A Prayer for the Crown-Shy (Monk and Robot #2) by Becky Chambers

A Psalm for the Wild-Built

A Prayer for the Crown-Shy is the follow-up to A Psalm for the Wild-Built. In the first book, Dex the tea monk and Mosscap the robot met each other in the wilderness after years of robots going no contact with humans. In A Psalm for the Wild-Built, we follow these two as Mosscap introduces themselves to humans, asking them what they really need.

I think I'm going to have reread all the books I've read in November. I seem to basically just dislike them all and I'm starting to wonder if my stress over two big things in my life, my job and recruiting board members for my volunteer gig, is just seeping into everything in my life, including my reading. 

I thought this book was boring. I'm not sure what message I'm supposed to get from it. 

It's typical Chambers, in that it's gentle and hopeful. I guess because I don't feel gentle and hopeful right now that it just didn't resonate with me. I just found myself glowering at my Kindle, knowing that this is NOT what would happen in "real life" and thinking that Chambers does not understand human behavior. Meanwhile, it has a 4.47/5 on Goodreads and people are writing things like it's "rewarding" or "a rich chocolaty cup of hugs." I am the problem, maybe?  

2.5/5 stars (which was me waffling between 2 and 2.5 and deciding to go for the higher number in an understanding that I'm a monster)

Line of note:

...unless you are a very particular, very rare sort of person, it does not take long to understand why people left said woods in the first place. Houses were invented for excellent reasons, as were shoes, plumbing, pillows, heaters, washing machines, paint, lamps, soap, refrigeration, and all the other countless trappings humans struggle to imagine life without. (location 46)

Right? Sometimes people go camping for fun and I'm absolutely clueless about why.

Things I looked up:

Propolis (location 805) - A natural resinous mixture produced by honey bees from substances collected from parts of plants, buds, and exudates (which is a substance secreted by a plant or insect - nothing like having to go look up a word to understand a word you're already looking up)

Littoral (location 1039) - relating to or situated on the shore of the sea or a lake