# Khadaji’s Whatcha Reading Thread - May 2021 edition
**URL:** https://boards.straightdope.com/t/khadaji-s-whatcha-reading-thread-may-2021-edition/941252
**Category:** Cafe Society
**Tags:** books-writing-myths
**Created:** [May 2, 2021, 11:30pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/khadaji-s-whatcha-reading-thread-may-2021-edition/941252 "2021-05-02T23:30:59Z")
**Posts on this page:** 20
**Page:** 2
### Author:  [@Left\_Hand\_of\_Dorkness](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Left_Hand_of_Dorkness)
#### Post date: [May 7, 2021, 7:02pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/khadaji-s-whatcha-reading-thread-may-2021-edition/941252/21 "2021-05-07T19:02:59Z")
I’m a little behind here. Three books lately.
First, reread [Nurk](https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/2192340.Nurk) to my second-grader. Ursula Vernon is in top form here, with the adventures of a mousy shrew, his snailboat, and a clean pair of socks. At some point I stopped reading and mentioned to my wife that much of the book reads like the adult horror she writes under the T. Kingfisher pseudonym. She does eldritch horror very, very well, even in the context of a silly children’s book.
I also read [Autonomous](https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/28209634-autonomous?from_search=true&from_srp=true&qid=w5BeFQ0iHA&rank=1), a near-future pharmapunk novel about evil corporations, AIs, and the usual nonsense. It was pretty decent, but I’ll be honest, I remember very little about the plot, and the characters weren’t especially memorable either. A good one for passing the time if you like this sort of thing, but you don’t need to drop everything to pick it up. If it gets nominated for awards, I’ll be neither surprised nor especially gratified.
Yesterday I finished [The Unbroken](https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/54467051-the-unbroken?from_search=true&from_srp=true&qid=NnVBasMYGG&rank=3). Anticolonialist fantasy is getting to be an entire subgenre, and this is one of the better ones I’ve read. The two point-of-view characters are deeply, deeply flawed, beautifully written characters that can’t help hurting people but whose motivations are fundamentally benevolent, no matter how awful they become. I’m not 100% sold on the ending, but the rest of the book was tremendous. This is one I’d definitely love to see pick up some awards.
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### Author:  [@Mahaloth](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Mahaloth)
#### Post date: [May 8, 2021, 6:30pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/khadaji-s-whatcha-reading-thread-may-2021-edition/941252/22 "2021-05-08T18:30:39Z")
**The Forever War** by Joe Haldeman
I was really surprised with this book. I went in totally unspoiled, no idea what it was about other than “scifi and war”. It was not what I expected. It was really more about war in general and does a pretty good job covering one man’s life in the military. Due to lightspeed travel, 1000 years go by in the book, but he only ages a few years.
Anyway, it was really only OK for me. I had hoped it would be better than it was, but it was by no means a bad book.
Next up:
**The Catcher in the Rye** \<–continuing my list of books I’ve not read that I really should have. I just finished Slaughter-House Five and The Forever War.
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### Author:  [@Elendil\_s\_Heir](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Elendil_s_Heir)
#### Post date: [May 8, 2021, 6:54pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/khadaji-s-whatcha-reading-thread-may-2021-edition/941252/23 "2021-05-08T18:54:02Z")
**Mahaloth** , sorry you didn’t like _The Forever War_ more; it’s a favorite of mine. In his short story “A Separate War,” you get to see what happened to Potter after she and Mandella are parted in _The Forever War_. Well worth a look.
And if you’d like to try more military sf, I highly recommend Robert Heinlein’s _Starship Troopers_ and John Scalzi’s _Old Man’s War,_ each with a very different take on what it means to be an infantry soldier in an interstellar war.
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### Author:  [@Siam\_Sam](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Siam_Sam)
#### Post date: [May 9, 2021, 2:00am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/khadaji-s-whatcha-reading-thread-may-2021-edition/941252/24 "2021-05-09T02:00:56Z")
Well into _The Two-Minute Rule_, a standalone LA noir by Robert Crais.
