# 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:** 14
**Page:** 4
### Author:  [@DZedNConfused](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/DZedNConfused)
#### Post date: [March 25, 2025, 10:14pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/khadaji-s-whatcha-reading-thread-march-2025-edition/1014943/61 "2025-03-25T22:14:42Z")
I finished _Haunt Sweet Home_ by Sarah Pinsker. It was… okay. Nothing to write home to Mother or Goodreads about, the ending was very rushed and I am left with more questions than the book’s run time. Something to listen to on a plane or a longish car trip when you really don’t want to think too hard.
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### Author:  [@SCAdian](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/SCAdian)
#### Post date: [March 25, 2025, 10:29pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/khadaji-s-whatcha-reading-thread-march-2025-edition/1014943/62 "2025-03-25T22:29:04Z")
Recently finished:
_Operation Biting: The 1942 Parachute Assault to Capture Hitler’s Radar_, by Max Hastings
_The Seventh Secret_, by Irving Wallace
Gave up on:
_The Woman Who Smashed Codes_, by Jason Fagone
Now reading:
_The Secret War: Spies, Ciphers, and Guerrillas 1939-1945_, by Max Hastings
Up Next:
_A Spy at the Heart of the Third Reich: The Extraordinary Story of Fritz Kolbe, America’s Most Important Spy in World War II_, by Lucas Delattre
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### Author:  [@Catamount](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Catamount)
#### Post date: [March 26, 2025, 1:36pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/khadaji-s-whatcha-reading-thread-march-2025-edition/1014943/63 "2025-03-26T13:36:17Z")
I started, then almost immediately gave up on _Luster_ by Raven Leilani. It’s about a self-destructive woman who thinks exclusively with her lower brain and then wonders why her life is falling apart. I got about two and a half chapters in before deciding that this is the kind of crap that life is too short to read.
Fortunately the other books I picked up at the library yesterday are much better. _Voyage of the Damned_ by Francis White is a fun fantasy murder mystery and _The Last Chronicle of Barset_ by Anthony Trollope is one of those doorstop-level Victorian novels that I love. Especially since it’s by Trollope who writes some of the best characters in the genre. The introduction kept comparing Dickens to Trollope since they were writing at the same time, but the difference that the editor didn’t realize is that Dickens wrote cariacatures while Trollope wrote people.
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### Author:  [@Dung\_Beetle](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Dung_Beetle)
#### Post date: [March 26, 2025, 2:19pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/khadaji-s-whatcha-reading-thread-march-2025-edition/1014943/64 "2025-03-26T14:19:13Z")
Started this morning on [Those Across the River](https://www.amazon.com/Those-Across-River-Christopher-Buehlman/dp/0425256510/).
A young couple moves to an old house near the ruins of a plantation where horrific things were done by the husband’s not-so-distant ancestors. He hopes to write a book, the plantation hopes for revenge! A good premise, but this story hasn’t grabbed me as quickly as Mr. Buehlman’s other stuff. It was his first novel.
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### Author:  [@Left\_Hand\_of\_Dorkness](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Left_Hand_of_Dorkness)
#### Post date: [March 26, 2025, 2:36pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/khadaji-s-whatcha-reading-thread-march-2025-edition/1014943/65 "2025-03-26T14:36:11Z")
Yeah–I really like his writing, but this is not one of my favorites by him.
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### Author:  [@Railer13](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Railer13)
#### Post date: [March 26, 2025, 3:40pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/khadaji-s-whatcha-reading-thread-march-2025-edition/1014943/66 "2025-03-26T15:40:37Z")
Finished _In Too Deep_ by Lee Child and his brother, Andrew Child. I’ve read all the Reacher novels and this one is by far the worst. Like most of the books, the plot is contrived and not really believable, but this story is off the charts. Plus, I found it a bit boring and had a hard time putting all the pieces together. Not recommended.
Now I’m back to reading _Never Lie_ by Frieda McFadden.
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### Author:  [@Quimby](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Quimby)
#### Post date: [March 26, 2025, 4:02pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/khadaji-s-whatcha-reading-thread-march-2025-edition/1014943/67 "2025-03-26T16:02:27Z")
Reading The Electric State. The movie was terrible but what people were saying about the original source made me want to try it. The art reminds me of the work of Jakub Rozalski which inspired the board game Scythe.
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### Author:  [@Red\_Wiggler](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Red_Wiggler)
#### Post date: [March 26, 2025, 7:36pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/khadaji-s-whatcha-reading-thread-march-2025-edition/1014943/68 "2025-03-26T19:36:46Z")
More fiction for me the last few weeks: Justin Cronin’s apocalyptic trilogy of _The Passage_, _The Twelve_ and _The City of Mirrors_.
Constructed somewhat similarly to _The Stand_, Cronin substitutes vampires for Randall Flagg and sometimes, as with Stephen King, I get a little annoyed at the injection of the supernatural. But also like King’s novel, it’s a rollicking adventure tale set in the entire wasteland of the North American continent, spanning a period of about a century.
I’m enjoying it.
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### Author:  [@Dung\_Beetle](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Dung_Beetle)
#### Post date: [March 28, 2025, 1:03pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/khadaji-s-whatcha-reading-thread-march-2025-edition/1014943/69 "2025-03-28T13:03:13Z")
Over halfway through, I’m ditching Those Across the River. It’s still not holding my interest, and I’m starting to get annoyed with the constant mention of how horny the main characters are for each other. That’s not what I came for.
