# Khadaji’s Whatcha Reading Thread - November 2024 edition
**URL:** https://boards.straightdope.com/t/khadaji-s-whatcha-reading-thread-november-2024-edition/1009478
**Category:** Cafe Society
**Tags:** books-writing-myths
**Created:** [October 30, 2024, 11:22pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/khadaji-s-whatcha-reading-thread-november-2024-edition/1009478 "2024-10-30T23:22:04Z")
**Posts on this page:** 20
**Page:** 1
### Author:  [@DZedNConfused](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/DZedNConfused)
#### Post date: [October 30, 2024, 11:22pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/khadaji-s-whatcha-reading-thread-november-2024-edition/1009478/1 "2024-10-30T23:22:04Z")
_turns around slowly_ Waitadarnminute…You there! Yes YOU! Aren’t you October trying to sneak out the door?! What do you think this month is??? A ding, dong, dash?
Seriously, how is October over and 2024 nearly over? Where did the year go? _peers at her Kindle_ Well I did read 40+ books and about 10 audiobooks, so I guess the year hung around a bit.
So Whatcha Readin?
I started _Fever_ by Jordan L Hawk. Horror and romance, I hope, in gold rush of 1897.
Waiting for my Libby list to explode,I have 5 audiobooks that say 2 weeks wait…
_Khadaji was one of the earlier members of SDMB, and he was well-known as a kindly person who always had something encouraging to say, particularly in the self-improvement threads. He was also a voracious, omnivorous reader, who started these threads 'way back in the Stone Age of 2005. Consequently, when he suddenly and quite unexpectedly passed away in January 2013, we decided to rename this thread in his honor and to keep his memory, if not his ghost, alive._
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### Author:  [@DZedNConfused](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/DZedNConfused)
#### Post date: [October 30, 2024, 11:24pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/khadaji-s-whatcha-reading-thread-november-2024-edition/1009478/2 "2024-10-30T23:24:37Z")
Last month: [OOO! Leftover candy!](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/khadaji-s-whatcha-reading-thread-october-2024-edition/1008311/67)
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### Author:  [@Cervaise](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Cervaise)
#### Post date: [October 31, 2024, 6:53am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/khadaji-s-whatcha-reading-thread-november-2024-edition/1009478/3 "2024-10-31T06:53:31Z")
I am rereading a classic I last read probably 30 years ago.
> **[The Shockwave Rider](https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/41070.The_Shockwave_Rider)**
>
> One man has made it his mission to liberate the mental …
I’m amazed how little of it I remember.
(It’s the only Brunner in my collection I’ve read only once. _Sheep_ and _Zanzibar_ were favorites, read several times. Not sure why I never revisited _Shockwave,_ it’s pretty excellent so far.)
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### Author:  [@Railer13](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Railer13)
#### Post date: [October 31, 2024, 7:12pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/khadaji-s-whatcha-reading-thread-november-2024-edition/1009478/4 "2024-10-31T19:12:55Z")
I finished listening to _The Fear Index_ by Robert Harris. A good read, and I would recommend.
Next up: _Framed_ by John Grisham and Jim McCloskey.
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### Author:  [@Dendarii\_Dame](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Dendarii_Dame)
#### Post date: [November 1, 2024, 12:05pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/khadaji-s-whatcha-reading-thread-november-2024-edition/1009478/5 "2024-11-01T12:05:41Z")
Finished _Last Night, A Superhero Saved My Life: An All-Star Roster on the Caped Crusader That Changed Their Lives_, edited by Leisa Mignogna (who wrote the best essay in that collection, “The Hero I Needed”), and _Fortune’s Fantasy: 13 Excursions Into the Unexpected_, by Ken Altabef, which was one of the better story collections I’ve read this year. “The Khoroshov Gambit” was the best one in it.
Now I’m reading _A Man Called Spade_ by Dashiell Hammett (the three short stories he wrote about that character), and _The Return of the Guinea Fowl: An Autobiographical Novel of a Liberian Doctor_, by Henry Nehemiah Cooper, M.D., with Izetta Roberts Cooper, Dawn Cooper Barnes, Ph.D., and Kyra E. Hicks.
