# Khadaji’s Whatcha Reading Thread - May 2024 edition **URL:** \ **Category:** Cafe Society\ **Tags:** books-writing-myths\ **Created:** [May 1, 2024, 2:34am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/khadaji-s-whatcha-reading-thread-may-2024-edition/1000992 "2024-05-01T02:34:44Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 18\ **Page:** 3
**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:** [May 22, 2024, 12:29pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/khadaji-s-whatcha-reading-thread-may-2024-edition/1000992/41 "2024-05-22T12:29:48Z")
Started this morning on You Like It Darker, the new story collection by Stephen King. I’m only 37 pages in, not through the first story yet, but it’s perfect. ---
**Author:** ![zimaane](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/z/a3d4f5/32.png) [@zimaane](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/zimaane)\ **Post date:** [May 22, 2024, 3:20pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/khadaji-s-whatcha-reading-thread-may-2024-edition/1000992/42 "2024-05-22T15:20:50Z")
**A Higher Form of Killing: Six Weeks in World War I That Forever Changed the Nature of Warfare** Diana Preston The emergence of three new technologies - chemical weapons, aerial bombing of cities, and submarine attacks on merchant shipping - during World War I. Pretty interesting. ---
**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:** [May 22, 2024, 8:54pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/khadaji-s-whatcha-reading-thread-may-2024-edition/1000992/43 "2024-05-22T20:54:41Z")
While volunteering in my high school’s library, I processed a new book by stamping the school’s address on an inside page with an excerpt from _Have Space Suit–Will Travel._ It including the lines "Go ahead! We’ll make a star!" _Wow!_ I remember thinking. _Gotta read that._ I’ve been a fan of SF ever since. Finished _The Age of Wood: Our Most Useful Material and the Construction of Civilization_, by Roland Ennos, which is very interesting. Recommended for anyone interested in biology or history. Now I’m reading _Handprints on Hubble: An Astronaut’s Story of Invention_, by Kathryn D. Sullivan. ---
**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:** [May 23, 2024, 2:35am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/khadaji-s-whatcha-reading-thread-may-2024-edition/1000992/44 "2024-05-23T02:35:06Z")
That’s cool, **DD**! Thanks. > [@zimaane](#): > > **A Higher Form of Killing: Six Weeks in World War I That Forever Changed the Nature of Warfare** Diana Preston > > The emergence of three new technologies - chemical weapons, aerial bombing of cities, and submarine attacks on merchant shipping - during World War I. > > Pretty interesting. I recommend _The Face of Battle_ by John Keegan - a bit dry, but pretty good. It’s about how warfare affects the common soldier, with case studies of Agincourt, Waterloo and the Somme. ---
**Author:** ![zimaane](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/z/a3d4f5/32.png) [@zimaane](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/zimaane)\ **Post date:** [May 23, 2024, 12:36pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/khadaji-s-whatcha-reading-thread-may-2024-edition/1000992/45 "2024-05-23T12:36:31Z")
Thanks, that sounds intriguing. I’ll add it to my long to-read list. ---
**Author:** ![Left\_Hand\_of\_Dorkness](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/left_hand_of_dorkness/32/7156_2.png) [@Left\_Hand\_of\_Dorkness](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Left_Hand_of_Dorkness)\ **Post date:** [May 23, 2024, 3:18pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/khadaji-s-whatcha-reading-thread-may-2024-edition/1000992/46 "2024-05-23T15:18:25Z")
I just finished [The Djinn Waits a Hundred Years](https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/127464148-the-djinn-waits-a-hundred-years). This isn’t my usual read – a multi-family tale of generational trauma – but the sweetener of a bit of magical realism drew me in. It’s beautifully written, a slow burn of a book, and if the climactic scene was predictable, well, it wasn’t trying to be a twist. Very glad I read it. ---
**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:** [May 23, 2024, 10:07pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/khadaji-s-whatcha-reading-thread-may-2024-edition/1000992/47 "2024-05-23T22:07:29Z")
I hated to do it because it’s actually a good book, but I can’t finish [Outrageous: A History of Showbiz and the Culture Wars by Kliph Nesteroff](https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/98652205-outrageous). As the book progresses closer to the present my blood gets angried up more and more. I’m getting so pissed off seeing how these conservative assholes have been building up the foundation for the shitshow we currently inhabit for the last fifty years I’m turning into Mrs. White in _Clue_. And that sucks because, as I said, it’s a really good book. If I didn’t live in a dystopia where I have no bodily autonomy I might be able to finish it but I don’t and I can’t. ---
