# Khadaji’s Whatcha Reading Thread - December 2025 edition **URL:** \ **Category:** Cafe Society\ **Tags:** comic-books-manga, books-writing-myths\ **Created:** [November 30, 2025, 2:12am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/khadaji-s-whatcha-reading-thread-december-2025-edition/1025247 "2025-11-30T02:12:57Z")\ **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:** [November 30, 2025, 2:12am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/khadaji-s-whatcha-reading-thread-december-2025-edition/1025247/1 "2025-11-30T02:12:57Z")
Sitting here listening to fireworks as my city celebrates the beginning of the Christmas season, and wondering just where did this year go?! Wasn’t it just yesterday that we were complaining about the heat? Well two weeks ago, since this month started amazingly, and frighteningly, warm in the low 70s. Sspoiler: November in the Rockies should be mid 50s tops more like upper 40s) Anyway, the fireworks have ended so MERRY CHRISTMAS, HAPPY HANNUKAH, HAPPY KWANZAA, HAPPY EID and if I’ve missed a holiday, I apologize. So what are we reading as we bid adieu to 2025? In print: _Murder on the Orient Express_ by Dame Agatha Christie. I read this over 40 years ago and barring a bit of casual racism and one slur, it still holds up at nearly 100 years old. The impossible nature of the crime is really well thought out and brain breaky. On Kindle: _The Maid’s Secret_ by Emily Organ. Murder and shenanigans in 1880s London. Audio: _Spooky Business_ by S. E Harmon, the 3rd in her series about a ghost whisperer and a cold case unit in south Florida. _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:** [November 30, 2025, 2:19am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/khadaji-s-whatcha-reading-thread-december-2025-edition/1025247/2 "2025-11-30T02:19:32Z")
Last month: [Remember, remember! The fifth of November, The Gunpowder treason and plot;](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/khadaji-s-whatcha-reading-thread-november-2025-edition/1024462/64) I finished _The Mapmaker’s Apprentice_ by C. J. Archer yesterday. It’s the second in her Glass and Steele series, a precocious apprentice goes missing , some things get found, matchmaking was attempted and the last 25 to 30 pages were read as fast as my Kindle could turn them. ---
**Author:** ![SuntanLotion](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/suntanlotion/32/16165_2.png) [@SuntanLotion](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/SuntanLotion)\ **Post date:** [November 30, 2025, 2:21am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/khadaji-s-whatcha-reading-thread-december-2025-edition/1025247/3 "2025-11-30T02:21:48Z")
Almost done with Last Rites by Ozzy. Kindof depressing. ---
**Author:** ![Tripler](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/tripler/32/21807_2.png) [@Tripler](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Tripler)\ **Post date:** [November 30, 2025, 2:42am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/khadaji-s-whatcha-reading-thread-december-2025-edition/1025247/4 "2025-11-30T02:42:17Z")
_New Cold Wars_ by David Sanger. About halfway done. Tripler I finished a few others this year already. ---
**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:** [November 30, 2025, 4:32am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/khadaji-s-whatcha-reading-thread-december-2025-edition/1025247/5 "2025-11-30T04:32:41Z")
Finished _Project Hail Mary_ by Andy Weir, about an unwilling astronaut from Earth who makes first contact with a resourceful alien; both work together to save their respective homeworlds. I liked it, but not quite as much as the author’s _The Martian_. There’ll be a movie with Ryan Gosling and Sandra Huller coming out in March. I’m just a chapter into _It’s Only Drowning_ by David Litt, nonfiction by a former Obama speechwriter who turns to surfing, of all things, to deal with his stress over Trump and COVID. Hasn’t wowed me so far. ---
**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:** [November 30, 2025, 11:46am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/khadaji-s-whatcha-reading-thread-december-2025-edition/1025247/6 "2025-11-30T11:46:05Z")
> [@Elendil\_s\_Heir](#): > > There’ll be a movie with Ryan Gosling and Sandra Huller coming out in March. Counting down the days! ---
**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:** [November 30, 2025, 4:16pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/khadaji-s-whatcha-reading-thread-december-2025-edition/1025247/7 "2025-11-30T16:16:12Z")
I couldn’t sleep last night, so sat up and read Cinder House in one go. It’s a retelling of Cinderella in which the main character is a dead bisexual house. 😄 Okay, I’m oversimplifying that, but not lying. It was decent. The author is Freya Marske, check it out. ---
