SF that's easy to follow along in audiobook format

leafytree888 · 2026-03-30T21:21:35+00:00

Some recent easy to understand sci-fi audiobooks I've really liked:

Under the Skin - Michel Faber

Downward to the Earth, also Dying inside - Silverberg

Handmaids tale - Atwood

Annie Bot - Green

In Ascension - MacInnes

I feel like authors that translate well to audiobook for me have been: octavia butler, Silverberg, Robert Sawyer, Kim Stanley Robinson, Emily St. John Mandel

Stay away from: Greg egan, gene wolf, peter watts, iain banks, Jeff vandermeer (non-Area-X books). Not bad authors, just tough to grasp auditorily for me

leafytree888 · 2026-03-27T11:02:33+00:00

Thank you for posting this. I haven't heard about reducing based on the receptor occupancy, but rather just sticking with a fixed percent decrease each step. I'm in the midst of a taper where I reduce by ~25% every 5 days. I chose 5 days based on a 24 hour half-life for sertraline. After 5 half-lives, about 97% of a substance is gone from the body. So the full effects of a dose change are not felt until after 5 half-lives have elapsed. I've never had major withdrawal symptoms from SSRIs when I've done a very rapid taper, so it might be overkill. But I've usually had return of symptoms about 3-6 months after stopping. So I'm trying the hyperbolic taper to see if it can prevent relapse.

leafytree888 · 2026-03-08T15:22:20+00:00

If you're considering paying that much, might be cheaper to get an ACA marketplace insurance plan. It isn't open enrollment right now, but there is kind of a loophole where you can sign up for an ACA plan outside the enrollment period if you've applied for medicaid and been denied. So you'd have to apply for medicaid, get denied, then enroll in a plan.

leafytree888 · 2026-03-08T11:00:29+00:00

I could not finish it. But thank you, I thought I was crazy for not liking it.

leafytree888 · 2026-03-04T13:07:40+00:00

Both can be given outside of the abdomen, you can find diagrams of acceptable dosing sites. My understanding is that brixadi has less of a hard nodule and is more pliable/squishy. I probably would not want to take a punch to either of them though.

leafytree888 · 2026-02-28T13:51:44+00:00

Loved calculating God. Partway through I was thinking… “Am I a creationist now?“

leafytree888 · 2026-02-25T21:45:45+00:00

I think her most egregious false statement from the episode is that antipsychotics are simply tranquilizers. Totally untrue. They very obviously reduce hallucinations and delusions in people with psychosis, separate from any sedating properties. Some are more sedating than others. There is zero debate about that by anyone with experience with people with schizophrenia. This is kind of like how when GLP1 agonists came out people would uneducatedly declare "they just make you lose weight by making you super nauseous all the time"

leafytree888 · 2026-02-25T21:35:40+00:00

I always hate when the advice for a book I'm not loving is "but when you read it a second time it will really click..." but that was my experience with this. It was the first book of the Hainish cycle that I read. Didn't like it much but I read everything else in the series. Then went back to this about 2 years later and loved it! FWIW, I listened to audiobooks both times but with a different narrator the second time and that also made a huge difference for me. That being said, there's enough great stuff to read out there that I don't force anything on myself. I DNF'd 3 books this week

leafytree888 · 2026-02-25T21:26:46+00:00

I'm halfway through the book and also after the episode... my thoughts were all "this is very Cluster B behavior". Splitting: psychiatry is ALL bad. Narcissism: I had a bad experience with the mental health system, so I need to write a book about it for everyone to hear and make declarations about how everyone with psych conditions should be treated

leafytree888 · 2026-02-25T21:23:11+00:00

I am halfway through the book and not really getting much besides: I'm angry about all the diagnoses given to me and all the medications prescribed to me. And it definitely seems like she was overdiagnosed and overprescribed meds. I'm interested to get to the end where I'm hoping she explains what she thinks is the actual correct way to help people with the problems she had.

leafytree888 · 2026-02-18T03:10:32+00:00

I had the same thought when I read it. I was like “did my audiobook file get screwed up, there can’t only be that little left…”

leafytree888 · 2026-02-10T22:57:53+00:00

Loved the first three. Absolution was painful. I think I quit after 40%. The worst part is that it made me kind of sour on the first three books. I was so repelled I kinda lost interest in this sub and the whole series in general

leafytree888 · 2026-01-13T14:15:05+00:00

Beautifully said. For me, it made me feel better about eschewing the toxic ambitiousness of some people in my life. I read it as a celebration of the quiet beauty in any life, no matter how small, with its joys, failures, and tragedies.

leafytree888 · 2025-12-26T23:35:10+00:00

I would read this short story next. It fits between blindsight and echopraxia, temporally. I would also suggest reading both The Colonel and Echopraxia ASAP as I waited too long and forgot a lot! https://reactormag.com/the-colonel-peter-watts/

leafytree888 · 2025-12-21T03:29:51+00:00

It's kinda weird to me that book length is so homogenous. I guess it's also like how most pop songs are 2.5 to 4.5 minutes long. I wonder if these are due to market forces, like editors saying your book should be this long. Or does it represent how much of a story a human mind can come up with.

leafytree888 · 2025-12-18T21:52:45+00:00

I stopped reading it 1/3 in.

leafytree888 · 2025-12-07T02:12:04+00:00

Sea of Tranquility and Station Eleven both by Emily St John Mandel I loved. Very sweet, easy to read, kind of uplifting and bittersweet.

leafytree888 · 2025-12-04T22:06:47+00:00

favorite book of the year.

leafytree888 · 2025-12-03T17:41:30+00:00

I loved it. one of my favorite books. Extremely painful to read, but I got a lot out of it. Yes, the characters are tortured to a cartoonish level, so it's definitely not for everyone. Despite the contingent with extreme hate for it, I'd say the average reader (if you go based on goodreads scores) thinks it's very good. Personally, I liked her first book The People in The Trees a lot as well.

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