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### Author:  [@Left\_Hand\_of\_Dorkness](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Left_Hand_of_Dorkness)
#### Post date: [May 9, 2021, 2:07am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/khadaji-s-whatcha-reading-thread-may-2021-edition/941252/25 "2021-05-09T02:07:01Z")
> [@Elendil\_s\_Heir](#):
>
> And if you’d like to try more military sf, I highly recommend Robert Heinlein’s _Starship Troopers_ and John Scalzi’s _Old Man’s War,_ each with a very different take on what it means to be an infantry soldier in an interstellar war.
I really liked _Old Man’s War_, but I despised _Starship Troopers_. Definitely they’re different takes. For military sf, my favorites are weird shit like _Ninefox Gambit_ or _Ancillary Justice_, but neither of them really focus on the infantry.
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### Author:  [@Elendil\_s\_Heir](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Elendil_s_Heir)
#### Post date: [May 9, 2021, 2:15am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/khadaji-s-whatcha-reading-thread-may-2021-edition/941252/26 "2021-05-09T02:15:04Z")
Righto! The rest of the _Old Man’s War_ series is also good.
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### Author:  [@Boycott](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Boycott)
#### Post date: [May 9, 2021, 10:48am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/khadaji-s-whatcha-reading-thread-may-2021-edition/941252/27 "2021-05-09T10:48:03Z")
Finished **The Guest List** by Lucy Foley
Winner of [goodreads.com](http://goodreads.com) Best Mystery and Thriller Award for 2020.
I started reading at 8PM and finished at 3AM.
Well worth the hype.
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### Author:  [@Dendarii\_Dame](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Dendarii_Dame)
#### Post date: [May 9, 2021, 5:33pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/khadaji-s-whatcha-reading-thread-may-2021-edition/941252/28 "2021-05-09T17:33:15Z")
Finished _Ticker: The Quest to Create an Artificial Heart_ , by Mimi Swartz. Excellent book, with many great anecdotes about the development of heart surgery, too. I was surprised at how many former NASA engineers went into the artificial heart business. (A surgeon asked an engineer, “Does my idea violate the laws of physics, or can it actually be built?”) Also, I was surprised about how many inventions began with a trip to Home Depot or a supermarket.
Now I’m reading _Braiding Sweetgrass: Indigenous Wisdom, Scientific Knowledge, and the Teachings of Plants_, by Robin Wall Kimmerer.
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### Author:  [@SCAdian](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/SCAdian)
#### Post date: [May 9, 2021, 6:09pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/khadaji-s-whatcha-reading-thread-may-2021-edition/941252/29 "2021-05-09T18:09:01Z")
Just Finished: _1636: The Vatican Sanction_ , by Eric Flint and Charles E Gannon
Now reading: _1636: The Devil’s Opera_ , by Eric Flint and David Carrico
Next up: _Grantville Gazette VII_, edited by Eric Flint
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### Author:  [@Dung\_Beetle](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Dung_Beetle)
#### Post date: [May 10, 2021, 1:30pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/khadaji-s-whatcha-reading-thread-may-2021-edition/941252/30 "2021-05-10T13:30:25Z")
Finished _Near the Bone_, and really liked it! At first, I thought it was going to be a very serious and possibly difficult book for me to read (I know what it’s like to walk on eggshells around some abusive POS). But I was intrigued. As the story progressed and things became a little less plausible, I lightened up and started to enjoy it more. On Saturday, I picked the book up “for just a couple of minutes” and wound up shirking my chores because I needed to keep going all the way to the end. It was just a cheesy horror tale after all, but that’s my bag. 😍
Started today on a short story collection, [When a Stranger Comes to Town](https://www.amazon.com/When-Stranger-Comes-Michael-Koryta/dp/1335141472/ref=tmm_hrd_swatch_0?_encoding=UTF8&qid=1620652987&sr=1-1), edited by Michael Koryta. The stories are based on the latter part of the proverb, “All great literature boils down to one of two stories—a man takes a journey, or a stranger comes to town.” Koryta is one of my must-read authors, as are Joe R. Lansdale and Joe Hill, also included in this book, so I’m really looking forward to this one.
