Khadaji’s Whatcha Reading Thread - July 2026 edition

Cafe Society
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I finally finished The Girl in the Picture by Denise Chong. My god, but Kim Phuc had a tough life. Far beyond the physical pain and suffering were the way she was treated by her handlers and the abject poverty her family lived in, made worse by the way everyone thought they were well-offf and kept stealing their things and confiscating any gifts given to her.

I’ve started reading Emily Wilson’s translation of The Odyssey. I’ve also started re-listening to the Robert Fagles translation as read by Ian McKellen.

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Finished it. The book (over 37 hours on audio) covers two hundred years and four interrelated tales, any one of which could have been a novel in its own right. The last section is about a future America which has gotten increasingly repressive and dystopic due to recurring pandemics and global climate change. It builds to a conclusion which is both ambiguous and even, I would have to say, cruel, given all that came before. Not sure I can recommend it. PM me if you want to know more.

Still reading Luke Skywalker Can’t Read: And Other Geeky Truths by Ryan Britt, an affectionate, uber-geeky exploration of all kinds of fandom. The chapter on the links between Star Trek and Sherlock Holmes has been a highlight so far.

I’ve returned to Rejection by Tony Tulathimutte, a collection of short stories which David Sedaris recommended. So far, all the stories have some Internet connection or theme, most of them snarky enough to make you wonder if we should just shut it all down.

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Finished Hole in the Sky, by Daniel H. Wilson, which was very good, although the ending didn’t really work, in my opinion. Also finished Big Stick, by Michael A. Ventrella. Meh.

Next up: A Book of Americans, by Rosemary and Stephen Vincent Benet; and Bones of the Earth, by Michael Swanwick.

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I have been reading An Absolutely Remarkable Thing by Hank Green. I knew it was about sudden Internet fame but was surprised it was also sci fi (pleasantly so). Almost near the end and enjoying it

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Recommendation accepted!

46

I had very mixed feelings about Matt Dinniman’s Dungeon Crawler Carl, so I was happy to pick up another book by him–Operation Bounce House. It was clarifying.

I fucking hate his writing.

One small taste: in this novel set hundreds of years in the future, a character learns a minor plot point from an NPR article. I love me some NPR, but will be astonished if they’re around in 30 years. Thinking they’ll be an ongoing concern centuries from now is a sure way to show me you don’t understand how history works. Some of the worst world-building I’ve ever encountered. There are other examples (the protagonist’s sister has a porn account with AlsoFans or something which she streams from a home studio, people watch commercials on screens, kids use passwords to log onto video games where they have names like, this is a direct quote, X_SuBhuM@nSlæy3r_X., and so on), but just in general he is too lazy to imagine a future that’s different from 2026.

If the satire were subtle or sharp, if the characters were compelling, if the battles were original, if the humor landed, if the prose were beautiful, I’d forgive the lazy anachronisms. But none of that is true.

Obviously a lot of folks love this writing. I’m done with this author.

But! Two others:

The Unveiling, by Quan Barry. I almost put this book down in the first 20 pages: every character, including the protagonist, was annoying and awful. But then around page 30, something happens, and I was like, oh, Jeff Vandermeer has entered the chat. Which isn’t to say it’s a knockoff; rather, the book grows weird in a way that I found much more compelling. Ultimately I’m not sure it sticks the landing, but I’m not sure it doesn’t: it’s certainly stuck with me.

Shroud, by Adrian Tchaikovsky. I’ve sung Tchaikovsky’s praised here before, and so there’s not much else to say about this Hugo nominee. Do you like first-contact SF stories where humans find themselves on alien planets confronting complex, well-considered ecosystems and alien intelligences that are really the whole point of the story? If you do, you’re gonna love Tchaikovsky, including this book. If not, give it a miss. It’s absolutely my jam.

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Finished A Book of Americans, by Rosemary and Stephen Vincent Benet, of which “Nancy Hanks” was the best poem. Also finished Bones of the Earth, by Michael Swanwick. Enjoyed the theories about the dinosaurs, but not the human characters.

Next up: The Vixen War Bride, by Thomas J. Doscher, which is science fiction; and Tomboy Bride: One Woman’s Personal Account of Life in the Mining Camps of the West, by Harriet Fish Backus.

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Okay, I just finished Shroud in a morning binge. Hot damn!

Shroud is possibly my favorite work by Tchaikovsky yet: in addition to the eco-psycho-anticapitalist trifecta, here he’s working with interesting human characters, something he’s not always managed. The final chapter almost brought me to tears. Recommended!

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I liked Shroud but I’m getting a bit tired of Tchaikovsky’s speciesism, every species is generally good or at least has redeeming characteristics, except humans, we are the worst of the worst.

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There are humans in his books who are great. It’s just humanity that sucks.

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True, but other species don’t seem to be afflicted similarly, it’s only humans who suck as a species.
I wonder what evolutionary forces Tchaikovsky imagines the other species have been exposed to that made them so much better?

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In the Children of Time series, there’s a very specific evolutionary force. In Alien Clay and Shroud, there are two others. I don’t want to give spoilers, but he definitely describes the forces at play.