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### Author:  [@zimaane](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/zimaane)
#### Post date: [November 1, 2024, 5:14pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/khadaji-s-whatcha-reading-thread-november-2024-edition/1009478/6 "2024-11-01T17:14:11Z")
**A Machine to Move Ocean and Earth: The Making of the Port of Los Angeles and America** James Tejani
The book is mostly about the bureaucratic and legal wrangling to secure ownership of the coastline where the port of Los Angeles was later built. You might think that that would make for a fairly boring book…and you’d be right.
Also, there aren’t really any maps, so if you are not very familiar with the geography of California, you’ll be confused.
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### Author:  [@Dendarii\_Dame](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Dendarii_Dame)
#### Post date: [November 3, 2024, 11:21pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/khadaji-s-whatcha-reading-thread-november-2024-edition/1009478/7 "2024-11-03T23:21:50Z")
Finished _A Man Called Spade_ by Dashiell Hammett (the three short stories he wrote about that character) of which the best was “Too Many Have Lived”, and _The Return of the Guinea Fowl: An Autobiographical Novel of a Liberian Doctor_, by Henry Nehemiah Cooper, M.D., with Izetta Roberts Cooper, Dawn Cooper Barnes, Ph.D., and Kyra E. Hicks, which was interesting.
Now I’m reading _Unwillingly to Earth_, a science fiction novel by Pauline Ashwell.
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### Author:  [@Siam\_Sam](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Siam_Sam)
#### Post date: [November 4, 2024, 4:45am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/khadaji-s-whatcha-reading-thread-november-2024-edition/1009478/8 "2024-11-04T04:45:24Z")
Finished _Different Seasons_, Stephen King’s 1982 short-story collection. Four novellas, each one excellent. Two were made into movies. “Rita Hayworth and Shawshank Redemption” became _Dude, Where’s My Car?_ Oh, wait, no, make that _The Shawshank Redemption_. “The Body” became _Stand By Me_.
Have started _The Waiting_, the newest from Michael Connelly, another Renee Ballard/Harry Bosch joint, but also featuring Bosch’s daughter Maddie, a promising young patrol officer. I feel Connelly may be setting her up to take over the narrative at some point in the future, what with Bosch’s ongoing battle with cancer an ongoing theme. I have no idea if that’s what Connelly does have in mind, and I don’t know that Bosch won’t live many more years, so if anyone happens to know if he dies in this book, please don’t tell me. No spoilers please.
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### Author:  [@CalMeacham](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/CalMeacham)
#### Post date: [November 4, 2024, 5:50am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/khadaji-s-whatcha-reading-thread-november-2024-edition/1009478/9 "2024-11-04T05:50:03Z")
I’m finishing up John Mortimer’s **Rumpole a la Carte** , then it’s on to another from my stack./
On audio, I’m halfway through **David Crockett: The Lion of the West** by Michael Wallis, a very good biography of the man who didn’t call himself “Davy”, with up-to-date information (well, up to the 2012 publication date) about Crockett, including new findings. A very good read.
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### Author:  [@Elendil\_s\_Heir](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Elendil_s_Heir)
#### Post date: [November 5, 2024, 8:02pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/khadaji-s-whatcha-reading-thread-november-2024-edition/1009478/10 "2024-11-05T20:02:07Z")
Neither _Follow Her Home_ by Steph Cha (semi-Chandleresque detective fiction set in modern L.A.) nor _A Little Life_ by Hanya Yanagihara (the life and times of some college buddies in NYC) passed my 50-page rule, despite good reviews. Both boring IMHO.
I finished _The Wager_ by David Grann, a pretty interesting true tale about a 1741 British naval shipwreck and its very unpleasant aftermath. I see it’s already been optioned for a movie.
Also recently finished _Shakespeare: The Man Who Pays the Rent_ by Judi Dench and Brendan O’Hea. Lots of great stories about her acting career and her enduring love of Shakespeare - most of the audiobook isn’t in her voice until the very end, but I still really enjoyed it. At times it’s a bit too cutesy, even twee, but not _too_ much to stomach.
I’m almost three-quarters of the way through _The Singer’s Gun_ by Emily St. John Mandel, her second novel. Not her best, but still worth a read, about a young man trying to leave his family of minor criminals and have a respectable career built on a whopper of a lie.
