# Khadaji’s Whatcha Reading Thread - April 2022 edition **URL:** \ **Category:** Cafe Society\ **Tags:** books-writing-myths\ **Created:** [March 31, 2022, 4:16pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/khadaji-s-whatcha-reading-thread-april-2022-edition/962053 "2022-03-31T16:16:30Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 20\ **Page:** 1
**Author:** ![DZedNConfused](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/dzednconfused/32/15991_2.png) [@DZedNConfused](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/DZedNConfused)\ **Post date:** [March 31, 2022, 4:16pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/khadaji-s-whatcha-reading-thread-april-2022-edition/962053/1 "2022-03-31T16:16:30Z")
Spring in the Rocky Mountains… and finally breathable air! (Northern Utah is so nasty in the winter, keep your inhaler close) My daffodils are blooming and with today’s rain everything should be green again. So Whatcha all readin? In print: _Kissed a Sad Goodbye_ by Deborah Crombie, the 6th Duncan Kincaid & Gemma Jones book. So far it’s pretty good. Kindle: _The Stroke of Midnight_ by Parker St. John. This is a side story to her Cabrini Law Clinic series, which I love a lot. Audio: _Good Behaviour_ by Molly Keane. This was written early in the last century but not published until 1981, it’s very stiff upper lip British; I suspect if you’re a Evelyn Waugh fan, you’d like it. I don’t dislike it, I’m just not wowed by it. _Khadaji was one of the earlier members of 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, who started these threads 'way back in the Stone Age of 2005. Consequently, when he suddenly and quite unexpectedly passed away in January 2013, we decided to rename this thread in his honor and to keep his memory, if not his ghost, alive._ ---
**Author:** ![DZedNConfused](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/dzednconfused/32/15991_2.png) [@DZedNConfused](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/DZedNConfused)\ **Post date:** [March 31, 2022, 4:20pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/khadaji-s-whatcha-reading-thread-april-2022-edition/962053/2 "2022-03-31T16:20:46Z")
Last month: [What can I say about March that hasn’t been said about any disaster?](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/khadaji-s-whatcha-reading-thread-march-2022-edition/960245/98) ---
**Author:** ![Dung\_Beetle](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/dung_beetle/32/7945_2.png) [@Dung\_Beetle](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Dung_Beetle)\ **Post date:** [March 31, 2022, 6:09pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/khadaji-s-whatcha-reading-thread-april-2022-edition/962053/3 "2022-03-31T18:09:07Z")
I put this in the March thread this morning, but I’ll put it here too. 🙂 Yesterday I finished Best Horror of the Year, volume 13. Out of 25 stories, I really liked only two of them “It Doesn’t Feel Right” (Michael Marshall Smith) and “A Treat For Your Last Day” (Simon Bestwick). However, a high percentage of the remaining stories were decent, and only a few were dreck. Today, I’m going back to novels with Simone St. James’ [The Book of Cold Cases](https://www.amazon.com/Book-Cold-Cases-Simone-James/dp/0440000211/ref=sr_1_1?crid=15GFDB3L9TATP&keywords=the+book+of+cold+cases+by+simone+saint+james&qid=1648728800&sprefix=book+of+cold+%2Caps%2C81&sr=8-1). It’s about a true-crime blogger interviewing an acquitted murderess who lives in a possibly haunted house. (And since this is Simone St. James, yes, the house is actually haunted. Good.) ---
**Author:** ![Dendarii\_Dame](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/bbce88/32.png) [@Dendarii\_Dame](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Dendarii_Dame)\ **Post date:** [April 1, 2022, 5:32pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/khadaji-s-whatcha-reading-thread-april-2022-edition/962053/4 "2022-04-01T17:32:15Z")
Finished _Alfred Hitchcock Presents: A Month of Mystery_ , edited by Robert Arthur. I thought the best was “Hard Sell” by Craig Rice. Now I’m reading _The Upside_, by Abdel Sellou. ---
**Author:** ![zimaane](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/z/a3d4f5/32.png) [@zimaane](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/zimaane)\ **Post date:** [April 1, 2022, 6:00pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/khadaji-s-whatcha-reading-thread-april-2022-edition/962053/5 "2022-04-01T18:00:44Z")
**Doctor Who: Harvest of Time** Alastair Reynolds The Doctor, as portrayed by Jon Pertwee in the early 1970s, along with Jo Grant and the team from UNIT, investigate some mysterious events at oil platforms in the North Sea. Is there a connection to the Master, currently imprisoned nearby? Not a novelization of a show, but very consistent with the pace and feel of the old TV series. Good escapist fun. Recommended ---
**Author:** ![Meurglys](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/258eb7/32.png) [@Meurglys](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Meurglys)\ **Post date:** [April 2, 2022, 2:31pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/khadaji-s-whatcha-reading-thread-april-2022-edition/962053/6 "2022-04-02T14:31:18Z")
_Plutoshine_ by **Lucy Kissick** , set a few hundred years in the future about a scheme to terraform Pluto. Her style reminds me of Kim Stanley Robinson a bit. I’m about 1/3rd of the way through and enjoying it a lot. ---
