xSubs Reading Room discussion

Just seen a recap of a book called “A Psalm for the Wild-Built” and it looks like a quite reflective if not grounding book. Seems short. Only 100+ pages.


It's been centuries since the robots of Panga gained self-awareness and laid down their tools; centuries since they wandered, en masse, into the wilderness, never to be seen again; centuries since they faded into myth and urban legend.
One day, the life of a tea monk is upended by the arrival of a robot, there to honor the old promise of checking in. The robot cannot go back until the question of what do people need? is answered.
But the answer to that question depends on who you ask, and how.
They're going to need to ask it a lot.
Becky Chambers's new series asks: in a world where people have what they want, does having more matter?

Mexican Gothic by Silvia Moreno-Garcia

“[An] irresistibly dark feminist reimagining of the Gothic fantasy novel . . . It’s all wonderfully creepy, blending chilling scenes of horror with classic Gothic tropes for a seductive and subversive tale. A book to devour in a few—very thrilling—sittings.”—Vanity Fair

Klara and the Sun, Kazuo Ishiguro

The sun always has ways to reach us.

From her place in the store, Klara, an Artificial Friend with outstanding observational qualities, watches carefully the behaviour of those who come in to browse and of those who pass in the street outside. She remains hopeful a customer will soon choose her, but when the possibility emerges that her circumstances may change for ever, Klara is warned not to invest too much in the promises of humans.

In Klara and the Sun, Kazuo Ishiguro looks at our rapidly changing modern world through the eyes of an unforgettable narrator to explore a fundamental question: what does it mean to love? 
https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/5...

Seveneves - cause I probably won’t have finished it by September

I'll add some more, these are two books I picked up but haven't read yet. They are both by black women who are typically very underrepresented in their genres (horror, fantasy) respectively.

The Good House by Tananarive Due

Working to rebuild her law practice after her son commits suicide, Angela Toussaint journeys to the family home where the suicide took place, hoping for answers, and discovers an invisible, evil force that is driving locals to acts of violence.

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The Fifth Season by N.K. Jemison

Three terrible things happen in a single day. Essun, a woman living an ordinary life in a small town, comes home to find that her husband has brutally murdered their son and kidnapped their daughter. Meanwhile, mighty Sanze -- the world-spanning empire whose innovations have been civilization's bedrock for a thousand years -- collapses as most of its citizens are murdered to serve a madman's vengeance. And worst of all, across the heart of the vast continent known as the Stillness, a great red rift has been torn into the heart of the earth, spewing ash enough to darken the sky for years. Or centuries.

Now Essun must pursue the wreckage of her family through a deadly, dying land. Without sunlight, clean water, or arable land, and with limited stockpiles of supplies, there will be war all across the Stillness: a battle royale of nations not for power or territory, but simply for the basic resources necessary to get through the long dark night. Essun does not care if the world falls apart around her. She'll break it herself, if she must, to save her daughter.

haven't tagged anything in these before so im not sure if it'll work but i'll try it:

The Song of Achilles
Achilles, "the best of all the Greeks," son of the cruel sea goddess Thetis and the legendary king Peleus, is strong, swift, and beautiful, irresistible to all who meet him. Patroclus is an awkward young prince, exiled from his homeland after an act of shocking violence. Brought together by chance, they forge an inseparable bond, despite risking the gods' wrath.

They are trained by the centaur Chiron in the arts of war and medicine, but when word comes that Helen of Sparta has been kidnapped, all the heroes of Greece are called upon to lay siege to Troy in her name. Seduced by the promise of a glorious destiny, Achilles joins their cause, and torn between love and fear for his friend, Patroclus follows. Little do they know that the cruel Fates will test them both as never before and demand a terrible sacrifice
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had to google translate the blurb for this one so apologies if it doesn't make sense
HHhH

two Czechoslovak paratroopers sent by London are charged with assassinating Reinhard Heydrich, head of the Gestapo, head of the Nazi secret service, planner of the final solution, protector of Bohemia-Moravia, nicknamed "the executioner", "the blonde beast", " the most dangerous man in the Third Reich ". After months of preparation, he is finally shot dead in his Mercedes. A mad hunt ensues that ends in a church in central Prague. HHhH is an acronym coined by the SS which means in German: "Himmler's brain is called Heydrich" (Himmlers Hirn heisst Heydrich).