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### Author:  [@CalMeacham](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/CalMeacham)
#### Post date: [November 6, 2024, 1:52pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/khadaji-s-whatcha-reading-thread-november-2024-edition/1009478/11 "2024-11-06T13:52:41Z")
I’ve started reading Harold Lamb’s **Marching Sands** – a “Lost Race”-type novel that was republished as part of Sam Moscowitz’ “Classics of Science Fiction” series in 1974. I’d read Lamb’s **Genghis Khan** not long ago and liked it. That was more typical of Lamb’s output – a biography of an Asian ruler. Lamb published a lot of such biographies, histories, and fiction, maintaining that most books ignored everything but European and post-Colonial American history.
So I was surprised when one of his characters – a leading character, stating the basics of the story, not a minor character spouting an eccentric viewpoint – say to the leader of the expedition they are sending to Central Asia:
> [@](#):
>
> “We are going to send you to prove that [the lost race] exists. If this is proved,” he continued decisively, “we will know that a white race was dominant in Asia before the time of the great empires; that the present Central Asian may be descended from Aryan stock.”
>
> Further on he says:
>
> “The Asiatics have taught their children that, from the dawn of history, they have been lords of the civilized world. What would be the result if it were proved that a white race dominated Central Asia before the Christan era? The traditions of six hundred million people who worship their past would be shattered.”
And he’s implying that this is a _good_ thing.
It is, I suppose, possible that Lamb is setting up this character and his beliefs as a foil that will be taught better in the course of the book, but I doubt it. I suspect this reflects Lamb’s own views, and it troubles me that a man so sympathetic to non-white people and history could nevertheless have so heavy a bias it says that “whites” were “dominant” _twice_ in that short excerpt.
I seem to be running into the pervasive bedrock belief in white supremacy an awful lot in my recent reading – not only Harold Lamb, but also Edgar Rice Burroughs’ explicit statement that blacks lacked the creative and intelligent spark that Tarzan had (quote in last month’s “Whatcha reading”). Also Sax Rohmer’s stories of the insidious Dr. Fu Manchu (I read _The Hand of Fu Manchu_ recently as an audio book), and even the book about David Crockett, who was a slave owner in addition to an Indian fighter. It was Crockett who was seen as the example of Manifest Destiny, even if he never preached it or even heard the term.
Encountering all this at the same time that Trump, the racist ignoramus, has captured the top office in the land (and by a wide margin) is a pretty depressing thing. Lamb wrote his book just over a century ago, and Rohmer and Burroughs much more recently than that.
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### Author:  [@Dendarii\_Dame](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Dendarii_Dame)
#### Post date: [November 6, 2024, 10:28pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/khadaji-s-whatcha-reading-thread-november-2024-edition/1009478/12 "2024-11-06T22:28:55Z")
Finished _Unwillingly to Earth_, a science fiction novel by Pauline Ashwell. It was an enjoyable fix-up novel of four novelettes, of which the best was “Deadly Statistics”.
Now I’m reading _Serendipity: A History of Accidental Culinary Discoveries_, by Oscar Farinetti, translated by Barbara McGilvray.
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### Author:  [@zimaane](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/zimaane)
#### Post date: [November 7, 2024, 2:40pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/khadaji-s-whatcha-reading-thread-november-2024-edition/1009478/13 "2024-11-07T14:40:05Z")
**The Star Builders: Nuclear Fusion and the Race to Power the Planet**
Arthur Turrell
A concise survey of the current state of research on developing nuclear fusion as a power source. Although the joke is that fusion power is thirty years away and always will be, the author finds a lot of serious people who don’t get the joke and believe we are on the brink of developing a clean, efficient and safe power source.
Well-written and informative book
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### Author:  [@DZedNConfused](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/DZedNConfused)
#### Post date: [November 8, 2024, 1:30am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/khadaji-s-whatcha-reading-thread-november-2024-edition/1009478/14 "2024-11-08T01:30:33Z")
I finished _Fever_ by Jordan L. Hawk, horror among the gold fields of the 1890s gold rush. Creepy and the characters I guessed would die did indeed … well not exactly die, but are definitely not living anymore.
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### Author:  [@Dendarii\_Dame](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Dendarii_Dame)
#### Post date: [November 8, 2024, 9:54pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/khadaji-s-whatcha-reading-thread-november-2024-edition/1009478/15 "2024-11-08T21:54:03Z")
Finished _Serendipity: A History of Accidental Culinary Discoveries_, by Oscar Farinetti, translated by Barbara McGilvray. Meh.