**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:** [May 23, 2024, 11:22pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/khadaji-s-whatcha-reading-thread-may-2024-edition/1000992/48 "2024-05-23T23:22:40Z")
If you’d like a hug, I offer one. Today I know just how you feel. ---
**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:** [May 27, 2024, 5:31pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/khadaji-s-whatcha-reading-thread-may-2024-edition/1000992/49 "2024-05-27T17:31:51Z")
Finished _Handprints on Hubble: An Astronaut’s Story of Invention_, by Kathryn D. Sullivan, which was very interesting. Read _Weird Medieval Guys: How to live, laugh, love (and die) in dark times_, by Olivia M. Swarthout, which was a lot of fun. Now I’m reading _Halting State_ by Charles Stross. ---
**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:** [May 28, 2024, 2:48am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/khadaji-s-whatcha-reading-thread-may-2024-edition/1000992/50 "2024-05-28T02:48:42Z")
Just started on _Mystic River_ by Dennis Lehane. ---
**Author:** ![CalMeacham](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/calmeacham/32/35_2.png) [@CalMeacham](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/CalMeacham)\ **Post date:** [May 28, 2024, 11:23am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/khadaji-s-whatcha-reading-thread-may-2024-edition/1000992/51 "2024-05-28T11:23:22Z")
Finished Clive Cussler’s **Shock Wave** , one of the pre-2000 Dirk Pitt novels that Cussler wrote all by his lonesome. I also quickly devoured Catherine L. Moore’s **Scarlet Dream** , a collection of Northwest Smith stories. The thing is, I’d read them several times before, and _don’t remember them_. Of course, I’ve read _Shambleau_ more times than I can count – it’s in a stack of anthologies, including the _Science Fiction Hall of Fame_. Besides which, I had to cite it in my own book on Medusa. But I have most of these stories in two other anthologies that I read – _Scarlet Dream and Black Gods_ and _Northwest of Earth_. The first is, I now realize, two anthologies smooshed together and taking the names of both. The latter is a pretty clever title (I have always been convinced, since I saw _Raiders of the Lost Ark_ for the first time back in 1981 that George Lucas or Steven Spielberg was inspired to name Indiana Jones that because of Northwest Smith – (Geographical name) plus (One of the most typical, common surnames in the US). Moore herself supposedly came up with the name when, as a secretary, she saw the name “N.W. Smith” on the return address on an envelope), I have no idea why I keep forgetting these stories. The illustrations in this 1981 edition make Smith look a lot like Han Solo, which is oddly appropriate. Also, the stories are monotonously similar. Smith encounters an alien but very humanly sexy Damsel in Distress from an ineffable menace with an alien name who wants to devour their essence like a psychic vampire and is able to get away by Dumb Luck or by shooting everything in sight. I know she could write other stories, but restricts Smith to this narrow sub-genre. I also finished up **The Secret to Superhuman Strength** by Alison Bechdel (she of the Bechdel test). The title is taken from ads that appeared on comic books, and it’s really an autobiography, mixed with thoughts on her intellectual forbears (Ralph Waldo Emerson, Jack Kerouac, Samuel Taylor Coleridge, Margaret Fuller) and on her various forms of exercise and working out. Now I’m on to **The Best Science Fiction Stories of Clifford D. Simak** , which I picked up at Boskone. On audio I’ve been re-listening to some Clive Cussler novels and things from my collection. I’ve got to find a new audiobook. ---
**Author:** ![zimaane](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/z/a3d4f5/32.png) [@zimaane](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/zimaane)\ **Post date:** [May 29, 2024, 3:25pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/khadaji-s-whatcha-reading-thread-may-2024-edition/1000992/52 "2024-05-29T15:25:51Z")
**Project Hail Mary** Andy Weir A man wakes up in a strange room with no memory of how he got there or why. As his memory slowly returns, he realizes that he and he alone can save the world. A lot more speculative than Weir’s other books, The Martian and Artemis, but still a lot of specific and careful science behind the action. And a lot of fun to read. **The Stone Sky** N.K. Jemison The conclusion of the shattered Earth trilogy, about a world where some people have the magical ability to start or stop earthquakes, and a lot of other stuff too. It was nicely written, although there were parts where I wasn’t sure what was going on, beyond “powerful magical stuff happening”. ---
**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:** [May 29, 2024, 3:47pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/khadaji-s-whatcha-reading-thread-may-2024-edition/1000992/53 "2024-05-29T15:47:02Z")
Finished Stephen King’s latest collection, You Like It Darker. I really enjoyed it. His “voice” was familiar and good, he stayed away from some previous pitfalls in his writing (male gaze, being overly political). I did catch a couple of errors, I think. They were things like, “He put the beer in the fridge” and then a few paragraphs later, “he took a sip of beer”. He does still have editors, right? Anyway, Two Talented Bastids, Danny Coughlin’s Bad Dream, and The Answer Man were my favorites. Least favorite: Rattlesnakes. The main character of that one is Vic Trenton, the father from Cujo. I don’t think that connection helped the story, and also, Cujo is a bucketload of human misery. I don’t revisit it. I re-read this and it sounds like a lot of bitching, but I don’t mean it to be. I’ve been very happy the last few days to find that King still has the gift. ---
**Author:** ![Left\_Hand\_of\_Dorkness](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/left_hand_of_dorkness/32/7156_2.png) [@Left\_Hand\_of\_Dorkness](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Left_Hand_of_Dorkness)\ **Post date:** [May 29, 2024, 4:43pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/khadaji-s-whatcha-reading-thread-may-2024-edition/1000992/54 "2024-05-29T16:43:00Z")
I just finished [Mongrels](https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/26156471-mongrels), by Stephen Graham Jones. It’s the second book I read by him, and I can only really talk about it in comparison to the first. I’ll try to avoid obvious spoilers, but just in case, I’ll put my comments in spoiler tags. Horror novels generally have happy endings or unhappy endings. I thought I’d predicted which way it was going to end, but then the book surprised me by ending the other way. But then I thought more about the main characters, and realized that in broad strokes, it had ended the way I’d predicted at first. It’s not as gut-punching a book as Jones’s _The Only Good Indian_, but I’m just fine with that. It was a great werewolf novel, one of the best I’ve ever read. ---
**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:** [May 29, 2024, 6:21pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/khadaji-s-whatcha-reading-thread-may-2024-edition/1000992/55 "2024-05-29T18:21:04Z")
> [@Elendil\_s\_Heir](#): > > …I’m now about a third of the way through _American Dialogue_ by Joseph Ellis, nonfiction about what the Framers have to teach us, or not, as we grapple with today’s problems. Thomas Jefferson (on slavery and racism) and John Adams (on economic inequality) are the focus so far. It’s okay but not great. Finished it. The other chapters were on Washington and foreign policy, and on Madison’s adroit politicking both before and after the Constitutional Convention. The latter was particularly good; I learned a lot. Not Ellis’s best (that’s still his Pulitzer-winning _Founding Brothers_), but worth a read. Over the weekend I zipped through Becky Chambers’s _A Psalm for the Wild-Built_, an upbeat, feel-good sf novel set on a human-settled, habitable, heavily-forested moon orbiting a gas giant. It’s about a vaguely-discontented tea monk who encounters a nature-loving robot out in the woods, and the offbeat friendship that results. It’s jussssst a little bit twee, but I liked it. Next up: _Eager_ by Ben Goldfarb, nonfiction about beavers’ amazing comeback from the devastation of the fur trade, and exploring all that they now have to offer a climate-changing world. Remarkable critters (and cute, too, unless they’re chewing down your favorite tree). ---
**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:** [May 30, 2024, 3:58pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/khadaji-s-whatcha-reading-thread-may-2024-edition/1000992/56 "2024-05-30T15:58:17Z")
Started today on [Annie Bot](https://www.amazon.com/Annie-Bot-Novel-Sierra-Greer/dp/0063312697/ref=tmm_hrd_swatch_0?_encoding=UTF8&qid=&sr=) by Sierra Greer. It’s a novel about a Stepford-wife-like robot whose ability to learn makes her question her role. ---
**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:** [May 30, 2024, 6:23pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/khadaji-s-whatcha-reading-thread-may-2024-edition/1000992/57 "2024-05-30T18:23:20Z")
New thread: [Oh boy warm weather!](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/khadaji-s-whatcha-reading-thread-june-2024-edition/1002292) ---
**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:** [May 30, 2024, 8:34pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/khadaji-s-whatcha-reading-thread-may-2024-edition/1000992/58 "2024-05-30T20:34:58Z")
Finished _Halting State_ by Charles Stross, which was excellent–one of the best novels I’ve read this year, and definitely the best SF one. Now I’m reading _The Thousand Dollar Dinner: America’s First Great Cookery Challenge_, by Becky Libourel Diamond. [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/khadaji-s-whatcha-reading-thread-may-2024-edition/1000992.md?page=2)