**Author:** ![Dendarii\_Dame](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/bbce88/32.png) [@Dendarii\_Dame](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Dendarii_Dame)\ **Post date:** [April 2, 2022, 8:27pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/khadaji-s-whatcha-reading-thread-april-2022-edition/962053/7 "2022-04-02T20:27:46Z")
Finished _The Upside_ , by Abdel Sellou and Caroline Andrieu, translated by Lauren Sentuc. Meh. Now I’m reading _The Hills at Home_ by Nancy Clark. ---
**Author:** ![CalMeacham](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/calmeacham/32/35_2.png) [@CalMeacham](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/CalMeacham)\ **Post date:** [April 4, 2022, 12:39pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/khadaji-s-whatcha-reading-thread-april-2022-edition/962053/8 "2022-04-04T12:39:33Z")
Finished Nicholas Meyer’s Sherlock Holmes pastiche **The Return of the Pharaoh** and wasn’t very satisfied. I liked _The Seven per Cent Solution_ and _The West End Horror_, but didn’t care for his later _The Canary Trainer_. I haven’t read _The Adventure of the Peculiar Protocols_, and now I’m not sure I want to. I’m a big fan of Holmes pastiches, although I recognize that most of them aren’t even close to capturing Arthur Conan Doyle’s style, and most don’t even try. (A rare exception was the collection The Exploits of Sherlock Holmes, written by Doyle’s son, Adrian, and classic mystery writer John Dickson Carr. Half the stories are by Carr alone, and I suspect her wrote 90% of the others. Those stories felt as if the elder Doyle really did write them.) I could overlook Meyer’s quasi-Doyle writing, but the characters seem to stray farther from the originals here, and there are too many anachronistic and non-Holmesian phrases and thoughts. And the mystery wasn’t that good. Now I’m reading L. Sprague de Camp’s autobiography **Time and Changes** , and enjoying it more. I didn’t even realize that de Camp had written an autobiography until two months ago. It’s got a great cover painting by Frank Kelly Freas, who did all those pulp sf/fantasy covers for magazines de Camp’s work appeared in (not to mention some great stuff for Mad). The book was published in 1995, five years before de Camp’s death (and ten years before Freas’). The book won the Hugo for best non-fiction in 1997, which shows I oughta pay more attention. > **[Time and Chance: An Autobiography](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Time_and_Chance:_An_Autobiography)** > > Pages for logged out editors learn more > > Time and Chance: an Autobiography is the autobiography of science fiction and fantasy writer L. Sprague de Camp, first published in hardcover by Donald M. Grant, Publisher, Inc. in 1996. An E-book edition was published by Gollancz's SF Gateway imprint on September 29, 2011, as part of a general release of de Camp's works in electronic form. > The book covers the writer's life and ancestry in a series of vignettes extending from the immigration of h... On audio, I’m finishing up Stephen King’s **If it Bleeds** ---
**Author:** ![Dung\_Beetle](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/dung_beetle/32/7945_2.png) [@Dung\_Beetle](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Dung_Beetle)\ **Post date:** [April 4, 2022, 3:29pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/khadaji-s-whatcha-reading-thread-april-2022-edition/962053/9 "2022-04-04T15:29:15Z")
I finished The Book of Cold Cases, and am happy to report that Simone St. James is back on her ghost story game! Today I read about half of [Cosmogramma](https://www.amazon.com/Cosmogramma-Courttia-Newland/dp/1617759783/ref=sr_1_1?crid=EMFZSY4IZAVU&keywords=cosmogramma+courttia+newland&qid=1649085903&sprefix=cosmogramma%2Caps%2C73&sr=8-1), short sci-fi stories by Courttia Newland. It’s okay, but I’m not going to bother finishing. ---
