone feels but I think a lot of people do. Writing it here, surrounded by trees and critters and whatnot, it was very easy to tap into that and to so much of the wilderness of Panga is inspired by the world outside my door.
B&N: Everyone romanticizes starting out in a new town like ducks does. And they go into it with such open arms and hope. I love, love this character. They’re so human and true. And when starting out their tea service they don’t ask for help. Dex is like so many people who want to be a pro at everything from the beginning. And it’s hard to give ourselves grace in doing that. Is that something you relate to?
BC: Oh, absolutely, absolutely. I am my harshest critic, by far, and I’m definitely not immune to the thing of Oh, that looks easy. I could just do that. And then finding myself completely lost in the middle of it. I think that anytime anyone starts out on any new endeavor, be professional or otherwise, there is that moment where you have to swallow your own ego and just realize I have no idea what I’m doing, and I have to make this up as I go along. And I still feel that way. A lot of the time. I think that a lot of writers do. You know, whenever, whenever I get the oh, how do you write a book question every time I’m like, I have no idea. I’ve been doing this for 10 years now I have no idea how to write a book that that level of of both humility, but also constant, very low key struggle was something I really wanted to communicate with decks because I didn’t want them to be instantly good at this. They are good at their profession, but it’s because of work and because of effort. And because they they really put the time into it. And they are still learning every day how to go about it. And to me, I find that more compelling than a character who is some kind of prodigy or just instantly picks things up. I think it’s more relatable because it’s how most of us go through the world. They have this, this real fear of people looking at them and thinking that they’re stupid, or that this is not the right thing when clearly they know that it is they just don’t know what next steps to take. I mean, that’s, that is a boat we’re all familiar with. So.
B&N: Yeah, yeah. And I think that’s exactly what is the switching of the of the career or the trying something new where in our minds like and Dex says it in the book, it’s new to you. But I’ve been thinking about this for a long time. And I think that’s true, or it’s something we all kind of ruminate on and think, like, Okay, I’m ramping myself up. And so to everybody else, it may be a surprise. But to us, it’s like, no, I’m doing this, like you don’t know how to do it. You don’t know anything about you’re like, I know, but I just got to do it. So he’s just such a wonderful character. And it was so wonderful to see myself through that to be like, Oh, Okay, I get it. And so yes, you have grace with yourself to, to just be okay with not being an expert. And and, yeah, it’s a helpful character, I think to relate to.
BC: Thank you.
B&N: What is it about tea that is so dang calming?
BC: What is it about tea? I can talk about tea a lot. The reason I went with tea as opposed to all the other things I could choose. So, Dex being a disciple of a God who is the God of small comforts, right. And that can mean a lot of different things. I decided, after a bit of trial and error, that they were going to serve tea to people who need it. The thing about a cup of tea is it’s, in a lot of ways, completely meaningless. It’s nothing. It’s a beverage. It is not the defining point of your day, right? But a good cup of tea can really change the entire mood of your day. It can save your afternoon. It’s the warmth, it’s the flavor. I think it’s also the fact that it takes time by definition, you have to wait a little bit for a cup of tea and maybe that’s just three minutes, or maybe 10. Depending on the brew you have. But you have to boil water and you have to wait before you drink it. And I think that it sounds so simple, but it’s something we kind of lack in the world as it is right now. We’re used to things being fast and instant and yes, three minutes is not a lot of time. But it is a longer amount of time than we typically wait for things. We’re used to being able to you know, just eat something you know straight out of the can or you know the bottle or what have you we’re used to being able to access all the information of the world instantly. A cup of tea forces you to prepare and to wait and it’s also one of those things where if someone else makes it for you, it’s the nicest thing in the world. You know, I know that there are many a day when my wife comes in brings me a cup of tea to my office and you know, very little else’s said usually but it it makes you feel loved and it makes you feel comfortable. And it really really can be the difference between feeling exhausted and just you know feeling like okay I can do this you know you take that one little moment to to center yourself and to do something that is nice for you. There are a lot of things about tea that I think we kind of take for granted because it is so simple and throw away. You don’t need it, but it does help.
B&N: There are so many themes that run through these books. And one of the first ones that stuck with me is remnants, which is when Mosscap is explaining to Dex that they have many different parts that have to come together to create the Um, and within those that are leftover reactions to various experiences, we all have that whether it’s traumatic or a positive reaction, and it’s for us to figure out how to deal with it and hold space for it in our lives without it taking over us. I thought this chapter so eloquently explained that through a robot, can you speak to that?