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### Author:  [@Left\_Hand\_of\_Dorkness](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Left_Hand_of_Dorkness)
#### Post date: [March 28, 2025, 1:10pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/khadaji-s-whatcha-reading-thread-march-2025-edition/1014943/70 "2025-03-28T13:10:04Z")
> [@Red\_Wiggler](#):
>
> More fiction for me the last few weeks: Justin Cronin’s apocalyptic trilogy of _The Passage_, _The Twelve_ and _The City of Mirrors_.
>
> Constructed somewhat similarly to _The Stand_, Cronin substitutes vampires for Randall Flagg and sometimes, as with Stephen King, I get a little annoyed at the injection of the supernatural. But also like King’s novel, it’s a rollicking adventure tale set in the entire wasteland of the North American continent, spanning a period of about a century.
>
> I’m enjoying it.
I enjoyed those pretty well. His next novel, a standalone, _The Ferryman_, was super-disappointing to me, a predictable nonsensical misogynist mess. But his vampires were bloody and fun.
I just finished [Lake of Souls](https://www.hachettebookgroup.com/titles/ann-leckie/lake-of-souls/9781668637739/), Ann Leckie’s short story collection. Leckie is one of my favorite science fiction authors, her Ancillary Justice series a real standout from the last decade. While none of her short stories blew me away in the way that her trilogy did, they were all solid stories, ranging from Twilight Zone weirdness to something that felt like Jane Austen trying her hand at comic weird fantasy. It was a lot of fun.
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### Author:  [@Dendarii\_Dame](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Dendarii_Dame)
#### Post date: [March 28, 2025, 9:04pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/khadaji-s-whatcha-reading-thread-march-2025-edition/1014943/71 "2025-03-28T21:04:40Z")
Finished _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, both of which would be good beach reads.
Next up: _CalderScuplture_, by Alexander S. C. Rower and _The Sword of the Lictor_, by Gene Wolfe. I’m also going to start an anthology about writing mysteries called _Howdunit: A Masterclass in Crime Writing by Members of the Detection Club_, edited by Martin Edwards, which will take me a number of months to read.
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### Author:  [@CalMeacham](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/CalMeacham)
#### Post date: [March 30, 2025, 2:40pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/khadaji-s-whatcha-reading-thread-march-2025-edition/1014943/72 "2025-03-30T14:40:44Z")
I picked up a couple of books for bedtime reading at a library sale:
**Womder Woman: The War Years 1941-1945** , edited by Roy Thomas. Interesting stuff. I’d never read the earliest Wonder Woman stories. I have to admit, they’re pretty crude. I knew that the artwork pre-1960 wasn’t great, but the artwork here is _really_ bad. Still, there’s great creativity and they play the idea of the Amazons straight (Interestingly, I’ve been reading Adriene Mayor’s book _Amazons_, about the original Greek myths). Marston, who co-create her and wrote the scripts, was also the inventor and promoter of the Lie Detector (consider Wonder Woman’s magic lariat that forced you to tell the truth), so it’s interesting that at one point WW is almost given a Lie Detector test. Just finished this last night.
Larry Gonick’s **Cartoon Guide to Chemistry** , co-authored with Craig Criddle. I’ve got a lot of Larry Gonick’s “Cartoon Guide to…” series, but I missed this 2005 entry. Lots of fun.
For regular reading I’m finishing up Larry Niven and Edward M. Lerner’s **Fleet of Worlds**. Then it’s on to Douglas Adams’ **Dirk Gently’s Holistic Detective Agency** , which I’ve never read.
On audio, I’ve been listening to a bonanza of Robert E. Howard’s stories that I picked up used. Mostly Conan the Barbarian (which I’ve read in print a gazillion times), but also Solomo Kane, Kull, Breckenridge Elkins, and a collection of horror stories. The horror collection includes a number which I not only haven’t read, but hadn’t ever hear of before (and I’ve been reading and collecting Howard for years). The stories aren’t at all bad – I’d expect unfamiliar ones to be bottom-of-the-barrel stuff, but they’re not – but they are often shockingly racist (which may be why some of these have’t been reprinted).
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### Author:  [@DZedNConfused](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/DZedNConfused)
#### Post date: [March 30, 2025, 8:39pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/khadaji-s-whatcha-reading-thread-march-2025-edition/1014943/73 "2025-03-30T20:39:49Z")
New thread: [Why is it cold again?](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/khadaji-s-whatcha-reading-thread-april-2025-edition/1016359)
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### Author:  [@Dendarii\_Dame](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Dendarii_Dame)
#### Post date: [March 31, 2025, 7:39pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/khadaji-s-whatcha-reading-thread-march-2025-edition/1014943/74 "2025-03-31T19:39:45Z")
Finished _CalderScuplture_, by Alexander S. C. Rower. The photos of the artwork were stunning, but I thought the description of them just okay. _The Sword of the Lictor_, by Gene Wolfe, as usual, had excellent worldbuilding but the rest of it didn’t interest me much.
Still reading _Howdunit: A Masterclass in Crime Writing by Members of the Detection Club_, edited by Martin Edwards.
Next up: _The Velveteen Rabbit_, by Margery Williams, a classic picture book which I somehow never got around to reading; and _Indigo: In Search of the Color That Seduced the World_, by Catherine E. McKinley.
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