# Khadaji’s Whatcha Reading Thread - August 2025 edition
**URL:** https://boards.straightdope.com/t/khadaji-s-whatcha-reading-thread-august-2025-edition/1021495
**Category:** Cafe Society
**Tags:** comic-books-manga, books-writing-myths
**Created:** [July 30, 2025, 3:48am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/khadaji-s-whatcha-reading-thread-august-2025-edition/1021495 "2025-07-30T03:48:06Z")
**Posts on this page:** 20
**Page:** 2
### Author:  [@Frodo](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Frodo)
#### Post date: [August 5, 2025, 8:52pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/khadaji-s-whatcha-reading-thread-august-2025-edition/1021495/21 "2025-08-05T20:52:27Z")
With great power…
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### Author:  [@DZedNConfused](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/DZedNConfused)
#### Post date: [August 5, 2025, 10:19pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/khadaji-s-whatcha-reading-thread-august-2025-edition/1021495/22 "2025-08-05T22:19:24Z")
I also picked it up because of your recommend. :)😉
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### Author:  [@Dung\_Beetle](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Dung_Beetle)
#### Post date: [August 5, 2025, 10:28pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/khadaji-s-whatcha-reading-thread-august-2025-edition/1021495/23 "2025-08-05T22:28:46Z")
At this rate, Barbara Truelove’s gonna owe me money.
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### Author:  [@Dendarii\_Dame](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Dendarii_Dame)
#### Post date: [August 6, 2025, 9:34pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/khadaji-s-whatcha-reading-thread-august-2025-edition/1021495/24 "2025-08-06T21:34:53Z")
Still reading _Man With a Bull-Tongue Plow_ by Jesse Stuart. Finished _The Long Way Down_, by Robb White, a YA novel from the 1970’s about trapeze artists which I found more entertaining than I expected, and _Rumbles: A Curious History of the Gut_, by Elsa Richardson, much of the content of which I’d already read elsewhere.
Next up: _The Remains of the Day_, by Kazuo Ishiguro, and _In Miniature: How Small Things Illuminate the World_, by Simon Garfield.
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### Author:  [@Catamount](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Catamount)
#### Post date: [August 9, 2025, 2:44pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/khadaji-s-whatcha-reading-thread-august-2025-edition/1021495/25 "2025-08-09T14:44:52Z")
Envy me, for I have been to the library and obtained the latest Benjamin January mystery, _Murder in the Trembling Lands_.
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### Author:  [@Elendil\_s\_Heir](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Elendil_s_Heir)
#### Post date: [August 10, 2025, 3:11am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/khadaji-s-whatcha-reading-thread-august-2025-edition/1021495/26 "2025-08-10T03:11:39Z")
> [@CalMeacham](#):
>
> I finished the audiobook of Ron Chernow’s **Alexander Hamilton** …
>
> I knew he was on Washington’s army staff, but didn’t realize how essential he was to the general, nor that he was writing the Federalist papers at the same time…
>
> According to Chernow, Hamilton intended to not fire his shot at his opponent in the duel with Aaron Burr… Burr even tried to lead a session in the House afterwards, to the surprise of the members…
Great book! But Hamilton resigned his Army commission in 1782; he didn’t write any of _The Federalist Papers_ until after the Constitutional Convention of 1787.
Burr was Vice President of the United States and would’ve been presiding over the Senate, not the House.
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### Author:  [@Elendil\_s\_Heir](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Elendil_s_Heir)
#### Post date: [August 10, 2025, 3:38am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/khadaji-s-whatcha-reading-thread-august-2025-edition/1021495/27 "2025-08-10T03:38:51Z")
Zipped through the graphic novel of _The Martian Chronicles_ by Ray Bradbury, illustr. by Dennis Calero. Bradbury’s words are as good as ever; Calero is an amateurish artist not at all up to the challenges of the text. Don’t waste your time.
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### Author:  [@DZedNConfused](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/DZedNConfused)
#### Post date: [August 10, 2025, 5:37pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/khadaji-s-whatcha-reading-thread-august-2025-edition/1021495/28 "2025-08-10T17:37:00Z")
Finished _Stone & Sky_ by Ben Aaronovitch. It was a fun romp into corporate espionage and Scottish folklore. I’m enjoying the person Abigail is becoming and I am ALWAYS here for Peter’s snark.
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### Author:  [@Dung\_Beetle](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Dung_Beetle)
#### Post date: [August 11, 2025, 2:11pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/khadaji-s-whatcha-reading-thread-august-2025-edition/1021495/29 "2025-08-11T14:11:56Z")
I finished Royal Gambit over the weekend, it was really good! One of the best in the Rook series so far.
