Khadaji's What'cha Readin' thread - June 2014

Auntie Pam was the OP for these threads for awhile (as was Le Ministre de l’au-delà before her), but she recently asked me to take over. I’ll do so for now, but if someone else would really like to, he or she is more than welcome to it.

Link to the May thread: Khadaji's What'cha reading -- May 2014 - Cafe Society - Straight Dope Message Board

I’m making slow progress through Andrew Solomon’s Far From the Tree, about child development and parenting of kids from troubled backgrounds.

**Khadaji ** was one of the earlier members of the SDMB, and he was well known as a kindly person who always had something encouraging to say, particularly in the self-improvement threads. He was also a voracious, omnivorous reader; and he started these monthly book threads. Sadly, he passed away in January 2013, and it was decided that we should rename these monthly threads in his honour.

I just finished Augusten Burroughs Sellevision. Not nearly as good as his later autobiographical books, but quite amusing all the same.

I’ve been reading some of the stories and essays in Washington Irving’s Sketch Book. Some of them I thought were rather good, but I’ve skipped past a few. At any rate, it hasn’t really grabbed me so far.

I’ve gotten woefully behind on my reviews, so will try to turn over a new leaf this month.

Recently finished On Gold Mountain: The One-Hundred-Year Odyssey of My Chinese-American Family by Lisa See. I first spotted it as an Amazon Kindle sale item, but opted to check it out from the library instead.
I found this book to be a fairly engrossing look at a personalized history of the immigrant Chinese experience in California (specifically San Francisco, Sacramento and Los Angeles) from the 1870’s onward. While I was aware of the big picture (men brought in to work on the railroads; the various Exclusion laws and regulations), being able to follow a single family provides a new perspective.

Fong See was a bit of an anomaly; his ambition led him to a merchant role; and his (common-law) marriage to an American woman afforded him more opportunity than a typical laborer of the time. His long life and success afforded him the chance to take additional wives back in China; bringing one to the States after his relationship with Ticie disintegrated. She was also a fairly remarkable woman, starting her own antique business and keeping her family afloat while Fong See started fresh with a traditional Chinese woman.

Unlike several GoodReads reviewers, I found the book very readable, and was not bothered by how See filled in the blanks in terms of what the individuals probably felt, thought and said over the years. See did include a Notes section citing her references; and the photo section was a nice addition. While I don’t know if I’ll return to this book in the future; I may have to look up some of Lisa See’s fiction work as well.

Recommended as at least a library read to those with an interest in immigrant experiences.

I’m about 60 pages into the 1200-page doorstop that is Boswell’s* Life of Samuel Johnson*, and to be honest it isn’t that bad. I’d say this was written before chapters were invented, but I’m also reading Fielding’s Tom Jones which was published about fifty years before the Life, so I know that’s a lie. Hey Boswell, chapter breaks would help a great deal.

Almost halfway through A Time to Kill, by John Grisham.

Still working on Angels Flight by Michael Connelly; not that the book is slow, I’ve just been busy for the first three days of my summer vacation. I need to shower, walk over to the convenience store, buy some sunflower seeds and curl up with the last 100 pages and git 'er done!

Just started two books this weekend: The Big Picture: 11 Laws That Will Change Your Life by Tony Horton, and the classic Fahrenheit 451 by Ray Bradbury.

I’ve only gotten through Tony Horton’s first law, but so far, I do not recommend the book one bit. I adore Horton’s on-screen personality (he leads the P90X workouts, among other things), but he’s not really a writer. If he had teamed up with a writer to write this book, I think it could have been much better. As is, I just don’t think that he’s armed with the rhetorical tools he needs to get his point across effectively.

As for Fahrenheit 451, I am so, so, so grateful that I never had to read this in school, because that would have taken all the fun out of it. Anytime you have to read a book and mark down important passages, look for central themes to write a thesis paper about, memorize things for reading quizzes, etc., it takes all the fun out of the book. This book is absolutely wonderful, chock full of deep thoughts and poetic language, and I am so glad that I can experience the book as a pleasure read rather than something for school.