BC: I’m interested in consciousness, just to put it extremely simply, I’m interested in the hidden parts of our brains that we don’t understand, and probably never can. I’m interested in how we’re just this mix of memory and the way we spend those memories. And also, you know, the things that are baked into us from a genetic, evolutionary standpoint. Things for example, like how most people are scared of spiders, I’m not I currently lack gene, but like most people are, most people will jump when they see something little and crawley running across the floor, or a snake or what have you, we have these things that we don’t really understand that we need jerk about on the flip side, outside of fear, we all like the side of water. And we all like green things. These are very, very deep biological traits of ours. And I wanted to play with that in a machine context as well. Because one of the ideas about consciousness in general, but I’m trying to get across with these books, and I’ve touched on in my other words as well, is that consciousness is not something we understand. It’s not really something we can engineer, I believe. We can design software to do very specific tasks, very specific types of thinking. But when it comes to sentient self awareness, like true personhood, for lack of a better term, I’m not sure that that’s something we can easily replicate, because we don’t understand it about ourselves. And so I wanted to make it clear with the robots in this book that we don’t understand why it is we woke up. And because of that, they have a lot of things they don’t think exactly like us, but there are aspects that we can relate to, in that there’s things that Mosscap is afraid of, or things that Mosscap finds familiar in ways that it can, it does not have a context for and that’s born out of the fact that it is built out of the remains of robots that came before. And that’s me thinking about my primate ancestors, it’s me with the little things in my day, where it’s clear that I have some root in my childhood somewhere that doesn’t like x or really likes X. And I don’t know why. I felt that that was just an aspect of, our thinking experience that I chew on a lot with no conclusion. But also, I thought that it made Mosscap and the other robots feel more real and relatable, and full thinking beings, you know, I didn’t want Mosscap to understand every part of itself, the way that robots and Androids typically do, where it’s like, Oh, you just fix the circuit here, and blah blah blah, you know, and no, there are so many things about Mosscap that Mosscap itself doesn’t get.
B&N: It’s so funny, because we are just these beings that do have all of these things that we’re just trying to figure it out. And it’s so funny when we all feel so alone, because it’s like, dude, everybody has this. And, we all just go through life. We’re like, I don’t know what to do. Should I go do this? I don’t want to ask for help. I’m gonna let everybody down. It’s so interesting that and I do love that Mosscap has it too, because it is such a great way to be like nobody has it figured out, not even robots. Isn’t that amazing.
BC: That’s definitely something I lean on hard in the second book as well, because we’re seeing Mosscap out of its comfort zone. For the first time. It hasn’t interacted with other humans outside of Dex and it very early on realizes that it’s out of its depth, and it doesn’t have any idea what it’s doing, even though it also knows that the right thing has marched forward into the woods to do this. And as soon as it gets there, very similar to Dex, stepping into a new profession, and going I have no idea what I’m doing, Mosscap does the same. And, I enjoyed writing that aspect of their relationship in the second book, because Dex has already come across that hurdle. And they can help in that regard. And it was nice to not flip that dynamic. It’s just a natural growth of that dynamic. I think that something that Dex struggled with and still struggles with is now something they can help Mosscap with as well.
B&N: One of the things I love most about the books is how Dex and Mosscap become such good friends. It shows us that we can find friendship and comfort in the most unexpected places. And sometimes those are the most deepest and meaningful relationships. And I love those. Do you have those? Was this in honor of anyone?
BC: Not any one I’m specifically but very much the the people I am close to, I am truly, truly lucky to have an incredible group of friends small but close, which is the way I like it. And that that is a quality that I wanted to, to inject into Dex and Mosscap’s relationship as well, that they are just comfortable with each other and that they understand each other in a way that other people don’t. And sometimes that’s something that takes a lot of discussion, there’s obviously lots of times where they don’t, they have to pause for a second and figure each other out. But they are also people who can share a silence, or, you know, a really simple activity, you know, just sitting in watching a river, or, you know, just walking down the road looking at flowers. I do have people like that in my life, and I value them immensely more than anything. And yeah, so they’re threads of that through their relationship.
B&N: And I love that from almost the get go, they were so comfortable with each other to which I think is also so telling. Not to say that they weren’t unsure and figuring each other out and talk about some things like you said, but they were just like, yeah, come as you are, let’s do this. And let’s go discover, and I’m very lucky to have friends like that, too. And it’s so amazing. And it’s so nice. It’s such a safe place. And I think that’s part of what comes through in the books too is they both feel safe to be vulnerable with each other and to challenge each other. And it’s just such a beautiful friendship that you’ve written with those two.
