# Khadaji’s Whatcha Reading Thread - March 2023 edition **URL:** \ **Category:** Cafe Society\ **Tags:** books-writing-myths\ **Created:** [February 28, 2023, 10:26pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/khadaji-s-whatcha-reading-thread-march-2023-edition/980511 "2023-02-28T22:26:13Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 20\ **Page:** 2
**Author:** ![Dendarii\_Dame](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/bbce88/32.png) [@Dendarii\_Dame](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Dendarii_Dame)\ **Post date:** [March 7, 2023, 12:23am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/khadaji-s-whatcha-reading-thread-march-2023-edition/980511/21 "2023-03-07T00:23:44Z")
Finished _Teacher Man_ by Frank McCourt, which was okay. Now I’m reading _The Witling_, by Vernor Vinge. ---
**Author:** ![Mahaloth](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/mahaloth/32/1079_2.png) [@Mahaloth](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Mahaloth)\ **Post date:** [March 7, 2023, 12:47am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/khadaji-s-whatcha-reading-thread-march-2023-edition/980511/22 "2023-03-07T00:47:18Z")
> [@Dung\_Beetle](#): > > I’ve started all three; the only one I finished was Replay. I liked it very much. I am about a quarter through Replay and enjoying it quite a bit. ---
**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:** [March 7, 2023, 1:07am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/khadaji-s-whatcha-reading-thread-march-2023-edition/980511/23 "2023-03-07T01:07:39Z")
The Trillion Dollar Conspiracy by Jim Marrs. ---
**Author:** ![Railer13](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/railer13/32/9742_2.png) [@Railer13](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Railer13)\ **Post date:** [March 7, 2023, 1:25am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/khadaji-s-whatcha-reading-thread-march-2023-edition/980511/24 "2023-03-07T01:25:40Z")
Finished _Plum Island_ by Nelson DeMille. A decent whodunit, although the protagonist figured out the murderer well before the end of the book, and then spent an inordinate amount of time (I thought) chasing him down. Now I just started _Women Talking_ by Miriam Toews. The movie version was released a couple of months ago. The book is based on a true story of a very conservative Mennonite colony in Bolivia where the women and girls were regularly raped after being subjected to an animal anesthetic. The attackers, as it turned out, were men from the colony. As both sides of my family have roots in the Mennonite church, I am definitely interested in this story. ---
**Author:** ![wguy123](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/wguy123/32/3161_2.png) [@wguy123](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/wguy123)\ **Post date:** [March 7, 2023, 1:41am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/khadaji-s-whatcha-reading-thread-march-2023-edition/980511/25 "2023-03-07T01:41:00Z")
Just started _Nightmare on the Scottie_ by Stephen Orsini. It is a fairly short non-fiction book that details the King Crab “goldrush” in the 60s and the need to build new ships in Alabama. It is the story of transporting one of those ships from Mobile, AL to Seattle, WA via the Panama Canal with a fall-down drunk captain at the helm. It’s an absolute page-turner and I expect to finish it within another 1-2 days. ---
**Author:** ![kayaker](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/kayaker/32/441_2.png) [@kayaker](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/kayaker)\ **Post date:** [March 7, 2023, 12:41pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/khadaji-s-whatcha-reading-thread-march-2023-edition/980511/26 "2023-03-07T12:41:16Z")
I finished rereading Walter Mosley’s books on my kindle. Started rereading Stephen King’s _Nightmares and Dreamscapes_ (short story collection) ---
**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:** [March 7, 2023, 1:27pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/khadaji-s-whatcha-reading-thread-march-2023-edition/980511/27 "2023-03-07T13:27:03Z")
> [@Mahaloth](#): > > I am about a quarter through Replay and enjoying it quite a bit. Oh good, glad to hear it. Started today on [Murder Your Employer: the McMasters Guide to Homicide](https://www.amazon.com/Murder-Your-Employer-McMasters-Homicide/dp/1451648219/ref=sr_1_1?crid=3RL5R2VS9468T&keywords=murder+your+employer+rupert+holmes&qid=1678195237&sprefix=murder+your%2Caps%2C142&sr=8-1) by Rupert Holmes (yes, _that_ Rupert Holmes)! It’s just okay so far, but has a lovely cover and illustrations, and of course is fun to flaunt at work. ---
**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:** [March 7, 2023, 2:28pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/khadaji-s-whatcha-reading-thread-march-2023-edition/980511/28 "2023-03-07T14:28:18Z")
Okay, I gotta read that one! ---
