# Khadaji’s Whatcha Reading Thread - July 2025 edition
**URL:** https://boards.straightdope.com/t/khadaji-s-whatcha-reading-thread-july-2025-edition/1020278
**Category:** Cafe Society
**Tags:** comic-books-manga, books-writing-myths
**Created:** [June 30, 2025, 12:38am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/khadaji-s-whatcha-reading-thread-july-2025-edition/1020278 "2025-06-30T00:38:55Z")
**Posts on this page:** 20
**Page:** 5
### Author:  [@kaylasdad99](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/kaylasdad99)
#### Post date: [July 21, 2025, 5:14pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/khadaji-s-whatcha-reading-thread-july-2025-edition/1020278/81 "2025-07-21T17:14:24Z")
> [@TheTyrant](#):
>
> Seriously, they’re so bad they’re worth a read. (For free if possible.)
I’ll check the public library.
And if I find them, I’ll lodge a complaint about the gratuitous waste of funding.
---
### Author:  [@Dung\_Beetle](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Dung_Beetle)
#### Post date: [July 21, 2025, 5:59pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/khadaji-s-whatcha-reading-thread-july-2025-edition/1020278/82 "2025-07-21T17:59:20Z")
Started today on [A Magic Deep and Drowning](https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/216616836) by Hester Fox. It’s too much romance for me, but I still want to know what happens next.
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### Author:  [@ShadowFacts](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/ShadowFacts)
#### Post date: [July 21, 2025, 6:59pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/khadaji-s-whatcha-reading-thread-july-2025-edition/1020278/83 "2025-07-21T18:59:47Z")
> [@Left\_Hand\_of\_Dorkness](#):
>
> It may surprise you that I’m a fan of that book.
If you like it so much, why did you spell it wrong???
😉
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### Author:  [@Left\_Hand\_of\_Dorkness](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Left_Hand_of_Dorkness)
#### Post date: [July 21, 2025, 11:47pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/khadaji-s-whatcha-reading-thread-july-2025-edition/1020278/84 "2025-07-21T23:47:59Z")
It’s my favorite quote from the book:
“Cool is the Left Hand of Dorkness, and Dorky the Right Hand of Cool.”
or something like that, it’s been awhile.
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### Author:  [@CalMeacham](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/CalMeacham)
#### Post date: [July 22, 2025, 1:34pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/khadaji-s-whatcha-reading-thread-july-2025-edition/1020278/85 "2025-07-22T13:34:39Z")
Finished reading Patricia Cornwell’s **Portrait of a Killer: Jack the Ripper Case Closed**. I’ll have to read the critiques of it. I understand that some people have objected that her candidate, artist Walter Sickert, was known to be away at the times of some o the killings.
I also finished **The Incredible Ditch: A Bicentennial History of the Middlesex Canal** by Carl Seaburg, Thomas Dahill, and Alan Seaburg. A labor of love by the Middlesex Canal Historical Society. I picked it up at the Middlesex Canal Museum in North Billerica MA, and it and the museum give you the history of a major engineering achievement of the early 19th century – a canal that could bring goods from Vermont and New York all the way to Boston Harbor. In its own way, it’s comparable to the Erie Canal across upstate New York. Yet the Middlesex Canal served less than fifty years, and is almost completely erased now. The reason given is that it couldn’t compete with the railroads (canals can’t operate in winter months), and that, without constant maintenance, the canal deteriorated. But someone went to the trouble of filling in most of the canal. Yet the Erie Canal, in the form of the New York State Barge Canal, continues not only to exist but to operate to this day. (It runs right next to the Graduate Living Center at the University of Rochester, and was practically outside my window for several years). Why did one survive and the other almost completely disappear?
I also finished **Lies my Teacher Told Me: A Graphic Adaptation** by Nate Powell and James W. Loewen. I’ve re-read Loewen’s book several times, and have it on audiodisc, but I had to pick this up few days ago when I saw it. Apparently Loewen himself reached out to Powell about doing this, and they collaborated on it before Loewen died. The graphic novel adds to the print book, bringing us up to the Age of Trump. Definitely worth a look.