BC: Thank you, I’m happy to hear that because it was really fun to write. I wanted it to be something that felt comfortable for people to read. But it also was a comfort for me to write, it was a real pleasure to write those two.
B&N: That’s so nice. In Psalm for the Wild-Built, Dex asks how the idea of maybe being meaningless can sit well with Mosscap. And it responds, Because I know that no matter what, I’m wonderful. I had to sit on that before I kept reading, I have to tell you, I put the book down, it was like, Wow, that’s amazing. And there are so many delightful messages in these books that are unexpected, but pack quite a punch. Is that your intention? Do you hope people read it that way?
BC: I mean, it’s my hope that people pick things up like that. But if you don’t, that’s okay. As I say in my dedication in the first book, The primary intent of these books is to take a break. Is to have something you can just curl up with for an afternoon, this is a book that is not going to hurt you. And I think that that’s so vital in this day and age to be able to just be able to pause for a second, I want the book to feel like a cup of tea as well, if all it is is just a little bit of comfort in your afternoon, you don’t think about it anything further, fine. But I wanted to give you the option of chewing on some of the stuff in there. One of the big impetus for this book was I was looking at the way my friends and I, everybody in my circle, were consuming new media in you know, sort of the late 2010s, early 2020s I do not need to explain to everyone else stressful this time has been. We’re living in this golden age of new stuff, new TV shows, video games, books, like everything that’s coming out is awesome. And I would commonly find myself saying this phrase of Oh, yeah, I’ve heard such good things. I will definitely get to that. But what I was actually watching and consuming as a lot of people I knew were were old favorites from when I was a kid shows that I’ve watched 10,000 times and kids shows. My wife watched Great British Bake Off, I don’t know how many times. And that sort of thing. And I really looked at that going, comfort seems to be the thing we are all seeking out, and I found myself sometimes in this sort of dilemma where I wanted to be consuming something that spoke to me where I am now I didn’t necessarily want to be watching the same thing I watched when I was 10 years old, or a show that is intended for 10 year olds now, but given the choice between something new that was like really tense in gritty or something that I associate with childhood, that was comforting, I went for comfort every single time. And so what I really wanted to do with these books was be like okay, can I write something that has that same level of comfort as watching a cartoon, as watching Bake-off, but it speaks to you as an adult. It speaks to you where you’re at now. It gives you problems conundrums, things to chew on, that you will relate to at this point in your life. Can I make something that feels that comforting, but it’s still for adults. So that was, that’s why there is that chewy stuff in these books because I wanted it to speak to our age group, I wanted it to speak to people who do want something to think about and do want to wrestle with the nuances of life, but also just want to curl up in a chair for a couple hours and be quiet.
B&N: I definitely it’s funny that you say that I definitely experienced that with this book, I actually heard somewhere that nostalgia is the experience without the anxiety. Like, wow, that, for me is huge. I think that’s why, especially during this time, you know, we went back to the books we liked in the movies we liked because it was kind of that comfort to your point. And I definitely took that with your books, there’s always something of like, something bad’s gonna happen,what am I getting into, and it was just such a hopeful, calming, lovely, kind of a way to leave the real world for a little bit. So, I love that you wrote that, because I definitely experienced that. And it was a very charming book that I almost wanted to hug when I was done. It’s like, I love these characters. I love this world. I love their adventures. So I love that you wrote it like that, and A Prayer for the Crown-Shy. At one point, Dex and Leroy are contemplating with Mosscap about giving it a part to repair itself and the idea of are you or aren’t you your body comes up, we do get to have autonomy over so much of our body. I have tattoos and piercings that I got without even thinking about it. But there’s so much of our body that we don’t have autonomy over. It was such an interesting conversation to read right now in the midst of everything going on. Can you speak to that?
