# Khadaji’s Whatcha Reading Thread - October 2024 edition
**URL:** https://boards.straightdope.com/t/khadaji-s-whatcha-reading-thread-october-2024-edition/1008311
**Category:** Cafe Society
**Tags:** comic-books-manga, books-writing-myths
**Created:** [October 1, 2024, 2:29am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/khadaji-s-whatcha-reading-thread-october-2024-edition/1008311 "2024-10-01T02:29:04Z")
**Posts on this page:** 9
**Page:** 4
### Author:  [@rocking\_chair](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/rocking_chair)
#### Post date: [October 27, 2024, 4:44pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/khadaji-s-whatcha-reading-thread-october-2024-edition/1008311/61 "2024-10-27T16:44:22Z")
I will give fatherland a go. Thank you.
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### Author:  [@Dung\_Beetle](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Dung_Beetle)
#### Post date: [October 27, 2024, 7:18pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/khadaji-s-whatcha-reading-thread-october-2024-edition/1008311/62 "2024-10-27T19:18:44Z")
Finished I’m Starting to Worry About This Black Box of Doom. It was entertaining, though I had trouble concentrating towards the end. That’s on me; I don’t have much focus right now.
I also skimmed through Catherine the Ghost, by Kathe Koja. If you’re a fan of Wuthering Heights, you’ll probably enjoy this as well.
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### Author:  [@Dendarii\_Dame](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Dendarii_Dame)
#### Post date: [October 28, 2024, 3:02pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/khadaji-s-whatcha-reading-thread-october-2024-edition/1008311/63 "2024-10-28T15:02:06Z")
Finished _Prayers from the Ark & The Creatures’ Choir_ by Carmen Bernos de Gasztold, translated by Rumer Godden, of which “Prayer of the Goldfish” was the best poem, and _Learwife_, by JR Thorp, which was excellent.
Next up: _Last Night, A Superhero Saved My Life: An All-Star Roster on the Caped Crusader That Changed Their Lives_, edited by Leisa Mignogna, and _Fortune’s Fantasy: 13 Excursions Into the Unexpected_, by Ken Altabef.
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### Author:  [@Left\_Hand\_of\_Dorkness](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Left_Hand_of_Dorkness)
#### Post date: [October 28, 2024, 5:43pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/khadaji-s-whatcha-reading-thread-october-2024-edition/1008311/64 "2024-10-28T17:43:31Z")
Only one book in the past week and a half, and a short one at that: [The Lightning Tree](https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/157265081-the-narrow-road-between-desires), by Patrick “I’ll never finish my trilogy goddammit” Rothfuss. Its title is really confusing: originally it was a short story, published as “The Lightning Tree” in 2014. Then it was expanded into a novella, published as _The Narrow Road Between Desires_ in 2023. But I swear the copy I read and is on my bedroom floor right now is called _The Lightning Tree_–I’ll double check when I get home.
Anyway, it’s fine enough. There’s a weird bit in the middle where (minor spoiler) the protagonist pays a boy for the location where a pretty girl takes her bath in the river, then goes and spies on her, then apparently has sex with her because she asked the boy to sell her location to the protagonist, and it all comes across as more of Rothfuss’s sex fantasies in a way that I find a little creepy. But other than that bit, it was an entertaining enough novella.
I tried reading _Rakesfall_, in which the starting premise is that a bunch of dead children are watching a TV show about two magical children watching a TV show about the dead children, and then it gets weirder. It’s very good, but between the election and the hurricane, my life is way too stressful for that sort of meta experiment at the moment, so I put it down until later.
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### Author:  [@CalMeacham](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/CalMeacham)
#### Post date: [October 29, 2024, 5:33pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/khadaji-s-whatcha-reading-thread-october-2024-edition/1008311/65 "2024-10-29T17:33:18Z")
I finished **The Secret Cases of Sherlock Holmes**. The book has a very clever idea – have Holmes participate in solving some _real-life_ crimes, beyond the Jack the Ripper case. It’s well-researched, but I was underwhelmed. Not enough of Doyle’s Holmes and his character there, although author Donald Thomas perseveres. I can’t exactly tell you why it doesn’t quite work, but , for whatever reason, it doesn’t.