**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:** [March 7, 2023, 6:35pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/khadaji-s-whatcha-reading-thread-march-2023-edition/980511/29 "2023-03-07T18:35:24Z")
Ken Grimwood’s _Replay_ is great - I’ve read it twice. Clever and engrossing, with some moments where I actually said “YES!” out loud when I got to them. Hope you keep enjoying it, **Mahaloth**. My current audiobook is _The Passenger_, nonfiction by Chaney Kwak. He’s a travel writer who survived a 2019 disaster aboard an ocean liner on which he was sailing, and of course wrote about it afterwards. There’s a bit too much navel-gazing about his stereotypical South Korean parents and his neglectful German boyfriend, but it’s a quick read and I’m enjoying it, all in all. Still reading _A Sea of Words: A Lexicon and Companion to the Complete Seafaring Tales of Patrick O’Brian_ by Dean King, with essays by John B. Hattendorf and J. Worth Estes. As I noted before, his choice of emphasis is sometimes inexplicable - he writes two pages about a single naval battle featured in only one of the 21 books in the series, but then just a short paragraph about HMS _Surprise_, the British frigate which is the setting of most of the books. Still making slow progress through _Children of Time_ by Adrian Tchaikovsky, a distant-future sf novel about a terraforming project gone badly, and dangerously, awry. I’m also reading _The Unexpected George Washington_ by Harlow Giles Unger, about the first President’s private life. I’m a big GW fan but Unger is too gushy even for my taste. Not sure I’ll finish it. ---
**Author:** ![BetsQ](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/b/fbc32d/32.png) [@BetsQ](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/BetsQ)\ **Post date:** [March 7, 2023, 6:52pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/khadaji-s-whatcha-reading-thread-march-2023-edition/980511/30 "2023-03-07T18:52:34Z")
I’m listening to [Lagoon](https://www.amazon.com/Lagoon-Nnedi-Okorafor-audiobook/dp/B00J2AW6RE/ref=sr_1_1?keywords=lagoon+book&qid=1678214923&s=audible&sprefix=lagoon%2Caudible%2C64&sr=1-1) by Nnedi Okorafor. It’s a first contact story and I’m about halfway through. I haven’t quite decided if I like it or not just yet. It’s a little tenser than I prefer listening to on my early morning walks, but I’m looking forward to finding out what happens. ---
**Author:** ![Mahaloth](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/mahaloth/32/1079_2.png) [@Mahaloth](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Mahaloth)\ **Post date:** [March 7, 2023, 6:57pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/khadaji-s-whatcha-reading-thread-march-2023-edition/980511/31 "2023-03-07T18:57:01Z")
> [@Elendil\_s\_Heir](#): > > Ken Grimwood’s _Replay_ is great - I’ve read it twice. Clever and engrossing, with some moments where I actually said “YES!” out loud when I got to them. Hope you keep enjoying it, **Mahaloth**. He just went back in time for the second time, which I assumed was going to happen. This is the earliest version of this “live it over again” story I’ve read. Predating Groundhog Day by a few years. I love that on his first trip back, he made tons of money, which is probably what I would have done. I also love that the second time, he is making money, but not the billions he made the first time. It’s an interesting choice. ---
**Author:** ![InternetLegend](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/internetlegend/32/13154_2.png) [@InternetLegend](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/InternetLegend)\ **Post date:** [March 7, 2023, 7:34pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/khadaji-s-whatcha-reading-thread-march-2023-edition/980511/32 "2023-03-07T19:34:46Z")
I just finished _The Love Songs of W.E.B Du Bois_ by Honore Fannone, and I really enjoyed it. The plot goes back and forth between a the lives of a family in (relatively) recent times and those of their ancestors, working from the 1600’s to the 2000’s. I read _Women Talking_ some time ago, and it was so devastating that I can’t bring myself to see the movie, even though it looks like it would be very good. ---
**Author:** ![Little\_Nemo](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/little_nemo/32/3120_2.png) [@Little\_Nemo](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Little_Nemo)\ **Post date:** [March 7, 2023, 9:51pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/khadaji-s-whatcha-reading-thread-march-2023-edition/980511/33 "2023-03-07T21:51:35Z")
_Hitler’s American Gamble: Pearl Harbor and Germany’s March to Global War_ by Brendan Simms and Charlie Laderman - A history of the events in the days between the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor and Hitler’s declaration of war against the United States. No surprising revelations but this goes into a lot more detail than most general histories devote to this topic. One problem with the book is that it can’t really answer its central question. Germany declared war because Hitler decided to and he didn’t have to answer to anyone else. But that means there will never been a conclusive answer as to why Hitler made that decision. We have some evidence from what he told other people but the things he said often didn’t fully express what he was thinking. _Cinema Speculation_ by Quentin Tarantino. A collection of essays on movies. This book reveals how central movies are to Tarantino’s life. In one of the opening chapters, for example, he talks about seeing _Bullitt_ in a theater and his reactions to it. This wouldn’t be unusual except he mentions at one point that he was six years old at the time. That said, Tarantino does have a lot of interesting insights into movies. ---