**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:** [November 30, 2025, 6:35pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/khadaji-s-whatcha-reading-thread-december-2025-edition/1025247/8 "2025-11-30T18:35:52Z")
Just the thing for when others won’t leave you alone with your latest page-turner: > **[Fuck Off I'm Reading Crew Socks](https://www.crazysocks.com/products/fuck-off-im-reading-crew-socks?srsltid=AfmBOop11h4iTFS0VLrPkWaDD5bKIdyShX_wfbQbiASbDsPYu4MphRB4)** > > Don't let anyone get between you and your book! When they try, just point to your sassy, swearing socks that declare "Fuck off, I'm reading." They'll get it. ---
**Author:** ![SuntanLotion](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/suntanlotion/32/16165_2.png) [@SuntanLotion](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/SuntanLotion)\ **Post date:** [November 30, 2025, 7:08pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/khadaji-s-whatcha-reading-thread-december-2025-edition/1025247/9 "2025-11-30T19:08:07Z")
I want ones that say Don’t talk while I’m watching the game. ---
**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:** [November 30, 2025, 11:43pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/khadaji-s-whatcha-reading-thread-december-2025-edition/1025247/10 "2025-11-30T23:43:14Z")
I need to put those on my Christmas list ---
**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:** [December 1, 2025, 1:24pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/khadaji-s-whatcha-reading-thread-december-2025-edition/1025247/11 "2025-12-01T13:24:53Z")
I just finished _The Player of Games_, by Ian Banks. It’s a 1988 SF semi-classic (as in, not really known outside the field but pretty well known within the field), and given its age, I’m gonna discuss it in a spoilery way; you’ve been warned. The prose is lovely. Banks has a way with a turn of phrase. The main character is loathsome. I know I was supposed to find him flawed, but I hated him throughout the book, to the extent that it made the book unpleasant to read. He’s in a post-scarcity utopia in which gender-bending is ubiquitous and in which there are no formal hierarchies, but he’s achieved fame by being the best games-player in all the known worlds. Cool! And he’s constantly pursuing younger women for sex, and never changing his own gender, and cheats at a game with a teenage girl because he’s so threatened by her genius, and treats everyone around him like absolute garbage. It felt like the author couldn’t imagine a future without creepy arrogant professors. The game itself is essentially a board game, which feels really time-specific. While we’ve had Chess and Go around for awhile, the book is set something like ten thousand years in the future, and it’s a little hidebound to think that the game they play would be so similar to late-twentieth-century nerd games. One key component of the game–devised by an alien civilization far removed from Earth–is a board on which earth, air, fire, and water are the main powers. Yep: aliens came up with the classical elements, not of ancient China, or various Native American groups, or sub-Saharan African nations, but the classical elements of ancient Greece. I appreciate what the author was going for. The book starts off _Ender’s Game_ and ends up _The Spy Who Came In from the Cold_, which is very cool. But I found it fell short in several key ways of its ambitions. ---
**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:** [December 1, 2025, 4:25pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/khadaji-s-whatcha-reading-thread-december-2025-edition/1025247/12 "2025-12-01T16:25:35Z")
I read it a few years ago and although I liked it, all in all, I haven’t felt compelled to go on to read any of his other books about the Culture (it’s “Iain,” BTW). ---
**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:** [December 2, 2025, 8:33am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/khadaji-s-whatcha-reading-thread-december-2025-edition/1025247/13 "2025-12-02T08:33:36Z")
Finished _1984_, by George Orwell. You know the story unless you’ve been living under a rock somewhere. A reread after first reading it 41 years ago in 1984, when we thought Reagan was the worst it could get. We were very naive and had no clue that this Hitleresque piece of utter shit in the White House today was coming. Makes me wonder if someone even worse may come along 30 or 40 years from now. Okay with me if he does, I’m done with America anyway. Have started another Orwell: _Down and Out in Paris and London_. ---
