Khadaji’s Whatcha Reading Thread - February 2024 edition

Started today on Poor Deer by Claire Oshetsky. It’s about a little girl who holds herself responsible for the death of a friend, hallucinating a creature she calls Poor Deer.

Just finished Trigger Warning, Neil Gaiman short stories. It was fine just fine, vintage Gaiman.

Now I’m reading Mickey 7, a space-colony novel with an intriguing premise (every ship has one person’s memory and gene code downloaded, so if they die they can be remade with full memories and personality; this person is effectively immortal, and is also given the worst and deadliest jobs) and a very Scalzi vibe. I’m enjoying it.

Finished Empire of the Sum: The Rise and Reign of the Pocket Calculator, by Keith Houston, which I enjoyed. It brought back memories of the day when I was in elementary school and I realized I’d forgotten to do my math homework. I knew I’d be in big trouble, but just before the teacher came around to collect it, she discovered another student had brought in a pocket calculator. She spent the rest of that period bawling him out and lecturing us on the evils of calculators. Which is how a calculator saved the day for me, and I didn’t even have one at the time.

Now I’m reading The Hatchet Man, by William Marshall. It’s a procedural mystery, set in Hong Kong before the Chinese takeover.

Remember teachers in algebra saying we wouldn’t always have a calculator with us? :grin:

Done. It was weird and sad and then it just stopped. I suppose I’m not smart enough to get it. :fu:

Started today on No One Can Know by Kate Alice Marshall, a murder mystery.

Finished The Hatchet Man, by William Marshall, which was okay.

Now I’m reading The State of Jones: The Small Southern County That Seceded from the Confederacy, by Sally Jenkins and John Stauffer.

I finished Mickey 7, and it stayed excellent throughout: intelligent, humane, funny, and a brisk plot that doesn’t let up, with flashbacks that integrate well with the main story without upsetting the pace. If you enjoy Scalzi, give it a go–especially if you like Scalzi but are a little worn out on him and want something in the same vein but with a different voice.

Earlier this year I read two novels by a British author named Janice Hallett–The Appeal, which I liked, and The Twyford Code, which I thought was really excellent. I just finished reading another novel of Hallett’s, The Mysterious Case of the Alperton Angels, which had its moments but was ultimately disappointing. Too confusing, too many characters, and too clever by half–Hallett loves loves loves plot twists and big surprises, and they worked well in the other two books but fell flat for me in this one. Also, her novels are all written using instant messages, emails, and transcribed interviews–and in this novel that felt limiting and gimmicky rather than fresh and interesting.

Now I have moved to a nonfiction book, Battle of Ink and Ice by Darrell Hartman, about the role newspapers played in the race between explorers Peary and Cook to be the first to the North Pole. About forty pages in and so far it’s pretty good.

Requested the Houston book from the library. I do indeed remember the backlash against the calculator as per @DZedNConfused --one that I did not buy into during my years as a math teacher I am happy to say. (“By all means use a calculator. Just make sure you use it appropriately and thoughtfully, is all.”) Thanks for mentioning it.

Finished The State of Jones: The Small Southern County That Seceded from the Confederacy, by Sally Jenkins and John Stauffer, which was very interesting. Strongly recommended for those interested in Civil War history.

Now I’m reading The Seventh Bride, by T. Kingfisher.

That was my intro to “T. Kingfisher”, I had followed Ursula on Livejournal for years and read a lot of her short stories, so I was expecting whimsy and intriguing ideas, which I got… along with outright horror.

Ditched No One Can Know…after a few chapters I realized I didn’t even want to know. :slight_smile:
Started this morning on The House of Last Resort, by Christopher Golden. It’s about a young American couple who move to Italy when they are able to purchase a house for one euro. They plan to renovate the home, but didn’t know about the EEeeeViLLL.

I finished Surely You Can’t Be Serious: The True Story of Airplane! by David Zucker, Jim Abrahams and Jerry Zucker, with interviews with most of the cast and crew. As I posted earlier, it was lots of fun. Very highly recommended for anyone who loves the movie, as I do.

Now I’m more than halfway through Inland by Tea Obreht, a beautifully-written Western with two major plotlines (probably linked in some way, although that hasn’t been revealed yet), one about a fugitive Turk in the pre-Civil War U.S. Camel Corps, and the other about a tough-as-nails, but maybe mentally ill, frontier mom in drought-stricken 1893 Arizona.

You may know that there was a so-so movie based on that incident a few years ago: Free State of Jones (film) - Wikipedia

An interesting concept, by Margaret Atwood et al.: https://www.cnn.com/2024/02/26/style/fourteen-days-collaborative-novel-culture-queue/index.html

Finished The House of Last Resort. Pretty meh. By the midpoint I was mentally critiquing the writing more than caring where the plot went.

Tomorrow I’ll be starting on The Oxford Book of English Ghost Stories, although there’s a high probability I’ve read them all already. I don’t seem to have the energy for anything else right now.

Except for What Feasts at Night that sums up everything I’ve started lately.

I started Dead Pirates of Cawsand by Steve Higgs. It’s one of his Blue Moon Investigations series about an ex-military man taking up investigative work and due to a typo in his advertisment has been cast as a paranormal investigator. The series is a cozy mystery series that starts with someone thinking it’s paranormal but ultimately proving not be. I enjoy his characters and the simplicity of his writing.

Finished The Seventh Bride, by T. Kingfisher, which I enjoyed, especially the author’s use of language.

Now I’m reading Fire on the Track: Betty Robinson and the Triumph of the Early Olympic Women, by Roseanne Montillo.

Finally finished Dan Simmons’ Ilium. I had to take a detour literally halfway through to read some other things, but I’m finally finished with that doorstop of a book. Dan Simmons has a fabulous imagination, but he takes forever setting things up and then finishes up rapidly, as if he’s suddenly worried about his wordcount. He introduces two pretty important characters in the last 100 pages or so of his 725-page book.
The story isn’t finished – he still hasn’t explained who or what the voynix are, and several other important items. I gather these are gone into in the sequel/conclusion Olympus, but a.) I don’t have a copy, and b.) I really don’t want to read another Simmons doorstop right now.

I also finished up Stephen King’s Fairy Tale as an audiobook. I’m hoping to pick up another audiobook tonight at the library – maybe a Cussler or Preston and Childs guilty pleasure. It’s shamefully light reading.

I’m reading Cunk on Everything as my bedside reading. My wife got addicted to the streaming Netflix TV series Cunk on Earth, so when I saw this book I got it for her as a Christmas present. Now that she’s done with it, it’s ideal bedtime reading – short funny chapters that don’t require a big investment in time.

For my next books, I picked up All our Yesterdays: An Informal History of Science Fiction Fandom in the 1940s by Harry Warner, Jr. The title isn’t strictly accurate – he goes back further in time to cover Jules Verne fandom and the like. NESFA Press was giving these away at Boskone this year.

I also bought a copy of the script for Escape from the Planet of the Tribbles, a third Tribbles script from David Gerrold (who wrote The Trouble with Tribbles for the original Star Trek and More Tribbles, More Troubles for the often overlooked animated series. You could say that he’s just doing it to gouge more money from the legions of fans (there’s really no possibility that this will be filmed) , but I bought it willingly, in full knowledge, from Gerrold himself, who autographed it.

After that I’ve got a stack of books I acquired for Christmas and at Arisia and Boskone.