Now I’m reading _Glory Be_ by Danielle Arceaneaux. It’s a cozy mystery.
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### Author:  [@Dendarii\_Dame](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Dendarii_Dame)
#### Post date: [November 10, 2024, 9:30pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/khadaji-s-whatcha-reading-thread-november-2024-edition/1009478/16 "2024-11-10T21:30:15Z")
Finished _Glory Be_ by Danielle Arceaneaux. Meh.
Now I’m reading _Peace Breaks Out_ by Angela Thirkell.
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### Author:  [@CalMeacham](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/CalMeacham)
#### Post date: [November 11, 2024, 1:10pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/khadaji-s-whatcha-reading-thread-november-2024-edition/1009478/17 "2024-11-11T13:10:17Z")
I finished Harold Lamb’s _Marching Sands_. Thoughts:
1.) I have no idea why Sam Moscowitz included this in a series of “Masters of Science Fiction”, or why L. Sprague de Camp also calls it Science Fiction in his intro. To me this looks like a pretty standard circa 1920 Adventure Novel set in Asia. The only unusual element is that it’s a hunt for a “Lost Race” – but there’s nothing impossible or implausible about this. No unusual Law of Nature or Super-Scientific discovery (like Radium Lamps). In my book, this ain’t science fiction.
2.0 The Bad Guys are Buddhists. And they’re n ot just Bad Guys who happen to be practicing Buddhists. They’re Bad Guys _because_ they’re Buddhists. The only other set of novels I’m familiar with where Buddhist = Bad Guy is in Robert Hans van Gulik’s “Judge Dee” novels. And that’s because Dee is a strict Confucianist and prejudiced against Buddhists. I know some Buddhists – nice guys, and generally pacifists. Having Buddhists be the undoubted and clear villains because of their religion is as jarring as having Rastafarians being the Bad Guys in one of Ian Fleming’s James Bond novels. And Lamb doesn’t even say or suggest that this anti-Buddhist stance is the result of any sort of prejudice by the main characters (as Gulik does), He just treats it as a Fact of Life.
3.) Not only does the lead character see the discovery of a supposed dominant tribe of White Aryans in the middle of the Gobi as something that will disrupt our view of history and cause untold amounts of doubt and soul-searching among the Chinese and Japanese, _all_ the white characters feels this way, and appear to be very happy about this. It makes you wonder if a young Harold Lamb was bullied by a gang of Chinese kids, and determined to get back at them, or something, It’s very weird.
I’m continuing my round of early 20th century Asia-based adventure novels with Talbot Mundy’s **King – of the Khyber Rifles**. I’ve wanted to read this for years. Hopefully, it won’t be as biased as the other works I’ve been reading.
On audio, I’m reading Clive Cussler’s **Ghost Soldier – an Oregon Files Adventure**. Cussler’s dead, of course, but he’s selling better than I am while alive. As I’ve said, he probably left a trunk full of rough outlines that collaborators will be drawing from for years. This one is written by Mike Maden, who wrote at least two other Oregon Files books (as well as several books in Tom Clancy’s series).
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### Author:  [@CalMeacham](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/CalMeacham)
#### Post date: [November 12, 2024, 5:44pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/khadaji-s-whatcha-reading-thread-november-2024-edition/1009478/18 "2024-11-12T17:44:12Z")
Reading Talbot Mundy’s _King – of the Khyber Rifles_ (which is set in British-held India circa WWI) I have stumbled across the most fascinating word.
**Thermantidote** – The name is obviously derived from “therm” + “antidote”. It’s something to alleviate the heat. Mundy’s hero describes it as a fan placed in the window having wetted arms. It seems to be an early incarnation of the _swamp cooler_ .
Looking it up online, I find that it has some interesting specific touches:
> [@](#):
>
> **thermantidote,** a rotating fan fixed in a window opening, fitted with _tatties_ (wetted screens of woven fragrant cus–cus grass), used in India to drive a current of cooled air into homes, hospitals, and barracks.
