# Khadaji’s Whatcha Reading Thread - March 2025 edition
**URL:** https://boards.straightdope.com/t/khadaji-s-whatcha-reading-thread-march-2025-edition/1014943
**Category:** Cafe Society
**Tags:** comic-books-manga, books-writing-myths
**Created:** [February 28, 2025, 8:15pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/khadaji-s-whatcha-reading-thread-march-2025-edition/1014943 "2025-02-28T20:15:50Z")
**Posts on this page:** 20
**Page:** 3
### Author:  [@Railer13](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Railer13)
#### Post date: [March 17, 2025, 9:36pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/khadaji-s-whatcha-reading-thread-march-2025-edition/1014943/41 "2025-03-17T21:36:22Z")
Started _In Too Deep_ by Lee Child and his brother, Andrew Child. Thus far this book isn’t up to the standards set by the rest of the Reacher books, but it’s still early.
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### Author:  [@Left\_Hand\_of\_Dorkness](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Left_Hand_of_Dorkness)
#### Post date: [March 18, 2025, 10:54am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/khadaji-s-whatcha-reading-thread-march-2025-edition/1014943/42 "2025-03-18T10:54:08Z")
[The Mercy of Gods](https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/201930181-the-mercy-of-gods), by James SA Corey
Seth Dickinson should almost receive royalties for this one. If you put Baru Cormorant into Exordia, you’d get a story not too far off from The Mercy of Gods.
It begins with space academics, y’know, backbiting and politicking only in space. I was prepared to slog through a dreary novel of unlikeable martinets. Fortunately, the mercy of authors kicked in, and things happened that were more compelling than the reallocation of grant funds.
The book shines on two levels. First, the individual characters are great–flawed and distinct and sympathetic. Second, the different species are well-conceived even when ill-defined, and the slow unfolding of their ways of thinking comprises the meat of the mystery.
Science fiction that nails the humans and the cultures is rare, and I really enjoyed this one, once grant funding became less of a plot point–or, perhaps, when it became more of one.
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### Author:  [@Dung\_Beetle](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Dung_Beetle)
#### Post date: [March 18, 2025, 2:35pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/khadaji-s-whatcha-reading-thread-march-2025-edition/1014943/43 "2025-03-18T14:35:20Z")
Finished I Who Have Never Known Men. It was okay, just a little slice of surreality, ending with no mysteries solved.
Next up: a vampire novel, [The Lesser Dead](https://www.amazon.com/Lesser-Dead-Christopher-Buehlman/dp/0425272621/), by Christopher Buehlman.
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### Author:  [@rocking\_chair](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/rocking_chair)
#### Post date: [March 18, 2025, 9:16pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/khadaji-s-whatcha-reading-thread-march-2025-edition/1014943/44 "2025-03-18T21:16:08Z")
Sunrise on the reaping. Still trying to come up with words.
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### Author:  [@Red\_Wiggler](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Red_Wiggler)
#### Post date: [March 19, 2025, 12:41pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/khadaji-s-whatcha-reading-thread-march-2025-edition/1014943/45 "2025-03-19T12:41:06Z")
Working my way through the _Foundation_ series. Asimov is a pretty good story teller but you have to ignore a few big misses with his technology predictions and the complete indifference to the possibility of any other sentient life in the galaxy besides humans.
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### Author:  [@CalMeacham](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/CalMeacham)
#### Post date: [March 19, 2025, 12:57pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/khadaji-s-whatcha-reading-thread-march-2025-edition/1014943/46 "2025-03-19T12:57:35Z")
> [@Red\_Wiggler](#):
>
> Asimov is a pretty good story teller but you have to ignore a few big misses with his technology predictions
I attended a lecture he gave in the 1970s. He read a brief quote from _Foundation_ in which Hari Seldon pulls out a “pocket calculator” that has glowing red digits.
“How about that?” he said “I not only got the name right, but I got the right color for the display!”
Except that not long after that most pocket calculators switched from those energy-gulping red LED indicators to much less power-intensive gray liquid crystal displays. So he only right for a couple of years.