**Author:** ![Little\_Nemo](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/little_nemo/32/3120_2.png) [@Little\_Nemo](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Little_Nemo)\ **Post date:** [March 7, 2023, 9:56pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/khadaji-s-whatcha-reading-thread-march-2023-edition/980511/34 "2023-03-07T21:56:30Z")
> [@Elendil\_s\_Heir](#): > > Ken Grimwood’s _Replay_ is great - I’ve read it twice. Clever and engrossing, with some moments where I actually said “YES!” out loud when I got to them. Hope you keep enjoying it, **Mahaloth**. A question: have you read any of Grimwood’s other books and, if so, are they worth seeking 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:** [March 7, 2023, 11:55pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/khadaji-s-whatcha-reading-thread-march-2023-edition/980511/35 "2023-03-07T23:55:09Z")
No, only that one. ---
**Author:** ![Catamount](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/catamount/32/2840_2.png) [@Catamount](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Catamount)\ **Post date:** [March 8, 2023, 12:31am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/khadaji-s-whatcha-reading-thread-march-2023-edition/980511/36 "2023-03-08T00:31:32Z")
> [@Railer13](#): > > Finished _Plum Island_ by Nelson DeMille. A decent whodunit, although the protagonist figured out the murderer well before the end of the book, and then spent an inordinate amount of time (I thought) chasing him down. > > Now I just started _Women Talking_ by Miriam Toews. The movie version was released a couple of months ago. The book is based on a true story of a very conservative Mennonite colony in Bolivia where the women and girls were regularly raped after being subjected to an animal anesthetic. The attackers, as it turned out, were men from the colony. > > As both sides of my family have roots in the Mennonite church, I am definitely interested in this story. That sounds like a worse horror story than anything Stephen King and Rob Zombie combined could come up with! ---
**Author:** ![SCAdian](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/scadian/32/3292_2.png) [@SCAdian](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/SCAdian)\ **Post date:** [March 8, 2023, 8:19pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/khadaji-s-whatcha-reading-thread-march-2023-edition/980511/37 "2023-03-08T20:19:42Z")
> [@Mahaloth](#): > > **Replay** by Ken Grimwood _Replay_ is excellent – I’ve read it several times. ---
**Author:** ![SCAdian](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/scadian/32/3292_2.png) [@SCAdian](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/SCAdian)\ **Post date:** [March 8, 2023, 8:22pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/khadaji-s-whatcha-reading-thread-march-2023-edition/980511/38 "2023-03-08T20:22:47Z")
Just started _Winds of Wrath_, the fifteenth (and final) book in the Destroyermen AH series by Taylor Anderson. Next will be _The Janus File_, the third book in a time-travel/AH series by David Weber and Jacob Holo. (Weber needs to quit wasting time on other stuff and finish the third Hell’s Gate book!) ---
**Author:** ![Dendarii\_Dame](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/bbce88/32.png) [@Dendarii\_Dame](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Dendarii_Dame)\ **Post date:** [March 8, 2023, 8:36pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/khadaji-s-whatcha-reading-thread-march-2023-edition/980511/39 "2023-03-08T20:36:27Z")
Finished _The Witling_, by Vernor Vinge, which is a very good SF novel. Vinge has some very interesting ideas about how certain psychic powers could work if they existed, especially with regard to teleportation. Now I’m reading _A Man Called Peter_ by Catherine Marshall, a biography of her husband. ---
**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:** [March 10, 2023, 3:48pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/khadaji-s-whatcha-reading-thread-march-2023-edition/980511/40 "2023-03-10T15:48:59Z")
> [@Elendil\_s\_Heir](#): > > My current audiobook is _The Passenger_, nonfiction by Chaney Kwak. He’s a travel writer who survived a 2019 disaster aboard an ocean liner on which he was sailing, and of course wrote about it afterwards. There’s a bit too much navel-gazing about his stereotypical South Korean parents and his neglectful German boyfriend, but it’s a quick read and I’m enjoying it, all in all. Finished it. Meh. Dunno why it got such great reviews. [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/khadaji-s-whatcha-reading-thread-march-2023-edition/980511.md?page=1) [Next page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/khadaji-s-whatcha-reading-thread-march-2023-edition/980511.md?page=3)