and
> [@](#):
>
> In a country where temperatures could reach 44℃ for lengthy periods such devices were necessary to the health of non–Indians. ‘The weather is becoming very hot’ wrote Fanny Parkes, wife of a British army officer, ‘and we hope to feel cool by the aid of a _ **thermantidote** _ , for which we are building a terrace and _ **verandah** _ ’. This was in March 1832. ‘It is an enormous machine . . . made of mango wood; the wheels and axle are of iron. In height, it is about seven feet, in breadth four or five, and some nine or ten or twelve feet in length . . . four large fans are turned round by two men on the outside; by which means the fans revolve and force air . . . into the house. The _ **thermantidote** _ , which is hollow and of circular form, has a projecting funnel, which is put through and fixed into the _ **window** _ of the house, from the machine which stands on the _ **verandah** _ ’. The air was forced through screens of fibrous jungle grass (with a ‘fragrant, delicious and refreshing scent’) worked into bamboo frames that were made to fit exactly into the _ **thermantidote** _ , or into _ **windows** _ . She describes the wetting of the screens by a team of _coolies_ ‘constantly employed’ in handing up water to fill a trough in the machine. That the apparatus was initially effective is clear from her diary entry for May — ‘for the first time I have been laid up with a strong attack of rheumatism and lumbago . . . and was told by a ‘medical man’ that “the _ **thermantidote** _ pours forth such a volume of cold air that if you have fallen asleep near it, it has caused all these aches and pains”. A month later she records ‘today the heat is dreadful; 89° [32℃] even at the mouth of the _ **thermantidote** _ , and in other parts of the house six degrees higher!
> **[Glossary T | Glossary Of Window And Related Terms](https://www.sashrepairs.co.uk/info/glossary-t.html)**
>
> Window Glossary T — teardrop window, a type of opening possibly unique to this gateway into the Northern Italian town of Crema.
It appears to be a cousin to and improvement on the _punkah_, that human-driven fabric fan used in India, which I have seen depicted in paintings and period motion pictures.
> **[The punkah and its pullers: A short history](https://servantspasts.wordpress.com/2020/08/10/the-punkah-and-its-pullers-a-short-history/)**
>
> Between colonial sleep and Indian labour, the history of punkah wallahs is buried. Ritam Sengupta brings to light the long history of labour, law, and violence that this labouring group underwent i…
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### Author:  [@Left\_Hand\_of\_Dorkness](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Left_Hand_of_Dorkness)
#### Post date: [November 12, 2024, 7:27pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/khadaji-s-whatcha-reading-thread-november-2024-edition/1009478/19 "2024-11-12T19:27:36Z")
I finally finished reading _[The West Passage](https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/195790798-the-west-passage)_, a very weird fantasy that reminded me of _The Neverending Story_ and _Perdido Street Station_, if those novels starred flat characters that I absolutely didn’t care about going on a quest whose stakes were cliched and not remotely compelling. Damn I wanted to like that book, because the world was so interesting; but other than a great world, it had very little to recommend it.
Now I’m reading _The Book of Elsewhere_, a collaboration between Keanu Reeves and China Mieville. Interesting enough so far, but I don’t think it’s gonna make my “Best of” list.
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### Author:  [@Railer13](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Railer13)
#### Post date: [November 13, 2024, 6:50pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/khadaji-s-whatcha-reading-thread-november-2024-edition/1009478/20 "2024-11-13T18:50:04Z")
I finished _Framed_ by John Grisham and Jim McCloskey. Well, I didn’t actually finish, but I quit after reading 8 of the 10 stories that comprise the book.
It is one thing to read fictional accounts of innocent folks were falsely accused, tried, convicted, and served time for a crime they did not commit. It’s always a combination of overzealous and dishonest cops, prosecutors eager for a win in court, corrupt judges who are in cahoots with the LEO and DA offices, and incompetent or cowardly defense attorneys. And it is always uplifting to read about how these poor individuals were eventually exonerated and freed from prison.
However, it is quite another thing to read actual, true stories of innocent folks who were sent to prison for crimes they did not commit. From coerced confessions to coached eyewitnesses to jailhouse snitches, these stories illustrate the corruption that exists within our justice system. And not all of these stories have happy endings, as some of the subjects are still in prison, while others who have been freed struggle to hold a job or adjust to life in the real world. One of those who was exonerated and released from prison was denied any restitution payment, but then had back child-support withheld from his meager earnings for the rest of his life, because he couldn’t make those payments while incarcerated.
These stories are not uplifting in any sense, and they are quite depressing. And after last week, I don’t need any more depressing things in my life. Someday I may go back and finish reading this book. But I doubt it.
Next up: _Conclave_ by Robert Harris.
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