**Author:** ![Elendil\_s\_Heir](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/e/7cd45c/32.png) [@Elendil\_s\_Heir](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Elendil_s_Heir)\ **Post date:** [April 4, 2022, 7:07pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/khadaji-s-whatcha-reading-thread-april-2022-edition/962053/10 "2022-04-04T19:07:38Z")
**CalMeacham** , if I haven’t already recommended her, allow me to put in a plug for June Thomson’s pastiches. If you’d never read the best five Conan Doyle stories and just about any five of hers, with author names removed, I’d defy you to guess who wrote what. Start with _The Secret Files of Sherlock Holmes_, a terrific collection, and go from there. I’m now coming to the end of _The Hundred Days_ by Patrick O’Brian, the next in his celebrated series of Napoleonic naval adventures. Capt. John “Lucky Jack” Aubrey is hoping for orders from a not-especially-friendly superior to intercept and capture a French treasure ship, while his particular friend and ship’s surgeon Dr. Stephen Maturin has just returned from an informative bit of espionage in Algiers. Excellent, as are all of O’Brian’s books IMHO. About halfway done with the 1936 Newbery Honor winner, _All Sail Set_ by Armstrong Sperry, a YA novel about a young man who helps design and then sails from New York to China as an apprentice sailor aboard the famous clipper ship _Flying Cloud_ . A straightforward adventure story with beautiful woodcut illustrations (reminiscent of Rockwell Kent) by the author. Still enjoying John Scalzi’s sf novel _Zoe’s Tale_, about a human colony hiding from hostile aliens. I’ve been hopping around in _Hitler’s Empire: How the Nazis Ruled Europe_, a very interesting history book by Mark Mazower, looking up things in the index that interest me. Mazower shows just how ill-conceived, haphazard and pointless (often self-defeatingly evil, even when it didn’t “need” to be) the Third Reich’s governance could be. ---
**Author:** ![DZedNConfused](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/dzednconfused/32/15991_2.png) [@DZedNConfused](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/DZedNConfused)\ **Post date:** [April 4, 2022, 11:14pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/khadaji-s-whatcha-reading-thread-april-2022-edition/962053/11 "2022-04-04T23:14:14Z")
I finished _Good Behaviour_ by Molly Keane. It was… very early 20th century comedy of manners. I would have loved it as a 20 year old. I don’t regret reading it, it was an odd experience and a decent distraction. If you like Evelyn Waugh, Dorothy L Sayer, Oscar Wilde, you will quite likely like this one. ---
**Author:** ![Elendil\_s\_Heir](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/e/7cd45c/32.png) [@Elendil\_s\_Heir](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Elendil_s_Heir)\ **Post date:** [April 5, 2022, 7:23pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/khadaji-s-whatcha-reading-thread-april-2022-edition/962053/12 "2022-04-05T19:23:03Z")
My library pulled back my audiobook of O’Brian’s _The Hundred Days_ because someone else wanted it, dammit, so I’m taking an involuntary break from that book (with less than an hour to go). In the meantime, I’ve begun an audiobook of Amor Towles’s _The Lincoln Highway_. So far it’s meh, but I’ll keep going for now. ---
**Author:** ![Dung\_Beetle](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/dung_beetle/32/7945_2.png) [@Dung\_Beetle](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Dung_Beetle)\ **Post date:** [April 6, 2022, 3:12pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/khadaji-s-whatcha-reading-thread-april-2022-edition/962053/13 "2022-04-06T15:12:06Z")
Currently reading [Beneath the Stairs](https://www.amazon.com/Beneath-Stairs-Novel-Jennifer-Fawcett/dp/1982177152/ref=sr_1_1?crid=35R9AL9L3WU71&keywords=beneath+the+stairs+jennifer+fawcett&qid=1649253308&s=books&sprefix=beneath+the+staris%2Cstripbooks%2C276&sr=1-1) by Jennifer Fawcett, about a haunted house. ---
**Author:** ![Ulf\_the\_Unwashed](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/u/b4bc9f/32.png) [@Ulf\_the\_Unwashed](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Ulf_the_Unwashed)\ **Post date:** [April 7, 2022, 1:23am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/khadaji-s-whatcha-reading-thread-april-2022-edition/962053/14 "2022-04-07T01:23:56Z")
Finished _The Clutter Corpse_ by Simon Brett, about a professional declutterer (who actually functions more like a social worker IMO) who stumbles upon not one but two dead bodies in the course of her work. A real potato chip book, not sorry I read it. There’s apparently a sequel (the book jacket describes this as “the first of a brilliant new mystery series”) which I may see if I can find, two potato chips being better than one. Or something. ---
