# 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:** 1\ **Showing post:** 55
**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). --- _[View the full topic](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/khadaji-s-whatcha-reading-thread-may-2024-edition/1000992)._