# Khadaji’s Whatcha Reading Thread - October 2025 edition **URL:** \ **Category:** Cafe Society\ **Tags:** comic-books-manga, books-writing-myths\ **Created:** [October 3, 2025, 1:53am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/khadaji-s-whatcha-reading-thread-october-2025-edition/1023626 "2025-10-03T01:53:21Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 20\ **Page:** 3
**Author:** ![Little\_Nemo](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/little_nemo/32/3120_2.png) [@Little\_Nemo](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Little_Nemo)\ **Post date:** [October 19, 2025, 4:53pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/khadaji-s-whatcha-reading-thread-october-2025-edition/1023626/41 "2025-10-19T16:53:25Z")
I picked up _Meddling Heroes_ by Charlie Brooks on a whim; it was in the “local authors” display at an indie bookstore. It’s a comic book superheroes story told from the points of view of a supervillain and his lawyer. It’s a short novel and I’m enjoying it (I’m about eighty percent through it). Hopefully Brooks sticks the landing. ---
**Author:** ![Little\_Nemo](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/little_nemo/32/3120_2.png) [@Little\_Nemo](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Little_Nemo)\ **Post date:** [October 19, 2025, 4:57pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/khadaji-s-whatcha-reading-thread-october-2025-edition/1023626/42 "2025-10-19T16:57:23Z")
> [@Railer13](#): > > Finished _If It Bleeds_ by Stephen King. It was okay. It consists of four novellas of varying quality. The first one and the last one are pretty good; the middle two are average. None of them is anywhere close to the quality of the novellas in _Different Seasons_, which is one of my favorite King books. The title story “If It Bleeds” really only works if you’ve read the previous novels in the series. ---
**Author:** ![Spice\_Weasel](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/spice_weasel/32/5435_2.png) [@Spice\_Weasel](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Spice_Weasel)\ **Post date:** [October 19, 2025, 5:15pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/khadaji-s-whatcha-reading-thread-october-2025-edition/1023626/43 "2025-10-19T17:15:01Z")
… Wow. ---
**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:** [October 19, 2025, 5:23pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/khadaji-s-whatcha-reading-thread-october-2025-edition/1023626/44 "2025-10-19T17:23:26Z")
I really didn’t like that book. ---
**Author:** ![Spice\_Weasel](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/spice_weasel/32/5435_2.png) [@Spice\_Weasel](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Spice_Weasel)\ **Post date:** [October 19, 2025, 5:24pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/khadaji-s-whatcha-reading-thread-october-2025-edition/1023626/45 "2025-10-19T17:24:12Z")
Based on your review, I’ll give it a pass. 😂 ---
**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:** [October 19, 2025, 5:37pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/khadaji-s-whatcha-reading-thread-october-2025-edition/1023626/46 "2025-10-19T17:37:18Z")
You don’t say. ---
**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:** [October 19, 2025, 9:04pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/khadaji-s-whatcha-reading-thread-october-2025-edition/1023626/47 "2025-10-19T21:04:54Z")
I enjoyed _Queen’s Gambit_ when I read it, many years ago. Since Tevis had written science fiction (most notably _The Man Who Fell to Earth)_, I thought that _Queen’s Gambit_ would also be SF, but I still enjoyed it for what it was. Finished _A Grim Reaper’s Guide to Catching a Killer_, by Maxie Dara and _Sometimes the Magic Works: Lessons from a Writing Life_, by Terry Brooks, both of which I enjoyed. Next up: _Shoebag_, a middle grade fantasy by Mary James in which a cockroach wakes up and discovers that he’s been turned into a boy; and _What an Owl Knows: The Science of the World’s Most Enigmatic Birds_, by Jennifer Ackerman. ---
**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:** [October 20, 2025, 4:00am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/khadaji-s-whatcha-reading-thread-october-2025-edition/1023626/48 "2025-10-20T04:00:09Z")
> [@Railer13](#): > > Just checked out _Queen’s Gambit_ by Walter Tevis. Hope i enjoy it as much as i liked the series. I hope so, too! As you may recall from March and April 2021: [Queen's Gambit on Netflix - #159 by Elendil\_s\_Heir](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/queens-gambit-on-netflix/924900/159) ---
**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:** [October 20, 2025, 1:18pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/khadaji-s-whatcha-reading-thread-october-2025-edition/1023626/49 "2025-10-20T13:18:39Z")
Current read; cozy steampunk from a favorite author: > **[A Tangle of Time (The Hexologists, #2)](https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/223296100-a-tangle-of-time)** > > From one of the most exciting and original voices in fa… ---
**Author:** ![robby](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/robby/32/11048_2.png) [@robby](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/robby)\ **Post date:** [October 22, 2025, 2:56am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/khadaji-s-whatcha-reading-thread-october-2025-edition/1023626/50 "2025-10-22T02:56:19Z")
My September/October 2025 issue of _Analog Science Fiction & Fact_ magazine just arrived today, and there is a story by Larry Niven in the current issue! He’s apparently 87 years old now, and still writing. ---
**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:** [October 22, 2025, 11:50am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/khadaji-s-whatcha-reading-thread-october-2025-edition/1023626/51 "2025-10-22T11:50:45Z")
I read _Fugitive Telemetry_ by Martha Wells. Murderbot solves a murder mystery. I think it’s one of my favorites in the series. I started _What Stalks the Deep_ the latest Sworn Soldier book by T. Kingfisher. We’re going underground and I’m already feeling claustrophobic. ---