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### Author:  [@MacDoc](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/MacDoc)
#### Post date: [March 19, 2025, 1:35pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/khadaji-s-whatcha-reading-thread-march-2025-edition/1014943/47 "2025-03-19T13:35:49Z")
Had been bingeing on detective novels from different cultures, Northern Iceland,
> **1. Snowblind (2015)**
> **2. • Nightblind (2015)**
> **3. • Blackout (2016)**
> **4. • Rupture (2016)**
> **5. • Whiteout (2017)**
> **6. • Winterkill (2020)**
1920s India,
**Murder Under a Red Moon** by Harini Nagendra
and the Harry Vrdee series now a TV set. ( pretty damn violent novels )
> **Streets of Darkness (Harry Virdee, #1) A.A. Dhand. ..**
> **Girl Zero (Harry Virdee, #2) A.A. Dhand. …**
> **City of Sinners (Harry Virdee #3) A.A. Dhand. …**
> **One Way Out (Harry Virdee, #4) A.A. Dhand.** …
> **Darkness Rising (Harry Virdee, #0.5) A.A. Dhand.** …
I usually have an Audible on the go and finished a good **Voyage of the Beagle** with the actual excerpts from Darwin’s journal but the weather has been too bad to ride.
Will get my teeth into
**Exodus: The Archimedes Engine** – Peter F\_ Hamilton which is my first preferred genre scifi
Only good thing about constant rain …it’s good reading weather.
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### Author:  [@DZedNConfused](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/DZedNConfused)
#### Post date: [March 19, 2025, 4:09pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/khadaji-s-whatcha-reading-thread-march-2025-edition/1014943/48 "2025-03-19T16:09:40Z")
I’m always speechless at how far off the mark most SF writers of the 50-80 were with hand held tech. A giant planet sized computer, yeah I bet my laptop does all that and faster.
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### Author:  [@MacDoc](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/MacDoc)
#### Post date: [March 19, 2025, 7:50pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/khadaji-s-whatcha-reading-thread-march-2025-edition/1014943/49 "2025-03-19T19:50:21Z")
Yup - missed the mark entirely tho Dick Tracy just about nailed my Apple Watch.
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### Author:  [@rocking\_chair](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/rocking_chair)
#### Post date: [March 19, 2025, 8:04pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/khadaji-s-whatcha-reading-thread-march-2025-edition/1014943/50 "2025-03-19T20:04:44Z")
i thought of the comic strip when apple watches came out. i would get the “look” when i would mention it.
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### Author:  [@MacDoc](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/MacDoc)
#### Post date: [March 19, 2025, 8:38pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/khadaji-s-whatcha-reading-thread-march-2025-edition/1014943/51 "2025-03-19T20:38:30Z")
The fact I can talk to Siri and have it type my message on my wrist and send it s just a bit mind bending…all without touching the watch. 🤪
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### Author:  [@Red\_Wiggler](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Red_Wiggler)
#### Post date: [March 19, 2025, 9:20pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/khadaji-s-whatcha-reading-thread-march-2025-edition/1014943/52 "2025-03-19T21:20:19Z")
In Asimov’s defense, basic cell phone tech still wasn’t on most people’s radar almost 40 years after he wrote the first in the series.
But I was amused to read that, tens of millennia in the future, the denizens of the galaxy’s capital city were still buying printed newspapers.
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### Author:  [@Dendarii\_Dame](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Dendarii_Dame)
#### Post date: [March 20, 2025, 11:06pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/khadaji-s-whatcha-reading-thread-march-2025-edition/1014943/53 "2025-03-20T23:06:09Z")
Finished _Between a Flock and a Hard Place_, by Donna Andrews (a Meg Langslow mystery) which was okay and _Dorothy Parker in Hollywood_, by Gail Crowther, which had some funny anecdotes although Parker lived a sad life in many ways.
Next up: _A Fall of Moondust_ by Arthur C. Clarke and _The Cure for Women: Dr. Mary Putnam Jacobi and the Challenge to Victorian Medicine That Changed Women’s Lives Forever_, by Lydia Reeder.
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### Author:  [@DZedNConfused](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/DZedNConfused)
#### Post date: [March 21, 2025, 4:21pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/khadaji-s-whatcha-reading-thread-march-2025-edition/1014943/54 "2025-03-21T16:21:20Z")
I finished _Somewhere Beyond the Sea_ by TJ Klune and I am the better for having J-Bone in my life. The whole book was lovely, charming and I spent so much time giggling in public places while reading. Klune and I disagree on endings, but it’s not enough to ruin my enjoyment.
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### Author:  [@zimaane](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/zimaane)
#### Post date: [March 22, 2025, 4:26pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/khadaji-s-whatcha-reading-thread-march-2025-edition/1014943/55 "2025-03-22T16:26:36Z")
**Ends of the Earth** Neil Shubin
A short but informative survey of various types of science being conducted in the Arctic and Antarctic.