I started today on
> **[Service Model](https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/195790861-service-model?ac=1&from_search=true&qid=egpIJsOExe&rank=1)**
>
> To fix the world they first must break it further. Hum…
It’s about a robot left to its own devices in a world where human authority is disappearing. Off to a slow start, but seems promising.
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### Author:  [@Little\_Nemo](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Little_Nemo)
#### Post date: [August 11, 2025, 2:41pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/khadaji-s-whatcha-reading-thread-august-2025-edition/1021495/30 "2025-08-11T14:41:45Z")
> [@Dung\_Beetle](#):
>
> It’s about a robot left to its own devices in a world where human authority is disappearing. Off to a slow start, but seems promising.
You might want to check out _Saturn’s Children_ by Charles Stross. It’s about a robot society where humans have gone extinct. The problem for the robots is that while they are intelligent and self-aware, they also were programmed with the central purpose of serving humans. So they’re trying to adjust to a society where their central purpose is no longer possible.
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### Author:  [@Dung\_Beetle](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Dung_Beetle)
#### Post date: [August 11, 2025, 3:14pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/khadaji-s-whatcha-reading-thread-august-2025-edition/1021495/31 "2025-08-11T15:14:19Z")
Thanks!
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### Author:  [@Dendarii\_Dame](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Dendarii_Dame)
#### Post date: [August 11, 2025, 11:32pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/khadaji-s-whatcha-reading-thread-august-2025-edition/1021495/32 "2025-08-11T23:32:45Z")
Still reading _Man With a Bull-Tongue Plow_ by Jesse Stuart. Finished _The Remains of the Day_, by Kazuo Ishiguro, which was okay; and _In Miniature: How Small Things Illuminate the World_, by Simon Garfield, which was very interesting and enjoyable.
Next: _Robert B. Parker’s Hot Property_, a Spenser novel by Mike Lupica, and _Rosamond Lehmann in Vegas_, a collection of columns from The Believer magazine by Nick Hornby.
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### Author:  [@MacDoc](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/MacDoc)
#### Post date: [August 12, 2025, 12:15am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/khadaji-s-whatcha-reading-thread-august-2025-edition/1021495/33 "2025-08-12T00:15:07Z")
Lots of space opera, bit of bodice ripper, intriguing mystery.
[https://allaboutromance.com/book-review/paradox-series-by-rachel-bach/](https://allaboutromance.com/book-review/paradox-series-by-rachel-bach/)
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### Author:  [@SCAdian](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/SCAdian)
#### Post date: [August 12, 2025, 2:53am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/khadaji-s-whatcha-reading-thread-august-2025-edition/1021495/34 "2025-08-12T02:53:38Z")
So far this month I’ve finished:
_After Daybreak: The Liberation of Bergen-Belsen, 1945_, by Ben Shephard – A Nazi concentration camp (the one where Anne Frank died) liberated by the British.
_The Winds of Fate_, by S M Stirling – the second book in his new series, about a history professor and four grad students who are tricked into taking a trip from 21st-century Austria to second-century Pannonia (same place, different name, very different government).
_Their Backs Against the Sea: The Battle of Saipan and the Largest Banzai Attack of World War II_, by Bill Sloan – also covers the Battle of Tinian.
_Etiquette and Espionage_, by Gail Carriger – the first book in her second series of steampunk stories, which are actually prequels to her first series, set in 1850s England. A fourteen-year-old girl is sent to a rather nonstandard finishing school.
_The Axmann Conspiracy: The Nazi Plan for a Fourth Reich and How the U.S. Army defeated It_, by Scott Andrew Selby – Axmann was the last head of the Hitler Youth, and was supposed to start preparations for the eventual return to power of the Nazis.
Currently reading:
_Tarzan the Magnificent_, the 21st book in the series by Edgar Rice Burroughs. Could have sworn I’d read all 24 books back in the late '60s/early '70s, but the only things in this one that are at all familiar are Tarzan and Muviro.
_Soulless_, by Gail Carriger – the first book in the above-mentioned first series, set in 1870s England.
_Infantry Soldier: Holding the Line at the Battle of the Bulge_ , by George W Neill – memoir of a soldier in the 99th Infantry Division.
Coming up:
I’ll probably get _Curtsies & Conspiracies_, by Gail Carriger, the second Finishing School book. And I’m going to reread _Jungle Girl_ (aka _The Land of Hidden Men_), by Edgar Rice Burroughs, in which a newly minted American doctor stumbles across a lost city in the Cambodian jungle.