I’m still reading **Norse Mythology for Bostonians** by Rowdy Gersson. I hadn’t noticed that the robe Odin is wearing on the cover (which is taken from an 18th century manuscript) has a Boston Bruins logo worked into it. The book is a hoot, adding to the traditional Norse gods and mythological characters the distinctly Bostonian ones of Belicheck, Brady, and Charlie (among others).
Unlike Jane Sibley’s _Norse Mythology According to Uncle Einar_, this one isn’t kid-friendly, as the following excerpt makes clear:
So way back, n’ I mean way fuckin’ back like we’re talkin’ ‘bout back befohr the Pilgrims even knew what a fuckin’ Mayflowah r’even fuckin’ was, there was nothing ‘cept this big ass wohrld tree that was shaped like a fuckin’ gallows pole, since the Vikings were a bunch’ah real death-obsessed mothahfuckahs.
He also adds distinctly Bostonian myths like “Thor Begets the Green Monster”.
Fun reading.
On audio, I’m halfway through **American Carnage: On the Front Likes of the Republican Civil War and the Rise of President Trump** by Tim Alberta. Very interesting reading, because Alberta is a journalist who covered all this as it was happening, and also interviewed the principals (including Trump), so we’re told about their inside maneuvering and thoughts. Also, Alberta leans right, so I get a different perspective than I am used to,
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### Author:  [@Dung\_Beetle](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Dung_Beetle)
#### Post date: [July 22, 2025, 1:39pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/khadaji-s-whatcha-reading-thread-july-2025-edition/1020278/86 "2025-07-22T13:39:52Z")
> [@Dung\_Beetle](#):
>
> but I still want to know what happens next.
I changed my mind. Insta-love is so irritating.
Currently reading [A Blink of the Screen: collected shorter fiction](https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/13536811-a-blink-of-the-screen), by Terry Pratchett. Uneven.
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### Author:  [@Left\_Hand\_of\_Dorkness](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Left_Hand_of_Dorkness)
#### Post date: [July 22, 2025, 2:38pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/khadaji-s-whatcha-reading-thread-july-2025-edition/1020278/87 "2025-07-22T14:38:24Z")
A few new ones:
[A Taste of Gold and Iron,](https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/58724599-a-taste-of-gold-and-iron) by Alexandra Rowland. A by-the-numbers queer romantasy. Nothing wrong with it, but it’s been a few weeks since I read it, and I remember almost nothing about it. The companion novel Running Close to the Wind is much filthier and much funnier and much more fun.
[Buried Deep and Other Stories](https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/203956677-buried-deep-and-other-stories), by Naomi Novik. Novik is always tremendously fun, and these stories are no exception.
[The River Has Roots](https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/211004176-the-river-has-roots), by Amal El-Mohtar. It’s a fantasy novella based on a murder ballad. Short, sweet, lovely.
[Ordinary Monsters](https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/58725025-ordinary-monsters), by JM Miro This was a bog-standard 19th-century London fantasy, which would be fine. But I was reading it, and it was at that moment that I noticed a pattern of words that appeared. Just then, it was at that moment that the author reused these words, and just then, I started noticing them several times in every chapter. Just then it happened again! It was at that moment that I grew increasingly annoyed at the unnecessary filler. It was at that moment that I decided the book needed a better editor, because just then, they could have cut those words with no change in meaning.
[Karla’s Choice](https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/205899901-karla-s-choice), by Nick Harkaway. It’s a sequel to _The Spy Who Came In From the Cold_, by John Le Carre’s son. I’ve not read TSWCIFTC in many years, but from what I remember, it’s very close stylistically, but a little less chilly than Le Carre’s novels. Beautifully written twisty Cold War spycraft, and the best thing I’ve read since _The Buffalo Hunter Hunter_.