That said, I think on a different level, his books can be read as a critique of our current society. He’s not quite as blatant as Matt Dinniman is, but he posits humanity controlled by fascist and/or capitalist rulers who prioritize ideology and acquisition over human joy and connection; and his aliens often provide a counterpoint, suggesting that things could be different (admittedly with a few million years of alternate evolution, but still). In Hitchhiker’s Guide, the Vogon are the rapacious aliens. In Tchaikovsky, it’s us. Both act as a satire and commentary on things that we’re getting wrong.

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I think this is the cause, it’s not that he thinks aliens are immune to suckage but that he’s interested for literary reasons in comparing sucky humanity to better possibiliies.
Understanding it doesn’t make it less irritating, sheesh Adrian I get it, I’m living it.
But it’s not so irritating that I stop reading his books, I just read them at long intervals so I don’t end up jumping from a bridge in despair.

54

Finished Eye of the Bedlam Bride, and I have the next Dungeon Crawler book ready to go! But first, a palate cleanser.

Started today on a non-fiction book (rare for me). It’s called Running with Sherman by Christopher McDougall | Goodreads
(subtitle: the donkey with the heart of a hero)
A co-worker recommended it because he knows we have donkeys, and my husband read it also (super rare for him). I hope to gain a greater understanding of the equine mind.

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At least we have better poetry.

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My DOG has better poetry… :laughing:

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I took time out from the Odyssey (Emily Wilson translation) to read Nicholas Sammond’s’ Birth of an Industry. The book was recommended because it is supposed to show that modern cartoons are the legitimate successors to blackface minstrelsy – not merely that the cartoons were inspired by minstrel acts, and drew a lot of their tropes from that, but that they really are modern-day minstrels, and are tinged, therefore, with racism.

I’ll give Sammonds high marks for research. I don’t know the history of minstrel shows intimately, but I have studied the early history of animation. Sammonds has exhaustive chapters on each, and he gets the broad sweeps and the minutiae right. But I don’t find his overall thesis convincing. Minstrel shows, vaudeville, and early cartoons overlapped each other and were all popular forms of entertainment, and were frequently on the same bill – they really couldn’t help but influence each other. Those ubiquitous white gloves that are on all those animated (and comic strip) characters from Mickey Mouse to Mutt and Jeff to Bugs Bunny – those are a carryover from minstrel shows. A lot of the style of humor and even some of the jokes are, too. But saying that the the mischievous behavior of the cartoon characters is a reflection of blackface characters, and the verbal interplay between the taller/boss/serious character and the shorter/subordinate/comedic character is inspired by the Interlocutor/Tambo and Bones is taking it too far. You’d think there was no comedy before minstrelsy, that the two-character dynamic is not a characteristic of stage drama in any form.

And he makes it all about bosses vs. labor – there’s a strong Marxist slant to his writing. Which is alright in itself, but ge sees everything through that lens. And he pushes racist interpretations and intentions everywhere. He always refers to “Turkey in the Straw” as “Old Zip Coon”, which is appropriate in the early days, but not later – how many people of my generation or later know the song by that name? When he analyzes the cartoon Trader Mickey (which, no matter how you look at it, is racist and outrageous in its imagery) he asks what could Mickey be trrading in his travel through the jungle, and says it can only be peoole – Mickey is a slaver! But, as he admits, the cartoon and its title are a parody of the real-life adventure film Trader Horn, based on the life of Alfred Aloysius Horn, who was a trader on African rivers. What did he trade for? Ivory! Not slaves. Sammonds does this kind of thing again and again.

I’ll admit he has some good points, and has done a hell of a job of research, but I’m not at all convinced that his equation of cartoon characters (even modern ones) with blackface minstrels holds.

Even the title is a giveaway – “Birth of an Industry” is obvious meant to invoke “Birth of a Nation”, D.W., Griffith’s popular but heavily racist story of the Civil War and its aftermath that glorifies the Ku Klux Klan.

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Finished it. A very strange and (mostly) ill-tempered book. It ended on a meta note, with a supposed long letter of rejection from the author’s publisher, criticizing every story in the book in detail and refusing to publish it… even as, obviously, we see that it has been published. Not sure I can recommend it, but it had its moments. The best story IMHO is “Ahegao; or, The Ballad of Sexual Repression,” in which a man submits a stunningly detailed (and hilariously raunchy) online request form for a personalized CGI porn film.

Now I’ve started Who Killed Jane Stanford?: A Gilded Age Tale of Murder, Deceit, Spirits and the Birth of a University by Richard White. It’s about the 1905 poisoning of the imperious widow of robber baron and railroad tycoon Leland Stanford, and the (purposefully?) abortive investigation which followed. The author has to speculate quite a bit, due to the passage of time and the loss or destruction of records, but it’s a well-researched and mostly interesting book.

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The Language of Mathematics: The Story Behind the Symbols Raul Rojas

A history of mathematical symbols, from the basic numbers up to modern set theory notation.

About as interesting as you would expect a book that devotes six pages to the development of parentheses to be. In other words, not particularly interesting.

60

FInished A Whisper and a Curse by Darcey Burke, the third in her series about a Victorian lord, who sees visions, and a female investigator. This time, the author tackled the Spiritualism movement of the late 1800s. It was quite good, story moved along nicely and there was some good character development for our main characters.