Khadaji’s Whatcha Reading Thread - July 2023 edition

Cafe Society
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So a cat… Part two:

There are a few strays in our area, but one in particular is a sweet faced old war vetran with a shredded ear and scar tissue around his neck, I call Tabby or Tabs. Tabby has been haunting my porch and yard for a couple years but he’d never let me get near him. Then one day a few weeks after Ghost moved in I came home to find: home invasion! As I type this, he is drowsing in the window…

So whatcha all readin?

Kindle: If Found, Return to Hell by Em X. Liu. It’s a novella that posits the question: What would you do as an interning wizard stuck in a call centre if you discovered a case of demonic possesion…

Print: The Witches of Wenshar by Barbara Hambly. I have been revisiting Ms Hambly’s older fantasy lately. After reading several T. Kingfisher’s books, I’ve decided their sense of humor is very similar and I should reread the OG.

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.

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Last Month: Of all the Junes I have known, you were the coolest

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Finished Maria Vale’s Molly Malone and the Angel of Death. More an urban fantasy than anything else, but also kind of gross and weird. I enjoyed this; some ARC reviewers on Goodreads did not, nor did they enjoy Vale’s employing words they didn’t know.

Now reading a friend’s autobiography and bits of Around the World in 50 Years, which ought to grab me but doesn’t. Scalzi, Leckie, and Okorafor all have Amazon Original Stories on Kindle; I’ve read the Scalzi, “Slow Time Between the Stars,” and enjoyed it. It’s narrated by a sentient starship.

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This complaint always weirds me out, you can’t pause and look it up? No one taught you context clues? Isn’t learning something part of why you read?
People confuse me.

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Started today on The Way Home: two novellas from the world of The Last Unicorn, by Peter S. Beagle. I finished the shorter of the two stories, which won the Hugo and Nebula awards. Very good, although my memory of The Last Unicorn is vague.

Note to self: check out this Hambly person.

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Vale was a medieval studies major, so yeah, her heavenly creatures speak Latin (translated in text), just as her shifter wolves speak Old English as needed.

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Oh that’s just freaking awesome. I need to read this!

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Thanks!
I see that I had her first wolf book on my TBR.

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Listened to the entirety of Await Your Reply by Dan Chaon today as I drove across Idaho and Wyoming.

An extremely unique and interesting book that features three separate plot lines that are seemingly unconnected, but everything is pulled together at the end, with some very surprising twists.

Ready for another recommendation!

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Finished Signs and Mysteries: Revealing Ancient Christian Symbols, by Mike Aquilina, which was interesting.

Now I’m reading The Ballad of Perilous Graves, by Alex Jennings.

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Railer13, glad you liked Chaon’s book! A favorite of mine. Next I’d recommend his You Remind Me of Me.

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Double Cross: The True Story of the D-Day Spies by Ben Macintyre.

I’m a fan of Macintyre’s work and I’ve read several of his books. This one is about the British use of double agents to feed false information to the Germans during WWII.

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I love Hambly’s Starhawk and Sun Wolf trilogy. One of my favorite fantasy series ever.

Still slogging through the St. Olav section of Heimskringla. It’s soooooo looooooong and there are so many side stories that keep intruding. Please, let this guy die soon so I can get to another king. St. Olav is not that interesting!

I picked up The Sirens of Titan at the library as a refresher from the medieval Icelandic literature. I forgot how much Kurt Vonnegut’s humor reminded me of Douglas Adams. I sense an influence there (on Adams’ side).

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I’m going to start a book which has been collecting dust since it was purchased at the start of the year. Now I’m pushing myself to finish it over the summer. It’s called The Railways: Nation, Network and People by Simon Bradley. A very long and daunting looking history about the British railway infrastructure and the overlap it had on the social landscape.

There’s also some typical mystery books I have lined up to finish as usual. It’s not long until Shari Lapena releases her latest standalone mystery thriller too so I am looking forward to that.

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Little_Nemo, I saw this documentary a few years back, about British counterespionage during WWII, and thought it was pretty good: Garbo: The Spy (2009) - IMDb

Recently finished:

Thunderball, as I work my way through Ian Fleming’s classic spy series. 007 races against time to find two stolen a-bombs in the Caribbean and stop SPECTRE’s nuclear blackmail plot. Good stuff.

Time Travel by James Gleick, a sort of pop culture/science/philosophy exploration of the concept. It was OK but not great.

One Way by S.J. Morden, an sf novel about construction of the first Mars base using convict labor, kinda sorta like Botany Bay. Interesting if farfetched premise, but disappointing overall.

Logan’s World by William F. Nolan, a sequel to Logan’s Run, an impressionistic sf novel about a dystopian future in which no one lives past age 21 due to enforced euthanasia, and then the collapse of that global society. I first read this in my teens and remembered it as being much better.

Still reading Kykuit, the Rockefeller Family Home by Ann Rockefeller Roberts, with photographs by Mary Louise Pierson, her daughter. It’s a beautifully-illustrated book about the Rockefeller estate, north of New York City, established by John D. himself. Someday I hope to visit there.

On the homestretch of Downfall by Richard B. Frank, an excellent, readable, very well-researched account of the last year of WWII in the Pacific, and all that led up to the bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki.

Just began A Visit from the Goon Squad by Jennifer Egan, of which I’d read good reviews. So far it’s about a young woman seeking psychological counseling to overcome her compulsion for petty theft.

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I’m partial to the Windrose Books but :heart:

Did you see she has written some further short stories about Wolf & Hawk? They’re available through Kindle.

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Finished The Ballad of Perilous Graves, by Alex Jennings, which is one of the best novels I’ve read this year.

Now I’m reading Randolph Caldecott: The Man Who Could Not Stop Drawing, by Leonard S. Marcus.

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Finished Randolph Caldecott: The Man Who Could Not Stop Drawing, by Leonard S. Marcus, which I enjoyed.

Now I’m reading The Loved One, by Evelyn Waugh.

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Based on a recent post by @Elendil_s_Heir, I also started A Visit from the Goon Squad by Jennifer Egan. It’s actually a series of 13 related stories, centering around two main characters (I think). I’m halfway through the second story, and am enjoying it thus far.