Between this and Anthony Horowitz’ Holmes adventure **The House of Silk** , (which I recently read as an audiobook), I’ve been getting The Unexpurgated Holmes, where modern-day authors have Holmes involved with criminals of the sort Doyle would never write about. He suggested blackmail, extra-marital affairs, and illegitimacy, but never went further. In these recent books we get sodomy, sadism, pedophilia, and other sexual crimes that would have been apt subjects for real blackmail. It’s arguably more realistic and grittier, but I’m not sure it adds anything to Holmes.
On, now, to the John Mortimer collection **Rumpole a la Carte** (the title story of which I’ve already read, and seen dramatized on TV) . I’ve also picked up the DVD collection of the second season of Rumpole, so I’m getting lots of the character.
On audio I’ve finished **Jungle Tales of Tarzan** , and have been thinking quite a bit about Tarzan, Edgar Rice Burroughs, and racism. I have objected to many of the examples of racism cited in the Tarzan books as cases of cherry-picking, but it’s pretty clear that Burroughs himself certainly had racist ideas and preconceptions - it shows in the way he describes the black villagers that Tarzan encounters. And Tarzan views all the blacks as enemies and terrorizes the village repeatedly. Of course, a villager killed his foster-mother Kala, but Tarzan does not seem to similarly treat all jungle predators.
Ibram X. Kendi accused Tarzan of being a case where a white author was showing that a white man could be a better jungle survivor than a black man, in essence being a better “ape-man” that a black man could be (and thus providing some sort of answer to Jack Johnson’s winning of the heavyweight title). I still don’t buy the thing about Jackson, but the following paragraph from “Tarzan and the Black Boy” in this collection gives me pause about the rest of that thought:
> [@](#):
>
> He had seen Tarzan bring down a buck, just as Numa, the lion, might have done, leaping upon its back and fastening his fangs in the creature’s neck. Tibo had shuddered at the sight, but he had thrilled, too, and for the first time there entered his dull, Negroid mind a vague desire to emulate his savage foster parent. But Tibo, the little black boy, lacked the divine spark which had permitted Tarzan, the white boy, to benefit by his training in the ways of the fierce jungle. In imagination he was wanting, and imagination is but another name for super-intelligence.
>
> Imagination it is which builds bridges, and cities, and empires. The beasts know it not, the blacks only a little, while to one in a hundred thousand of earth’s dominant race it is given as a gift from heaven that man may not perish from the earth.
“Earth’s dominant race” makes his prejudices pretty clear (as does “dull, Negroid mind”), and in this passage we see that ERB really _was_ arguing that blacks “lacked the divine spark which had permitted Tarzan, the white boy, to benefit by his training in the ways of the fierce jungle.” No wonder, to ERB’s mind, that there were no black Tarzans, despite there being plenty of chances of other Kalas adopting black babies. It makes you wonder how he felt about Mowgli.
I’m now re-reading Bob Woodward’s **Peril** on audio. Seemed appropriate at election time.
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### Author:  [@rocking\_chair](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/rocking_chair)
#### Post date: [October 30, 2024, 4:08pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/khadaji-s-whatcha-reading-thread-october-2024-edition/1008311/66 "2024-10-30T16:08:07Z")
i started fatherland by harris last night. i have the fear index on the kindle.
fatherland is not kindled, i went to the b&n to get it. very dangerous. so many interesting books and things.
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### Author:  [@Railer13](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Railer13)
#### Post date: [October 30, 2024, 10:25pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/khadaji-s-whatcha-reading-thread-october-2024-edition/1008311/67 "2024-10-30T22:25:23Z")
I was perusing some list of mysteries/thrillers (which I enjoy) and came across an author named S. A. Cosby. Anybody here read anything by him? The plot lines listed look intriguing.
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### Author:  [@DZedNConfused](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/DZedNConfused)
#### Post date: [October 30, 2024, 11:23pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/khadaji-s-whatcha-reading-thread-october-2024-edition/1008311/68 "2024-10-30T23:23:45Z")
Next month: [Is that turkey I smell? (Offer only valid in the US)](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/khadaji-s-whatcha-reading-thread-november-2024-edition/1009478)
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### Author:  [@Elendil\_s\_Heir](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Elendil_s_Heir)
#### Post date: [November 3, 2024, 4:05am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/khadaji-s-whatcha-reading-thread-october-2024-edition/1008311/69 "2024-11-03T04:05:41Z")
> [@rocking\_chair](#):
>
> i started fatherland by harris last night…
Hope you love it, as I do!
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