**Author:** ![Left\_Hand\_of\_Dorkness](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/left_hand_of_dorkness/32/7156_2.png) [@Left\_Hand\_of\_Dorkness](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Left_Hand_of_Dorkness)\ **Post date:** [April 7, 2022, 2:42pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/khadaji-s-whatcha-reading-thread-april-2022-edition/962053/15 "2022-04-07T14:42:07Z")
Man, I’m reading slowly this year. Just finished [A Desolation Called Peace](https://www.goodreads.com/en/book/show/45154547), by Arkady Martine. Absolutely read the first book (A Memory Called Empire) first–but if space opera with a brilliantly-realized empire based loosely on Byzantium and the Aztec Empire, coupled with meditations on selfhood, assassination attempts, and hot lesbian romance appeals, it’s a series worth checking out. It’s one of the best books I’ve read in awhile. That said, I want to discuss what may be a ginormous plot hole. Don’t open the spoiler if you might read the book at some point: So, the aliens in their giant wheel ships are all of a single harmonious mind, right? And this is the first alien contact they’ve had with a species of individuals, such that it rocks their freakin’ world to realize that individuals can be people, right? _Then why is their military tech so advanced?_ It seems really unlikely they fight wars amongst themselves, given their harmonious mind. And it seems unlikely they’ve fought wars against another spacefaring species, given how astonished they are at the idea of sentient individuals. Who are they fighting with, then, that they’ve developed battleship technology? This by no means ruins the book for me, but I hope someone has an answer. ---
**Author:** ![Dendarii\_Dame](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/bbce88/32.png) [@Dendarii\_Dame](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Dendarii_Dame)\ **Post date:** [April 7, 2022, 3:22pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/khadaji-s-whatcha-reading-thread-april-2022-edition/962053/16 "2022-04-07T15:22:40Z")
Finished _The Hills at Home_ by Nancy Clark, which I mostly enjoyed. Now I’m reading _Of Bears and Ballots: An Alaskan Adventure in Small-Town Politics_, by Heather Lende. ---
**Author:** ![Dendarii\_Dame](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/bbce88/32.png) [@Dendarii\_Dame](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Dendarii_Dame)\ **Post date:** [April 9, 2022, 6:27pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/khadaji-s-whatcha-reading-thread-april-2022-edition/962053/17 "2022-04-09T18:27:16Z")
Finished _Of Bears and Ballots: An Alaskan Adventure in Small-Town Politics_ , by Heather Lende, which I enjoyed. Now I’m reading _The Last Cuentista_ by Donna Barbra Higuera, this year’s Newbery Prize winner. It has the distinction of the highest number of people killed in what’s called “Death by Newbery”–billions when Earth is destroyed by a comet. (I didn’t spoiler it because that information is at the beginning of the novel and on the inside front cover.) ---
**Author:** ![Dung\_Beetle](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/dung_beetle/32/7945_2.png) [@Dung\_Beetle](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Dung_Beetle)\ **Post date:** [April 9, 2022, 10:13pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/khadaji-s-whatcha-reading-thread-april-2022-edition/962053/18 "2022-04-09T22:13:10Z")
I finished Beneath the Stairs. The ghost story parts were well done and interesting, but the romance subplot featuring the living characters was really getting on my nerves by the end. The author made sure to let us know how things were going to work out for them, when what I actually wanted to know was how things were going to work out supernaturally. I think the book would have been improved by cutting out the whole living-folks relationship (and the unnecessary sex scenes, ugh). However, overall the book was decent, and I would give the author another chance. ---
**Author:** ![Love\_Rhombus](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/love_rhombus/32/10694_2.png) [@Love\_Rhombus](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Love_Rhombus)\ **Post date:** [April 10, 2022, 12:03pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/khadaji-s-whatcha-reading-thread-april-2022-edition/962053/19 "2022-04-10T12:03:13Z")
I just started The Spy In Moscow Station- there’s a lot of technical information and descriptions of the various ways the Russians were using microwaves to gather information. I thought it would be dull but the author keeps it brisk enough to be interesting even if you’re not technically inclined. ---
**Author:** ![Siam\_Sam](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/d78d45/32.png) [@Siam\_Sam](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Siam_Sam)\ **Post date:** [April 10, 2022, 10:08pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/khadaji-s-whatcha-reading-thread-april-2022-edition/962053/20 "2022-04-10T22:08:26Z")
Still on _The House of Morgan: An American Banking Dynasty and the Rise of Modern Finance_ , by Ron Chernow. Will take awhile. Big, and I have limited reading time. [Next page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/khadaji-s-whatcha-reading-thread-april-2022-edition/962053.md?page=2)