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### Author:  [@Left\_Hand\_of\_Dorkness](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Left_Hand_of_Dorkness)
#### Post date: [May 10, 2021, 11:03pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/khadaji-s-whatcha-reading-thread-may-2021-edition/941252/31 "2021-05-10T23:03:55Z")
I read the novella [The Empress of Salt and Fortune](https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/51190882-the-empress-of-salt-and-fortune), a gem of a story set in a fantasy ancient China, about a “Mongolian” (?) woman who marries the Chinese Emperor and then is exiled. It’s short and lovely.
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### Author:  [@SCAdian](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/SCAdian)
#### Post date: [May 11, 2021, 5:31pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/khadaji-s-whatcha-reading-thread-may-2021-edition/941252/32 "2021-05-11T17:31:58Z")
Just Finished: _1636: The Devil’s Opera_, by Eric Flint and David Carrico
Now reading: _Grantville Gazette VII_, edited by Eric Flint
Next up: _1636: The Viennese Waltz_, by Eric Flint, Gorg Huff, and Paula Goodlett
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### Author:  [@The\_wind\_of\_my\_soul](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/The_wind_of_my_soul)
#### Post date: [May 12, 2021, 3:53pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/khadaji-s-whatcha-reading-thread-may-2021-edition/941252/33 "2021-05-12T15:53:49Z")
I’ve added a couple books to my to-read list based on this thread: _Near the Bone_ and _The Guest List_.
I just finished _Into the Wild_ last night. It was a great book. The author has an interesting way of telling the story: out of chronological order, and occasionally veering from the main story entirely to tell other interesting stories that are only tangentially related, but it worked. I was engrossed in whatever story he happened to be telling for that chapter.
About 3/4 of the way through _The Secrets She Carried_ by Barbara Davis. It’s a dual timeline book, where the woman in the modern day timeline inherits the plantation where her mother was murdered, and discovers some secrets about the property: forbidden love, illegitimate children, racial and class divisions, that sort of thing. I really liked the book at the beginning, but it’s running out of steam. The writing was beautiful at the beginning, and the characters lively and complex, and everything’s starting to get more trite now.
Also partway through _Invisible Women: Data Bias in a World Designed for Men_ by Caroline Criado Perez. It’s one of those books that is so well-written that it leaves you in a bad mood. Women have become so accustomed to these little inequities that we tend to just roll our eyes and laugh. But why should women’s discomfort be seen as so trivial? Why is it funny than women are perpetually cold in the office while men are comfortable, or women are waiting in long lines with full bladders while men laugh at them and get on with their days? And then when the book starts getting into medical research and safety, ohh that made me mad. But if you’ve ever wondered why still needs to be a thing in the 21st century, boy will this book educate you.
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### Author:  [@Dendarii\_Dame](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Dendarii_Dame)
#### Post date: [May 12, 2021, 7:58pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/khadaji-s-whatcha-reading-thread-may-2021-edition/941252/34 "2021-05-12T19:58:29Z")
Finished _Braiding Sweetgrass: Indigenous Wisdom, Scientific Knowledge, and the Teachings of Plants_, by Robin Wall Kimmerer. Outstanding–one of the best books I’ve read so far this year. Strongly recommended.
Now I’m reading _Librarian Tales: Funny, Strange, and Inspiring Dispatches from the Stacks_, by William Ottens.
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### Author:  [@Spice\_Weasel](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Spice_Weasel)
#### Post date: [May 12, 2021, 7:59pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/khadaji-s-whatcha-reading-thread-may-2021-edition/941252/35 "2021-05-12T19:59:04Z")
Almost finished with **World War Z** by Max Brooks. What a unique and fascinating and genuinely terrifying read. It subverts traditional narrative form by telling the story through a series of survivor interviews, people from all walks of life, laypeople, soldiers, those from every level of government all over the world. It’s not like we’ll ever have a Zombie apocalypse but this book makes it frighteningly clear how unprepared we are for a global disaster.
