Foxen books 2020!

Discussão75 Books Challenge for 2020

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Foxen books 2020!

2DianaNL
Jan 1, 2020, 5:33 pm

Best wishes for 2020!

3FAMeulstee
Jan 1, 2020, 6:17 pm

Happy reading in 2020, Katie!

4PaulCranswick
Jan 1, 2020, 6:42 pm



Another resolution is to keep up in 2020 with all my friends on LT. Happy New Year!

5drneutron
Jan 1, 2020, 7:51 pm

Welcome back!

6thornton37814
Jan 5, 2020, 9:35 pm

Enjoy your reading!

7ronincats
Jan 8, 2020, 9:49 pm



Happy New Year, Katie!

I had planned to read The Stone Sky for the SFF:KIT Challenge "I Meant To Read It In 2018..." last year, but never did so have short-listed it for the SFF-KIT 2020 - January Challenge "I Meant To Read It In 2019..." instead!

8souloftherose
Jan 10, 2020, 12:40 pm

Welcome back Katie! I loved the N. K. Jemisin trilogy so hope you enjoy The Stone Sky.

9xymon81
Jan 10, 2020, 4:17 pm

I have not read that trilogy yet, but I did read her earlier series. I cant wait to see what you think of this series.

10Foxen
Jan 15, 2020, 12:30 pm

Hi all! I have finished The Stone Sky, and quite enjoyed the whole trilogy. I definitely think I liked the first book, The Fifth Season the best - I love the pirate island, and the storytelling method with the multiple narratives worked really well in the first one. The second two were also great - great to continue to see the worldbuilding, and the characters come into their own, and a satisfying resolution to the story ultimately, but definitely the first book is the star.

I'm in a bit of a reading lull to start out the year, unfortunately. Once I finished Stone Sky I needed to let that settle for a little while. I picked up Killing Commendatore after that, but don't quite have the intellectual energy for it right now, so I've switched to another N. K. Jemisin series (selected more or less at random). After a bit of trouble switching gears into it, I'm now started on The Killing Moon, which seems quite interesting so far!

11humouress
Jan 16, 2020, 5:11 am

Hi Katie! Hurriedly trying to catch up on threads.

Happy New Year!

12Foxen
Jan 26, 2020, 5:12 pm

Book 2! The Killing Moon by N. K. Jemisin - an interesting, solid sci-fi world. I'm enjoying it, and straight into the next one.

13souloftherose
Fev 3, 2020, 2:20 am

>12 Foxen: I need to read that Jemisin duology - glad you're enjoying them!

14Foxen
Fev 4, 2020, 10:59 pm

Finished the Jemisin duology!

3) The Shadowed Sun by N.K. Jemisin

I... enjoyed this less than The Fifth Season triology, although I'm having trouble articulating why. Both of the books in this duology were quite good - it's a compelling magic system and exploration of a fictional culture (apparently based on ancient Egypt, although I wouldn't have known that except for the forward). The first book, The Killing Moon deals compellingly with mentor/father-son (I guess?) relationships, and The Shadowed Sun takes that theme in interesting new directions. Overall very engaging, but probably not a series that will stick with me, for whatever idiosyncratic reason. I did like the exploration of a culture's understanding of death which felt very foreign to a modern American one.

I still seem to be in a phase of needing unchallenging reading, so I'm now rereading Tigerman - which continues to be possibly my favorite book of all time. It's apparently (according to my kindle history) been about two years since I read it last, which seemed like enough that it wouldn't be too soon again. I love the setting and I love the characters, and I'm still trying to come to terms with how it all comes together, and I see it in a new way each time. Mostly, I love the setting, though. Mancreu speaks to me in a way that I suspect only makes sense to slightly self-induced dispossessed islanders, which can't be a large category, or perhaps just reflects my own self-aggrandizement. Maybe better to just say the doomed tropics strikes a chord, even if most of the cultures involved are not my own. Anyway, Harkaway is good, if I haven't said that before - read something by him, it's all great and mind-bendy, and will use language in ways you don't expect.

15humouress
Fev 15, 2020, 12:19 am

*sigh* I have a couple of Jemisin books on my shelves but somehow I haven’t managed to pick them up to read.

16Foxen
Fev 17, 2020, 12:51 pm

>15 humouress: You should! They're page turners once you get into them, and The Fifth Season is a really interesting story!

Finished
4) Tigerman by Nick Harkaway. Still one of my favorite books. Such great characters.

and

5) The Girl Who Owned a City by O.T. Nelson. This was a read-aloud with my husband, which he requested as he remembered it as a good post-apocalyptic YA novel from when he was a kid. It lived up to expectations. Ive been reading a lot of apocalyptic fiction recently, so my standards are high right now, and this book glossed over a lot of messy unpleasantness that you might otherwise expect - which is fine in a YA novel. It was also... weirdly capitalist? In an apocalypse where only children have survived, they succeed by reinventing a capitalist utopia? Definitely some weird cold-war era propaganda mixed in there, but overall a fun read.

I moved the read-aloud game onto an adult apocalyptic novel which I read recently and really enjoyed - Station Eleven, so that is now in progress, and we're enjoying it.