The bulk of the story takes place between 1938 and 1942. The narrative is structured like a funnel: short chapters tell different episodes in different places and at different times, all of which converge on Prague where the attack took place. All of the characters in this book actually existed or still exist. The author reported the facts as accurately as possible but had to resist the temptation to romanticize. How to tell the story? This question sometimes leads the author to take the stage to give an account of his writing conditions, his research, his hesitations. Historical truth turns out to be both a neurotic obsession and an endless quest.

This is more of personal passion here BUT

The Rise and Fall of the Dinosaurs


The dinosaurs. 66 million years ago, the Earth’s most fearsome and spectacular creatures vanished. Today their extraordinary true story remains one of our planet’s great mysteries.

In this stunning narrative spanning more than 200 million years, Steve Brusatte, a young American paleontologist who has emerged as one of the foremost stars of the field—discovering ten new species and leading groundbreaking scientific studies and fieldwork—masterfully tells the complete, surprising, and new history of the dinosaurs, drawing on cutting-edge science to dramatically bring to life their lost world and illuminate their enigmatic origins, spectacular flourishing, astonishing diversity, cataclysmic extinction, and startling living legacy. Captivating and revelatory, The Rise and Fall of the Dinosaurs is a book for the ages.

Brusatte traces the evolution of dinosaurs from their inauspicious start as small shadow dwellers—themselves the beneficiaries of a mass extinction caused by volcanic eruptions at the beginning of the Triassic period—into the dominant array of species every wide-eyed child memorizes today, T. rex, Triceratops, Brontosaurus, and more. This gifted scientist and writer re-creates the dinosaurs’ peak during the Jurassic and Cretaceous, when thousands of species thrived, and winged and feathered dinosaurs, the prehistoric ancestors of modern birds, emerged. The story continues to the end of the Cretaceous period, when a giant asteroid or comet struck the planet and nearly every dinosaur species (but not all) died out, in the most extraordinary extinction event in earth’s history, one full of lessons for today as we confront a “sixth extinction.”

Brusatte also recalls compelling stories from his globe-trotting expeditions during one of the most exciting eras in dinosaur research—which he calls “a new golden age of discovery”—and offers thrilling accounts of some of the remarkable findings he and his colleagues have made, including primitive human-sized tyrannosaurs; monstrous carnivores even larger than T. rex; and paradigm-shifting feathered raptors from China.

An electrifying scientific history that unearths the dinosaurs’ epic saga, The Rise and Fall of the Dinosaurs will be a definitive and treasured account for decades to come.

The Humans
THERE'S NO PLACE LIKE HOME.
OR IS THERE?

After an 'incident' one wet Friday night where Professor Andrew Martin is found walking naked through the streets of Cambridge, he is not feeling quite himself. Food sickens him. Clothes confound him. Even his loving wife and teenage son are repulsive to him. He feels lost amongst a crazy alien species and hates everyone on the planet. Everyone, that is, except Newton, and he's a dog.

What could possibly make someone change their mind about the human race. . . ?

Come Again
First Love. Second Time Lucky.

All hell has broken loose in Kate Marsden’s life. Her husband has died, she’s lost her job and now she’s pushed the last of her friends away. Then one day, she wakes up in the wrong body – and the wrong year. She’s eighteen again and it’s her first day of university. Which means today’s the day she’ll meet Luke, her future husband, for the first time.

If they can fall in love again, Kate might just be able to save him second time around.

Dune!

The Uninhabitable Earth - may as well read this so we know how society will collapse

Replay

Jeff Winston was 43 and trapped in a tepid marriage and a dead-end job, waiting for that time when he could be truly happy, when he died.

And when he woke and he was 18 again, with all his memories of the next 25 years intact. He could live his life again, avoiding the mistakes, making money from his knowledge of the future, seeking happiness.

Until he dies at 43 and wakes up back in college again..