Common Read at Lane

• Changing Planes by Ursula K Le Guin
• The Dispossessed by Ursula K Le Guin
• The Year of the Flood by Margaret Atwood
• How to Do Nothing by Jenny Odell
• The Bonobo and the Atheist by Frans de Waal
• Operating Manual for Spaceship Earth by Buckminster Fuller
• Reason for Hope by Jane Goodall
• For Small Creatures Such As We by Sasha Sagan

• The entire filmography of Hayao Miyazaki, particularly Nausicaä of the Valley of the Wind, Castle in the Sky, and My Neighbor Totoro
• The short film Overview.

• Samorost
• Machinarium
• Flower
• Pyre
• Eastshade
• The Myst series

• Solar Living Center in Hopland, CA (now closed)
• Community Exchange System
• Earthships
• Chanting Benedictine nuns
• State and national parks, as well as botanical gardens
• Pale Blue Dot by Carl Sagan ("the most famous passage from [this video] is at the root of everything I do")

Other general concepts and ideas: solarpunk, permaculture, artificial intelligence, rewilding

Looking for a way to start conversation about the book? Here are some prompts.

1. At the beginning of A Psalm for the Wild-Built, Dex makes a decision to become a tea monk. Have you ever decided to make a big change in your life? What was that like? How would you describe it?

2. How would you describe the mood of this book? What textures, descriptions or sensory cues tell you about Panga as a place?
 
3. Dex lives in a wagon that they describe as “perfect” (p.12). What would your ideal living space (including your environment) look like? What needs would it serve?
 
4. On their first day of becoming a tea monk, “Dex realized with a stomach-souring thud that they were standing on the wrong side of the vast gulf between having read about doing a thing and doing the thing” (p.14). What was that experience like?
 
5. Dex and Mosscap have discussions about whether Mosscap is a person or an object (pp. 69 and 83).  What do you think? How do you define what a “person” is? Does someone or something have to be a “person” to deserve care, respect, and agency?
 
6. How would you compare Mosscap to current artificial intelligence technologies? What questions does the novel raise about these technologies?
 
6. Dex and Mosscap discuss what it’s like to have “remnants" (pp. 89-98). What does it mean to have a remnant? What are the benefits and drawbacks of having remnants? How does the concept of remnants help us understand the climate crisis or other global, national, or local challenges?
 
7. Dex asks: “What is wrong with me that I can have everything I could ever want and have ever asked for and still wake up in the morning feeling like every day is a slog?” Do you find Mosscap’s philosophy of purposelessness (pp. 138-141) to be helpful or not?
 
8. A Psalm for The Wild-Built  — What do you think the title means?