BC: Sure. So the dilemma that they’re talking about is that Mosscap has had a component break with within itself. And culturally, robots don’t fix themselves. They could they think, technologically, they could live forever, technically, you know, if they just kept replacing bits of themselves, but they don’t, because they revere nature so much. They want to understand nature so much, that they see that everything else, ages and dies. And so they let themselves do the same because they don’t feel that they can actually understand the organic world if they don’t do that. And so for Mosscap it’s this real conundrum, because it’s a very simple part. But it’s something that’s causing them real problems. And Dex does not understand why moss cap is having such an issue with this, this is something we can fix really easily. And they have to go through these, like really tying themselves in knots figuring out how can we fix this in a way that is culturally acceptable to you? And can we even do that, and I think that was the first part of that whole issue that was really important to me was that I didn’t want Dex to force a viewpoint onto Mosscap about it, I didn’t want Dex to sort of strong arm Mosscap into doing this. And I tried to make that clear that Dex is aware of that as well. Like they understand almost from the jump that this is a cultural difference. And this is something that is extremely important to Mosscap. And so it’s not a matter of arguing that point of, I think your viewpoint is stupid. I think this is nonsense. It’s okay, well, given that, what can we do? Like, is there a solution within this? And, it takes Mosscap a long time to think about it. Like it has to step away when various solutions are presented? And, it doesn’t sleep, but it takes a night to think about it. Because it’s doing something that robots do not typically do. And I just I wanted to highlight that the intense intimacy of our relationship to our bodies there, and that these things are culturally determined, you know, I likewise have tattoos. There are a bazillion different cultural impressions, or subculture impressions, on what those mean. And that’s been true for all of history. You know, some people get them on a whim, some people get them with a lot of thought, some people don’t want to get them at all. That too, is a very human experience. And it was just yet another example in those books that I wanted to show. To highlight both the difference between In the culture of robots and, and us, but also making it clear that we can navigate those things respectfully, and that you don’t have to understand it. And you don’t have to agree with it, in order to respect it, in order to figure out, Okay, what’s the solution that works for you? And ultimately giving Mosscap agency over that decision. If Mosscap had decided that it would prefer to just sit down in the middle of the road and rust, that would be its choice. Wouldn’t have been one that Dex would have agreed with. But in the end, Dex would have been like, okay, fine, do you. So, I actually really enjoyed writing that chapter for that reason. Those sorts of little cultural puzzles are something I’ve loved in almost every book I’ve written, and it’s something I probably will write forever.
B&N: It was interesting to read because I was camp Dex, where I was like, yeah, obviously, you’re a robot put a new part, you know, and they were in they were, it was an easy part to get. So it was interesting for me to to think about that other side and be like, oh, yeah, that’s true. It is its decision and, it gets to decide. And I loved the time it took to step away and think about it. And I did. I think it was just another example of Dex and Mosscap’s friendship where they both had the respect to have that conversation as well. And you know, say, Well, this is why I think that and these are all the reasons why you should do it. And this is why I think this and why I shouldn’t do it, and to another conversation and friendship that they handled with such grace. And it was a wonderful conversation that opened my eyes as well. Let’s talk about Dex going home, and the enormity of it, but also the smallness of it at the same time. If anyone’s left home, I’m sure they’ve experienced that Dex was so welcomed and so understood, but so nervous about it at the same time. And isn’t that kind of the way it is for all of us going home?
BC: I think so. You leave and you come back. And even though most things are the same, there’s that moment of like, oh, that store I used to know isn’t there anymore. It’s both sides of it are surreal, right? The things that are still there that haven’t changed, where you’re just like, Oh, my God, that’s still there, you’re coming back as this very changed person. But that thing is still exactly where it was. But also the things that aren’t. That this place has changed without you as well. And I think for anyone who has left home before, that’s just part of the experience. It’s weird. It changes you in a way that you cannot unchange. You know, the old cliche of you can’t go home again, you can’t. And even though the people there love you, you’ve had this whole life, away from them, you have changed, they have changed. And so you’re constantly sort of going back to this love that grew together and has continued while you’re apart. But you have to figure out who you are now, and even though Dex keeps in touch with their family, they visit their family when they can, it’s not like Dex is estranged or something like that. But things have changed since they’ve been away. And this experience that Dex is having with Moscow is massively changing them. And that’s something they have to, you know, introduce their family to as well, both literally and metaphorically. And I think that’s the most key part of going away and coming back, of having to figure out how to explain to these people that you love that you care about, you’re not the same anymore, and trying to understand how they’re not it can be a difficult thing. And it can be a bittersweet thing. And I think that even if you are excited to go to that place, there is that fear, similarly to what we were talking about earlier about how you don’t, you know, I’m going to change my job, I’m going to do this thing. I’ve been thinking about it for a long time, but this is brand new to you, we do get defensive and we do get protective of that, you know, what if I go back and they don’t like me anymore? What if I go back and we don’t connect in the same way anymore? What if this thing that I think is really meaningfull isn’t now. What if we’ve grown apart not for any, you know, sort of hurtful reason or traumatic reason, but just because that’s what people do. All of that are things that go hand in hand with coming home and I very much wanted to highlight that with Dex’s experience of going back.
