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2020 book thread:
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Murder Must Advertise - Dorothy L Sayers. I thought I'd read all the Wimsey books! what a delight to find I'm wrong. And this is one of the best ones - Lord Wimsey undercover at an office job, lots of gossip, and melancholy bits about consumerism.
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The Manager's Path - Camille Fournier This is a good practical straightforward book about being a technical manager - which is not what I am, but is close enough to be useful. No huge revelations, but as stuff comes up at work I'm recognising the frames & mindsets from the book.
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The Breath of the Sun - Rachel Fellman A fantasy novel about climbing a mountain so tall it goes all the way to space. About religion and small communities and the way later parts of out lives lay entangled over the earlier parts. I love how layered the text is.
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Close to the Machine - Ellen Ullman I bought this as a twitch reaction to recent women-in-tech memoirs and it is fantastic and sharp and completely relevant. So many paragraphs I want to post photos of.
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Excellences & Perfections - Amalia Ulman an art book documenting her Instagram performance (which I like a lot), with some nice essays at the front (inc Steyerl on 419 scams). The Ananda letters section was really well judged, giving context and contrast to the work.
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The Stars Are Legion - Kameron Hurley think I got this because of the generation ship kick I was on... interesting Mastaba Snoopy-like worldbuilding, but it focused on adventuring and political machinations, and neither of those seized my imagination in the satisfying way.
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Paladin's Grace - T Kingfisher burned through this last night. it describes itself as a fluffy fantasy romance with severed heads. it turns out I really needed to read something where two damaged people care for each other. also recommended if you're into descriptions of perfume.
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Gideon The Ninth - Tamsyn Muir feel like this thread is revealing my somewhat trashy tastes... more stuff about corpses and damaged people having feelings. also very good, though. does both god-emperors who have ruled for 10000 years but also that the skull makeup gives her spots
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[read a bunch of books but didn't update this thread, might add later, but I wanna post about the one I read today, so skipping forward...]
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Signal to Noise - Silvia Moreno-Garcia loved Prime Meridian, loved this. set in Mexico City, a music-is-magic story about teenagers & the adults they become. all the characters feel like they have their own stuff going on, a sense of class & history & relationships.
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Nicola Griffith - Ammonite an anthropologist, a planet with mysteries, a lurking space bureaucracy, hard journeys. but mainly about becoming part of a community, finding a home. from nearly 30 yrs ago, but prefigures a lot of current queer SF books.