On my own, I'm reading The Gone World by Tom Sweterlitsch, which Kindle recommended to me based on Harkaway, but seems to be a bit of a miss so far - its a time travel novel mixed with a crime procedural, which sounds fun but hasn't grabbed me so far. We'll see. I need to catch up on LT threads to get some better recommendations!

17humouress
Fev 21, 2020, 12:37 am

You can still join the Fantasy February thread. There are some good recommendations on there.

18ronincats
Mar 9, 2020, 6:44 pm

Good to see you drop by my thread, Katie.

19alcottacre
Mar 9, 2020, 7:37 pm

I really need to read N.K. Jemisin at some point!

I have added Tigerman to the BlackHole. Thanks for the recommendation, Katie!

20Foxen
Mar 26, 2020, 9:41 am

You'd think I'd have more time for LibraryThing during a pandemic, but it doesn't seem to be working out that way. Dropping in to drop a link to the now-digital version of the MIT Mysterious Book Exchange: https://stephenfilippone.space/?page_id=133. Descriptions of books from the MIT community, and you can click to reveal titles. I've added a few things to my wishlist!

21Foxen
Abr 1, 2020, 8:52 am

I haven't posted my recent reading!

6) The Gone World by Tom Sweterlitsch
7) Night Tiger by Yangsze Choo
8) How Rory Thorne Destroyed the Multiverse by K. Eason
9) Servant of the Underworld by Aliette de Bodard
10) Harbinger of the Storm by Aliette de Bodard

Back to LT recommendations, and so much better! Night Tiger was utterly enthralling. I take slight issue in that Rory Thorne did not really destroy the multiverse, although she did definitely take down the patriarchy. Love me some feminist re-imagined fairy tales! Now on to the Acatl trilogy - they are very fun! When I was trying to describe it to my husband his reaction was, "so it's kind of like ancient Aztec Witcher?" and... kinda? Also with some police procedural thrown in? An interesting take on a culture that feels very different from our own (and obviously with some liberties taken). I'm in the middle of the third book now. Also re-reading Station Eleven as a read-aloud - we started it months ago, when it didn't feel quite so on the nose. We've also started The Chrysalids as another read-aloud. My post-apocalyptic fiction bent is starting to get awkward.

22PaulCranswick
Abr 12, 2020, 6:59 am



I wanted my message this year to be fairly universal in a time we all should be pulling together, whatever our beliefs. Happy Celebration, Happy Sunday, Katie.

23humouress
Abr 12, 2020, 11:27 am

Hmm. I’m seeing Aliette de Boddard mentioned favourably a lot. The first couple of times I assumed she was a medieval writer but I’m thinking she’s someone whose books I should look into.

24Foxen
Abr 15, 2020, 1:56 pm

I'm not sure how I feel about de Boddard. The series is good fun, but it's a little formulaic and hasn't really gripped me, while still being entertaining all the way through. I'm enjoying this series mainly for the exploration of a mythology system I'm unfamiliar with, but I'm also kind of wondering what's actually known about it vs. gaps she's filling in. (Reasonable to do that in context, but that's something that leads me away from historical fiction, generally). There's also a lot of animal sacrifice, and the Kindle versions, at least, seem to be oddly poorly edited? (lots of missing quote marks, for whatever reason. No big deal, but unprofessional looking.) I also had to put down the third one for a while because there's an epidemic and the protagonist keeps breaking quarantine for plot reasons and I'm like, "I know you have a magic amulet but you're not sure it works and just stay. at. home.!" - but that's just the current context getting to me. :)

11) The Chrysalids by John Wyndham.
We finished this one yesterday. A good one! A several generations post-apocalpyse society dealing with genetic mutations and repressive policies. I liked the ambiguousness of the moral outcome, and it was a well-told story that holds up pretty well.

25ronincats
Abr 18, 2020, 9:28 pm

I recently read Servant of the Underworld but the library shut down before I could get the sequels. I read Rory last year and enjoyed it a lot.

26Foxen
Abr 20, 2020, 8:47 pm

I may have gotten both of the recommendations from your thread, Roni! I'm still plugging through the third Acatl book, but an unexpected side effect of working from home is that I previously did most of my leisure reading on the commute, so I've slowed down. It continues to be a good read, though, and I'm hoping for a good finale!

27Foxen
Abr 30, 2020, 2:37 pm

12) Master of the House of Darts by Aliette de Bodard. This one stuck the landing. Pretty good wrap up to a fairly solid series.

Not sure what I'm reading next. I picked something up, but don't like it and aren't even going to list it here. In a bit of a slump. I might re-read Lord of the Rings.

28humouress
Maio 12, 2020, 9:40 am

>24 Foxen: >27 Foxen: Well, I may get to her books if I run out of anything else to read.

29PaulCranswick
Dez 25, 2020, 3:28 am



I hope you get some of those at least, Katie, as we all look forward to a better 2021.

30humouress
Dez 25, 2020, 4:06 am



Wishing you and yours the very best of the season.

31Foxen
Jan 2, 2021, 2:14 am

Thanks Paul and Humouress! I hope you both had good holidays as well!