B&N: It was very sweet. Dex went off at one point and said, I just need a minute and their mom was like, I know like it she kind of knew to give him space. And I think that’s the comfort of it is those people know us so well that they know exactly what we need. And so that is like at that fundamental deep level there. That’s where I think the comfort comes from And then as all the other things you talked about that many things change, and it is have we grown together have we grown apart is a very nuanced experience.
BC: I wanted to make it clear too with Dex, Dex being a queer character, I wanted to make it incredibly clear that it wasn’t that Dex left home, because they weren’t welcomed there. Dex is close with their family, their family adores them, but Dex is someone who just needs to go, who just needs to be elsewhere, this place where Dex grew up didn’t fit them. And not because of any unkind reason, not because of a hurtful reason. It was because they just needed to be somewhere else. And I think that that’s something that was really, really important for me to get across. This is a world in which Dex can be themself, effortlessly, and without fear, without any need to hide, that the reason they are on the road and that they live this very solitary life is just because they’re a solitary person and their family gets that. There isn’t any guilt about having left, there isn’t any guilt about their need to sort of back away from the chaos going on in the kitchen and just step away for a bit. They’re a quiet person. And that’s respected, nobody is trying to force them to be you know, an extrovert when they are not. And that was just yet another layer of icing on the fact that this is a safe world. And this is a place where you can have the freedom to explore any aspect of yourself. And nobody’s going to judge you for it.
B&N: We have talked about the lands you created. They were all individual and beautiful sounding, and exactly where I want to go. If I wanted to get out of the city, were they based on anywhere?
BC: Um, gosh, let’s see. Um, so the Woodlands are definitely based on where I live in Humboldt County. I mean, I think that’s very obviously, out in the Redwoods that I’m talking about the same thing. A lot of the places there are in the book as well. So, the Shrublands, which is the, the the very pastoral farmlands, that too, is based on, you know, my time here in Northern California, not here in the north north, but down in wine country, down through the valley, that sort of thing. All of those are places where I have felt very connected to the landscape around me, I was really trying to summon places where I had felt quiet, and I had felt safe. And I didn’t feel a need to reinvent the wheel on those things. Because I think, again, my goal was so much of this was to be relatable, to create environments that a person could very quickly and naturally relax in, the person here being the reader, of course, so writing about beautiful meadows and fields, that’s a classic. As is, you know, a rugged coastline. That too, is very Northern California. So yeah, I didn’t have to think too far afield. When writing these places, I just thought of places that I thought were beautiful and tried to capture those in the page as best as I could.
B&N: Now we are a book company. So I just have to ask, of course, what are you reading? or what have you read? What are some of your favorite books?
BC: Things I have read lately, I just read Spear by Nicola Griffith, which was fantastic. It was so it was one of those books where I don’t know if you do this, where you kind of like press your forehead against it. When you’re done. You’re just like, Oh, it’s so good, because you want to just consume the whole thing. Um, let’s see, I also I recently read How to Do Nothing by by Jenny Odell, which was fantastic.
B&N: That’s so perfect for this conversation.
BC: But yes, I read it. I read it after the fact, one of my friends had read it and he’s like, you’ve read this book. And I was like, okay, and it’s a book that’s incredibly difficult to talk about. Because by design, it’s not something you can sum up in just a quick blurb or a tweet, it is something you really have to sit with. It’s a beautiful book and a few are drawn to any of the themes we have been discussing today, I would highly, highly recommend it. My TBR pile is enormous and our question will say that, you know, I’m I’m heading out on tour next month and so I do what I call is my homework, which is, I try to read the latest things by people I am doing events with so that we can have good conversations. One of which is I’m doing an event with Ryka Aoki who did this incredible book, Light from Uncommon Stars, which I read last year. It was one of my favorite things that I read last year. If you like hopeful, beautiful, weird, just delightful, but will also break your heart sort of fiction. I can’t recommend it highly enough.
B&N: That’s actually sitting on my table to be read next. I’m very excited to read it. It’s great. Yeah. Becky Chambers 2019 Hugo Award winner for the Wayfarer series. Thank you so so so much. It has been a pleasure to talk to you. I loved your books. Thank you for giving us this time today.
BC: Thank you so much. This has been a wonderful conversation and I’ve really enjoyed being here.