**Author:** ![pullin](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/p/c57346/32.png) [@pullin](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/pullin)\ **Post date:** [December 2, 2025, 1:13pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/khadaji-s-whatcha-reading-thread-december-2025-edition/1025247/14 "2025-12-02T13:13:38Z")
Went down a You Tube rabbit hole on movie vehicles/props. Watched an interesting one about the weird 12-wheeled overland monster used in “Damnation Alley”. Then ended up reading about Roger Zelazny’s distaste for the movie and how it completely missed the point of his book. So I just started Zelanzny’s “Damnation Alley” yesterday. So far it’s pretty interesting. This is the first book of his I’ve read - maybe I’ve found a new (to me) author. Next up I’ll try the movie, just out of curiosity. ---
**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:** [December 2, 2025, 2:24pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/khadaji-s-whatcha-reading-thread-december-2025-edition/1025247/15 "2025-12-02T14:24:49Z")
Started this morning. > **[Slashed Beauties](https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/222925674-slashed-beauties)** > > A gothic feminist body horror in two timelines revolvin… ---
**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:** [December 2, 2025, 11:24pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/khadaji-s-whatcha-reading-thread-december-2025-edition/1025247/16 "2025-12-02T23:24:40Z")
I just finished _Retreat_ by Krysten Ritter. It’s a pretty good mystery/thriller. Could make a decent movie or series. ---
**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:** [December 2, 2025, 11:47pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/khadaji-s-whatcha-reading-thread-december-2025-edition/1025247/17 "2025-12-02T23:47:12Z")
His stuff is … different. I really knew I’d love him when his protagonist in _Doorways in the Sand_ was thrown out of Australian for climbing the Sydney Opera House. 😄 Most of his books can be read in any order but both Amber Series have to be read in publication order… a couple books end in the middle of a conversation and the next book pick up right after. ---
**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:** [December 3, 2025, 9:02pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/khadaji-s-whatcha-reading-thread-december-2025-edition/1025247/18 "2025-12-03T21:02:34Z")
I finished _Murder on the Orient Express_ by Dame Agatha Christie. I had some difficulty at first since the tone was very different from her earlier books, I’m guessing this was the point where her writing gelled into the voice and style we are most used to reading. I read this 40+ years ago when I was a teen, I don’t remember if I knew the twist then but reading it this time, I very much enjoyed how she made it so clear what the solution was but still managed to make it a surprise at the end. Next up: _The Floating World_ by Axie Oh, which my sister bought me for my birthday back in April and _The Maid’s Secret_ by Emily Organ (on Kindle which is easier to read in the car on dark winter mornings while waiting for my passenger to come out to the car) ---
**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:** [December 5, 2025, 3:43pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/khadaji-s-whatcha-reading-thread-december-2025-edition/1025247/19 "2025-12-05T15:43:03Z")
I finished Slashed Beauties. It’s a book about sex workers which contains next to no mention of sex. It’s also supposedly about women who kill men, but it’s really about one woman using magic to control other women, and the rules of the magic aren’t very clear. It kept me interested enough to finish, but was a mess by the end. Not recommended. ---
**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:** [December 5, 2025, 5:33pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/khadaji-s-whatcha-reading-thread-december-2025-edition/1025247/20 "2025-12-05T17:33:29Z")
Copied from the end of the November thread: I’ve finished L. Sprage deCamp’s **The Undesired Princess** , the first 2/3 of a volume that also contaibs David Drake’s decamp homage _The Enchanted Bunny_ (my next read). After that it’s on to **Someone You can Build a Nest In** by John Wiswell. Wiswell is Guest of Honor at this year’s Arisia next month, and I’m (as usual) a Program Participant. I always like to read at least one work by the GoH (if I’m not already familiar with them) so I won’t be embarrassed if I’m drawn into a discussion about their work. Or, Og save us, an actual discussion with the GoH. I’m not reading anything in particular on audio right now. I’ve been switching between audiodiscs I already have without reading a complete work. [Next page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/khadaji-s-whatcha-reading-thread-december-2025-edition/1025247.md?page=2)