Especially since your teacher would emphasize the censorship aspect of the book, when I feel Bradbury’s real message was what happens to people when they become truly isolated from each other. In so many ways, he predicted the explosion of reality TV and the internet. The main character’s wife is so cut off from real life that the people in her “soaps” are more real to her than her husband; with her wireless ear buds in they talk directly to her any time and all the time. I took Bradbury’s message about media and isolation far more to heart than censorship.

Totally agree! (At least so far, I’m only about 50 pages in.) I had thought it was more about censorship just based on what I’ve heard about it, so the focus on isolation surprised me.

It also made me realize that entertainment technology actually encourages person-to-person interaction more than it used to, what with radio and television being largely replaced by computers and cell phones (in other words, switching from one-way communication to two-way communication).

All righty, finished Angels Flight by Michael Connelly, and once more the twists at the end didn’t really surprise me but they suited the story.

I need something fluffy to read now… oooo Terry Pratchett!

Currently reading The Rathbones. It gets middling reviews on Amazon, but I’m about 75% through it and really like it. It’s the story of a New England whaling family told like a myth or fantasy. Very magical setting, story wanders around from generation to generation, back and forth in time. You have to like that sort of stuff to like the book, but if you do, highly recommended.

I’m about 70% of the way through Lisa Scottoline’s Final Appeal. It started off a bit rocky, but now I’m enjoying it. :slight_smile:

Next up is the latest Dresden Files book from Jim Butcher, Skin Game.

This morning I downloaded Supreme Justice, by Max Allan Collins. I’ve never read anything by him before, but it was the most promising of this month’s Kindle First offerings. So far none of these free books has inspired me to read more by the same author, but I still love that Amazon has this program for Prime members!

Finished Christopher Moore’s Fool. I really enjoyed the re-take on Shakespeare’s Lear, complete with snarky humor and gory details. Yep, the language is definitely filthy and there’s loads of debauchery, but it didn’t really bother me.

Still reading the other items from last month (Graves, Woolfson, et al.) plus picked up Lyndsey Faye’s Dust and Shadow. Thus far, a good Holmes pastiche that makes use of the suspects and details I got from Rumbelow’s Complete Jack the Ripper.

Finally remembered where I got the recommendation for Red Country too: it came from the “Fantasy and SF novels since 2000 that Might Be Essentials One Day.

Just finished up the audiobook version of Charlatan: America’s Most Dangerous Huckster, the Man Who Pursued Him, and the Age of Flimflam written by Pope Brock & narrated by Johnny Heller. I’ve read several books on medical quackery, and was vaguely aware of the main character of this story.

The Charlatan of the title is “Doctor” John R. Brinkley - the “Goat Glands Man” whose charisma and confidence regarding his xeno-tranplantation virility treatments in the early decades of the 20th century turned the small towns of Milford Kansas and Del Rio, Texas into pseudo-medical powerhouses. Along the way, Brinkley pioneered the use of radio and modern public relations in both advertising and politics, created one of the first “border blaster” Mexican radio stations and through that station introduced America to both hillbilly/bluegrass music and the blues/country crossovers that became rock & roll.

Brock has definitely done his research in both historical and medical/sociological scope, and presents the material as a storyteller would. There is some with some mildly risque commentary along the way… I don’t recall the quote exactly, but for example: " ever since man stood erect, he has been concerned about the erectness of his manhood". :smiley:
I found the exploits of Brinkley both fascinating and repellent - for example, he nearly got himself elected as governor of Kansas mere weeks after having his medical license revoked. The man was pulling in millions of dollars in income during the depth of the Depression - and spending it lavishly. His exploits helped found laws against medical malpractice; and his example has been followed by many a quack and charlatan since.

I really enjoyed this book and may return to it, or more likely, Brock’s other works, in the future. Recommended to those interested in human foibles, medical history and showmanship.

My book club read that some years ago and I found it meh. To each their own.

As if Mt. ToBeRead wasn’t high enough, here you come with this.

More or less what I said as I added it to the list … I can’t even squint and see the end of that list.

I’m also reading Andrew Solomon’s Far from the Tree. Interesting premise, and :dubious: several times in every chapter.

Definitely; a good portion of it seems to be just a long stream of anecdotes placed in no particular order. I can’t remember how much I read before I lost interest.