Recommended
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### Author:  [@Elendil\_s\_Heir](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Elendil_s_Heir)
#### Post date: [March 23, 2025, 6:32pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/khadaji-s-whatcha-reading-thread-march-2025-edition/1014943/56 "2025-03-23T18:32:39Z")
> [@Red\_Wiggler](#):
>
> In Asimov’s defense, basic cell phone tech still wasn’t on most people’s radar almost 40 years after he wrote the first in the series…
Agreed, although Heinlein had his characters carrying around what were recognizably cellphones in the first chapter of _Space Cadet_ (1948).
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### Author:  [@Siam\_Sam](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Siam_Sam)
#### Post date: [March 24, 2025, 3:17am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/khadaji-s-whatcha-reading-thread-march-2025-edition/1014943/57 "2025-03-24T03:17:33Z")
Finished _Infinite Jest_, by David Foster Wallace. What a journey! It took a few months, what with my very limited reading time. Encyclopedic, and with hundreds of extensive endnotes, many of them with their own footnotes. And you can’t just skip the endnotes, because they are crucial to the tale. How do you even write something like this? It’s no wonder the author ended up killing himself. The only question is did it take a crazed, suicidal mind to write something this intricate, or did the act of writing such an opus drive him to suicide? But it is well worth your time if you have some weeks or months to spare. The title comes from _Hamlet_, the part where he holds up the skull and says, “Alas, poor Yorick! I knew him, Horatio: a fellow of infinite jest, of most excellent fancy: he hath borne me on his back a thousand times; and now, how abhorred in my imagination it is!” How to describe the novel? Set in the slightly distant future in a combined North American superstate comprised of Canada, the US and Mexico (that piece of shit Trump would approve, except for maybe Mexico), it takes place in Arizona and Boston, largely the latter. It involves Quebecois nationalists, an elite tennis academy and the dreggiest of dregs among Boston’s homeless drug-addict population. Much of what used to be the northeastern US and southeastern Canada is a hazardous-waste dump. The late founder of the tennis academy was also an avant-garde independent filmmaker who crafted a movie so compelling to see, the mere act of watching it fried your mind and turned you into a hopeless addict of that film, the viewers from that point on desiring only to watch it over and over for the rest of their lives, shunning everything else including food and all human contact. Naturally, the film has been long suppressed. Just as naturally, the Quebecois nationalists want to find the master copy for use in their separatist struggle. None of what I just wrote does the story any justice at all. But I guarantee it is well worth your effort. Truly one of the great novels of the 20th century.
I have to decompress after something like that, so I have now started _Sparring Partners_, a collection of three novellas by John Grisham. We are now in preparations to move back to Thailand, which we will do in just a few months – Trump and America can go fuck themselves – so nothing too heavy until we get settled in back over there again.
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### Author:  [@zimaane](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/zimaane)
#### Post date: [March 24, 2025, 3:12pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/khadaji-s-whatcha-reading-thread-march-2025-edition/1014943/58 "2025-03-24T15:12:46Z")
**Ends of the Earth** Neil Shubin
A short but informative survey of various types of science being conducted in the Arctic and Antarctic.
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### Author:  [@Dung\_Beetle](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Dung_Beetle)
#### Post date: [March 25, 2025, 3:08pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/khadaji-s-whatcha-reading-thread-march-2025-edition/1014943/59 "2025-03-25T15:08:44Z")
I finished The Lesser Dead. Pretty darn good, and this from someone who usually considers themselves “all vampired out”.
Next I attempted The Unworthy, by Agustina Bazterrica. I got through about 30 pages before I decided there was not enough story to be wrung out of all the gore and torture. Next!
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### Author:  [@Dendarii\_Dame](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Dendarii_Dame)
#### Post date: [March 25, 2025, 9:21pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/khadaji-s-whatcha-reading-thread-march-2025-edition/1014943/60 "2025-03-25T21:21:55Z")
Finished _A Fall of Moondust_ by Arthur C. Clarke, which was an excellent work of SF suspense and _The Cure for Women: Dr. Mary Putnam Jacobi and the Challenge to Victorian Medicine That Changed Women’s Lives Forever_, by Lydia Reeder, which is a good introduction to the subject of women doctors in the United States in the 1800’s, although I’ve read nearly all of the material it covers in other books and magazines.
Next up: _Daughter of Daring: The Trick-Riding, Train-Leaping, Road-Racing Life of Helen Gibson, Hollywood’s First Stuntwoman_, by Mallory O’Meara, and _Gilt_, by Jamie Brenner.
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