Fun fact : The US military was so impressed by this book they brought the author on as a consultant for emergency preparedness. He’s done guest lectures at West Point.
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### Author:  [@Frodo](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Frodo)
#### Post date: [May 12, 2021, 8:47pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/khadaji-s-whatcha-reading-thread-may-2021-edition/941252/36 "2021-05-12T20:47:17Z")
The COVID pandemic was eerily similar to that book on it’s first stages, it starts in China, most don’t take it seriously at first but then panic, we even had the fake “cure” being sold to dupes.
Except in the book the US political leadership takes it seriously and has a minimum of competence, which err, didn’t happen in real life.
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### Author:  [@Elendil\_s\_Heir](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Elendil_s_Heir)
#### Post date: [May 13, 2021, 4:38pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/khadaji-s-whatcha-reading-thread-may-2021-edition/941252/37 "2021-05-13T16:38:01Z")
> [@The\_wind\_of\_my\_soul](#):
>
> …I just finished _Into the Wild_ [by Jon Krakauer] last night. It was a great book. The author has an interesting way of telling the story: out of chronological order, and occasionally veering from the main story entirely to tell other interesting stories that are only tangentially related, but it worked. I was engrossed in whatever story he happened to be telling for that chapter…
Yes, I enjoyed it too. This thread may interest you: [Into The Wild](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/into-the-wild/421460)
> [@Spice\_Weasel](#):
>
> Almost finished with **World War Z** by Max Brooks. What a unique and fascinating and genuinely terrifying read. It subverts traditional narrative form by telling the story through a series of survivor interviews, people from all walks of life, laypeople, soldiers, those from every level of government all over the world. It’s not like we’ll ever have a Zombie apocalypse but this book makes it frighteningly clear how unprepared we are for a global disaster…
Also a good read. The movie is quite different but also worth a look, I’d say.
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### Author:  [@Spice\_Weasel](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Spice_Weasel)
#### Post date: [May 13, 2021, 5:53pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/khadaji-s-whatcha-reading-thread-may-2021-edition/941252/38 "2021-05-13T17:53:03Z")
> [@Elendil\_s\_Heir](#):
>
> Also a good read. The movie is quite different but also worth a look, I’d say.
Yes, I saw the movie first, and loved it. It is radically different from the book, but both are great.
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### Author:  [@Frodo](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Frodo)
#### Post date: [May 13, 2021, 6:14pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/khadaji-s-whatcha-reading-thread-may-2021-edition/941252/39 "2021-05-13T18:14:15Z")
The movie was just another more or less typical zombie movie IMHO.
It would’ve been better to make a miniseries with the same stories we see in the book, but then you couldn’t have Brad Pitt as a protagonist of course.
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### Author:  [@DZedNConfused](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/DZedNConfused)
#### Post date: [May 13, 2021, 6:32pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/khadaji-s-whatcha-reading-thread-may-2021-edition/941252/40 "2021-05-13T18:32:28Z")
I DNFed **“Women Who Run with Wolves”** byClarissa Pinkola Estés. My bookclub is reading it this month, I thought it would be more of a look at folklore and historic women instead of the self congratulatory burble it turned out to be. In all honesty, I probably would have loved this book at age 20 when I was young and felt the world was against me. Now at 56, I’ve settled into the world and it just sounds like a load of verbal masturbation about how awesome the author is.
I was deeply offended to have her reduce the suicide of a woman caught in the Great Depression in the utter hell that was the Dust Bowl to: oh she couldn’t dress up and go window shopping anymore. No don’t put YOUR shallowness onto the victim of a tragedy, madam.
And you would think a PhD would understand that anecdotal evidence isn’t evidence.
Also it feel vaguely TERF to me, she should get out and talk to trans people, both men and women, and non binary persons for a more rounded look at what “women” are.
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