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### Author:  [@Elendil\_s\_Heir](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Elendil_s_Heir)
#### Post date: [August 12, 2025, 4:22am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/khadaji-s-whatcha-reading-thread-august-2025-edition/1021495/35 "2025-08-12T04:22:18Z")
> [@Little\_Nemo](#):
>
> …You might want to check out _Saturn’s Children_ by Charles Stross. It’s about a robot society where humans have gone extinct. The problem for the robots is that while they are intelligent and self-aware, they also were programmed with the central purpose of serving humans. So they’re trying to adjust to a society where their central purpose is no longer possible.
I read that awhile back. I loved the concept but was underwhelmed by the actual writing.
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### Author:  [@zimaane](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/zimaane)
#### Post date: [August 12, 2025, 5:12pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/khadaji-s-whatcha-reading-thread-august-2025-edition/1021495/36 "2025-08-12T17:12:26Z")
**Starlings: The Curious Odyssey of a Most Hated Bird** Mike Stark
In the late 1800s Eugene Schieffelin, a wealthy New Yorker, released several hundred European starlings that he had had shipped over from England (sturnus vulgaris) into Central Park\*. This was not a good idea. Within a few decades the noisy aggressive birds were a nuisance all over the country Schemes with varying degrees of hare brainedness were undertaken to rid cities and farms of the invaders, without success. Nowadays we mostly just put up with them.
\* there is a story that he did this because he wanted every bird mentioned in Shakespeare to be living in the park, but this is likely not true.
Short pleasant book.
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### Author:  [@Railer13](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Railer13)
#### Post date: [August 14, 2025, 7:55pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/khadaji-s-whatcha-reading-thread-august-2025-edition/1021495/37 "2025-08-14T19:55:47Z")
Just finished _A Serial Killer’s Guide to Marriage_ by Asia Mackay. An unusual storyline, in which two serial killers, both of whom prey on Really Bad Men, meet and fall in love. After they are married, they become a lethal killing team, eliminating scumbags all over Europe. After baby comes, however, the killing stops, and they are suddenly another suburban couple. But a couple of years later, the bloodlust returns.
I enjoyed this book for the most part, although I thought it dragged somewhat in the second half. But a really surprise ending made up for that shortcoming. Overall, I would recommend this book.
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### Author:  [@Dendarii\_Dame](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Dendarii_Dame)
#### Post date: [August 14, 2025, 9:20pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/khadaji-s-whatcha-reading-thread-august-2025-edition/1021495/38 "2025-08-14T21:20:00Z")
Still reading _Man With a Bull-Tongue Plow_ by Jesse Stuart. Finished _Robert B. Parker’s Hot Property_, a Spenser novel by Mike Lupica, and _Rosamond Lehmann in Vegas_, a collection of book review columns from The Believer magazine by Nick Hornby, both of which were okay.
Next: _Ruled Britannia_, by Harry Turtledove.
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### Author:  [@Siam\_Sam](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Siam_Sam)
#### Post date: [August 15, 2025, 3:00am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/khadaji-s-whatcha-reading-thread-august-2025-edition/1021495/39 "2025-08-15T03:00:29Z")
Finished _Never Flinch_, the latest by by Stephen King. Two separate cases – a serial killer on the loose and a psycho pro-life religious nut stalking a pro-choice icon on her lecture tour – eventually converge. Private eye Holly Gibney is on the job. Quite good.
Have started _The Big Empty_, Robert Crais’ latest. Almost halfway through. A young Internet influencer hires Elvis Cole to find her father, who vanished suddenly ten years earlier when she was 13. I expect to finish it before our imminent move back to Bangkok, although things are a bit chaotic at the moment.
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### Author:  [@Elendil\_s\_Heir](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Elendil_s_Heir)
#### Post date: [August 15, 2025, 3:47am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/khadaji-s-whatcha-reading-thread-august-2025-edition/1021495/40 "2025-08-15T03:47:30Z")
> [@Elendil\_s\_Heir](#):
>
> …Just started _Lula Dean’s Little Library of Banned Books_ by Kirsten Miller, about a prudish woman in a small Georgia town and her comic comeuppance. It almost failed my 50-page rule, but then it got better, and I think I’ll finish it after all.
>
> Still reading Andy Weir’s _Project Hail Mary_ now and then with my son.
I finished the first. A mostly-funny little novel with some good things to say about freedom, love, history, courage, and the abiding and transformative power of reading. It’s a good book-club book.
Made a little progress on the second. Just hasn’t grabbed me the way _The Martian_ did.
Now about halfway through _Knife_, Salman Rushdie’s short memoir of the 2022 _fatwa_-inspired murder attempt against him at Chautauqua, and its aftermath. Both harrowing and interesting.
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