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### Author:  [@chela](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/chela)
#### Post date: [July 22, 2025, 2:40pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/khadaji-s-whatcha-reading-thread-july-2025-edition/1020278/88 "2025-07-22T14:40:39Z")
Listening to an audiobook. Robert K Massie’s [Catherine the Great](https://www.penguinrandomhouse.com/books/108892/catherine-the-great-portrait-of-a-woman-by-robert-k-massie/)
Chose the audiobook so I wouldnt have to deal with pronouncing Russian names. I’ve watched snippets of Hulu’s The Great, and in my mind it’s blonde Elle Fanning as I listen, but Catherine was actually raven haired. Incredible that a minor princess from Germany became empress of Russia. Better her than PeterIII that’s for sure.
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### Author:  [@Dendarii\_Dame](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Dendarii_Dame)
#### Post date: [July 22, 2025, 7:49pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/khadaji-s-whatcha-reading-thread-july-2025-edition/1020278/89 "2025-07-22T19:49:11Z")
Finished
Still reading _Man With a Bull-Tongue Plow_, poems by Jesse Stuart, which is 700 sonnets long so it’s going to take awhile. Finished _A House With Good Bones_ by T. Kingfisher which was okay. Earlier this year I read another book with similar themes, Mapping the Interior, by Stephen Graham Jones, which is far superior. Also finished _Valiant Women: The Extraordinary American Servicewomen Who Helped Win World War II_, by Lena Andrews. It was interesting. I’ve read a couple of books in the past two years which went into more detail about women who are mentioned in this book.
Next up: _The Law of Superheroes_, by James Dailey, J.D., and Ryan Davidson, J.D., and _11,000 Years_, a science fiction novel about time travel by Mark Roth-Whitworth.
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### Author:  [@Elendil\_s\_Heir](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Elendil_s_Heir)
#### Post date: [July 22, 2025, 8:58pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/khadaji-s-whatcha-reading-thread-july-2025-edition/1020278/90 "2025-07-22T20:58:37Z")
> [@Elendil\_s\_Heir](#):
>
> …Now reading _The Two Popes: Francis, Benedict, and the Decision That Shook the World_ by Anthony McCarten. I’d enjoyed the movie with Jonathan Pryce and Anthony Hopkins, which was lightly fictionalized; this is nonfiction, and pretty good so far, although McCarten’s prose is a bit breathless sometimes. I knew very little of the future Pope Francis’s early life, and am learning a lot.
Just finished it, and I was disappointed by the end. It has little in common with the very good movie of the same name. The movie is about their private, lively discussions of life, faith and the church; the book is a biography of both but doesn’t have even a word about those discussions. Dry and lifeless compared to the movie.
I’m now reading _Presumed Guilty_ (2025) by Scott Turow, the third in his trilogy about skilled but often-unlucky Kindle County lawyer Rusty Sabich, after _Presumed Innocent_ (1987) and _Innocent_ (2010). Rusty is semiretired and living out in the sticks with his girlfriend; her troubled son runs afoul of the law and Rusty, it looks like, will have to help him in court. It’s pretty good so far.
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### Author:  [@Spice\_Weasel](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Spice_Weasel)
#### Post date: [July 23, 2025, 5:30pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/khadaji-s-whatcha-reading-thread-july-2025-edition/1020278/91 "2025-07-23T17:30:09Z")
> [@Dung\_Beetle](#):
>
> I changed my mind. Insta-love is so irritating.
I love romance, but I agree with you.
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### Author:  [@Dung\_Beetle](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Dung_Beetle)
#### Post date: [July 23, 2025, 6:01pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/khadaji-s-whatcha-reading-thread-july-2025-edition/1020278/92 "2025-07-23T18:01:49Z")
I saw that this was a re-working of The Little Mermaid. The insta-love in that story didn’t bother me, but in this tale of a mer-man throwing it all away for a pretty girl he’d spent hardly any time with, it did. I’m not sure why.
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### Author:  [@DZedNConfused](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/DZedNConfused)
#### Post date: [July 23, 2025, 9:59pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/khadaji-s-whatcha-reading-thread-july-2025-edition/1020278/93 "2025-07-23T21:59:23Z")
I appreciate the flipping of the trope, usually it’s the woman that gives everything up to be with the man, but I really hate the whole trope. Relationships are all about compromise and figuring out how to make two people happy but this trope doesn’t do that, it just says someone has to give up everything so “they”, in reality the other person, can be happy. Hell of a bad way to start a relationship.
_shoves her soapbox offstage…_
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### Author:  [@DZedNConfused](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/DZedNConfused)
#### Post date: [July 25, 2025, 5:06pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/khadaji-s-whatcha-reading-thread-july-2025-edition/1020278/94 "2025-07-25T17:06:20Z")
DNFed _Real Americans_ by Rachel Khong, I just don’t care, I don’t like these people and I can’t honestly be bothered to plow through 300+ more pages of their humdrum lives. They’re not even awful people, they’re just uninteresting.
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### Author:  [@Railer13](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Railer13)
#### Post date: [July 26, 2025, 1:42pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/khadaji-s-whatcha-reading-thread-july-2025-edition/1020278/95 "2025-07-26T13:42:53Z")
> [@Railer13](#):
>
> Next up: _King of Ashes_ by S.A.Cosby.
> [@DZedNConfused](#):
>
> Looking forward to what you think of it. It’s on my TBR.
Finished listening to _King of Ashes_. This is one powerful book, with complex characters and an extremely intense plot. I would highly recommend it, although with a disclaimer: there are a lot of extremely violent and graphic scenes. Still, a fast-paced and engrossing, albeit depressing, read.
If you like audiobooks, then I’d recommend listening to this book. The narrator is Adam Lazarre-White. Most of the characters are black, and he does a masterful job of shifting dialects, especially when he’s voicing the thug gangsters who play a major role in the plotline.
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### Author:  [@SCAdian](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/SCAdian)
#### Post date: [July 26, 2025, 6:05pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/khadaji-s-whatcha-reading-thread-july-2025-edition/1020278/96 "2025-07-26T18:05:55Z")
Recently finished:
_Inferno’s Shadow_, the fourth Artillerymen book, by Taylor Anderson
_Tarzan and the Castaways_, Tarzan #24 (a trio of short stories), by Edgar Rice Burroughs
Just started:
_50 Children: One Ordinary American Couple’s Extraordinary Rescue Mission Into the Heart of Nazi Germany_, by Steven Pressman
_Tarzan the Magnificent_, the twenty-first Tarzan book, by Edgar Rice Burroughs
I could have sworn I had copies of all 24 Tarzan books back in the late '60s/early '70s, but neither the characters nor the storyline of this one sound the least bit familiar.
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### Author:  [@Catamount](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Catamount)
#### Post date: [July 26, 2025, 11:06pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/khadaji-s-whatcha-reading-thread-july-2025-edition/1020278/97 "2025-07-26T23:06:11Z")
I started on Claire North’s _Ithaca_ and, y’all the writing is so bad I’m taking _notes_. I believe I may have some rant material here.
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### Author:  [@Dung\_Beetle](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Dung_Beetle)
#### Post date: [July 27, 2025, 12:05am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/khadaji-s-whatcha-reading-thread-july-2025-edition/1020278/98 "2025-07-27T00:05:00Z")
That’s fun, isn’t it? I’ve never written a book but I’d love to edit some crap. 😁
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### Author:  [@DZedNConfused](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/DZedNConfused)
#### Post date: [July 27, 2025, 12:12am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/khadaji-s-whatcha-reading-thread-july-2025-edition/1020278/99 "2025-07-27T00:12:17Z")
_pops a boatload of popcorn_ Bring it on!
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### Author:  [@MacDoc](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/MacDoc)
#### Post date: [July 27, 2025, 7:12am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/khadaji-s-whatcha-reading-thread-july-2025-edition/1020278/100 "2025-07-27T07:12:40Z")
Much fun and very relevant.
> **[Service Model by Adrian Tchaikovsky](https://www.scifimind.com/service-model-by-adrian-tchaikovsky/)**
>
> I once read that most novel plots could be reduced to two great starting points: a stranger comes to town, and someone goes on a journey. In Adrian
[ ](https://www.scifimind.com/wp-content/uploads/2024/05/Service-Model.jpg)
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