**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:** [October 22, 2025, 12:26pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/khadaji-s-whatcha-reading-thread-october-2025-edition/1023626/52 "2025-10-22T12:26:28Z")
Three books since my last post, I think: [Gifted and Talented](https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/211004124-gifted-talented), by Olivia Blake. I picked it up because of the title and because I’m a gifted education specialist and it amused me. The first half of the first sentence hooked me: “Meredith Wren, a fucking asshole, not that it matters at this stage in the narrative but it’s worth pointing out….” It maintains this mordant narrator voice through most of the book, and while I generally hate the genre of “problems faced by the ultra-rich,” this one, like _Knives Out_, had enough of a spin on the genre that I found it delightful. It’s a modern fantasy with a magical realist touch to the fantasy and a very bitter, sharp sense of humor. _[Sea of Tranquility](https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/58446227-sea-of-tranquility)_. This was for a book club, and while the author’s prose is lovely, I ended it and was like, eh, _Interstellar_ did it better. All its narrative tricks and supposedly satisfying conclusion just felt like stuff I’d seen done before, and what I was left with was a bunch of characters that I didn’t find very compelling, including one of the most glaringly obvious author stand-ins that I’ve ever seen (a character who’s a best-selling author whose most famous book was about the aftermath of a pandemic–o where o where did you get that idea from, [Emily St. John Mandel](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Station_Eleven)? _[Overgrowth](https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/217387964-overgrowth)_, by Mira Grant. The premise–_Invasion of the Body Snatchers_, more or less, told from the POV of a self-aware pod person–is really intriguing, and throughout the book I kept thinking how much better it’d be if a better author had tackled it. As it is, the pod-person is a neurospicy petulant millennial who can’t shut up about how she hates people, except for her trans boyfriend, and the book is a paper-thin allegory for being trans. The ending actively pissed me off. The author, I concluded, genuinely thinks she’s better than all us normies, and doesn’t hate us so much as she despises us; her superiority complex drips through on every page. But it was the last two words of the book that made me laugh out loud: in the author’s note, it said, “Mira Grant also writes under her other name, Seanan McGuire.” I fucking **hate** the writing of Seanan McGuire, and had I known this was a pseudonym, I would never have picked up the book. ---
**Author:** ![Spice\_Weasel](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/spice_weasel/32/5435_2.png) [@Spice\_Weasel](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Spice_Weasel)\ **Post date:** [October 22, 2025, 4:15pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/khadaji-s-whatcha-reading-thread-october-2025-edition/1023626/53 "2025-10-22T16:15:41Z")
Halfway through _What We Can Know_ and the sunk cost fallacy is pushing me ever onward. There’s a point (and I am making this vague and as spoiler free as possible) where someone says to the protagonist, “I don’t care about any of this.” And I’m like, yeah. Neither do I. ---
**Author:** ![Siam\_Sam](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/d78d45/32.png) [@Siam\_Sam](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Siam_Sam)\ **Post date:** [October 23, 2025, 8:24am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/khadaji-s-whatcha-reading-thread-october-2025-edition/1023626/54 "2025-10-23T08:24:21Z")
Finished _Misery_, by Stephen King. The author of a popular romance-novel series wrecks his car in Colorado’s High Country and is rescued by his “Number 1 fan.” She also keeps him prisoner and tortures him. Very good, of course. I think by now everyone knows the story, if not because of the book, then thanks to the movie. I bought the book for my wife, because before we returned to Bangkok we were really getting into Kathy Bates’ new _Matlock_ series, and I told her the story of how she won the Oscar for playing Annie Wilkes in _Misery_, her first major screen role. I’d read it years ago and so reread it after the wife finished it. It reminded me that way back when, I myself dated an ex-nurse named Ann who was just as bat-shit crazy as Annie Wilkes. I could easily see my Ann doing the same things to me that Annie Wilkes did to Paul Sheldon. Easily. It’s just that I had a luckier escape. Next up is _Goodbye to Berlin_, by Christopher Isherwood. ---
**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:** [October 23, 2025, 12:38pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/khadaji-s-whatcha-reading-thread-october-2025-edition/1023626/55 "2025-10-23T12:38:11Z")
_Misery_ is one of two Stephen King books I woll never read again because it was too real. The other one is _Cujo_. ---
**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:** [October 23, 2025, 12:56pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/khadaji-s-whatcha-reading-thread-october-2025-edition/1023626/56 "2025-10-23T12:56:42Z")
> [@Left\_Hand\_of\_Dorkness](#): > > the book is a paper-thin allegory for being trans. I just want to rant a little more about this, because people might not believe me. Spoiler box out of an excess of caution, describing a scene from near the end of the book: The narrator is riding on the back of an immense winged beast–a plant-based pterodactyl-like alien with telepathy–and getting to know it. Does she ask about its homeworld? About its perspective on the invasion of Earth? About its relationship to other aliens? About its memories of other invasions? About what humanity can expect? No. Her telepathically-delivered question: “Um, what are your pronouns?” ---
**Author:** ![Spice\_Weasel](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/spice_weasel/32/5435_2.png) [@Spice\_Weasel](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Spice_Weasel)\ **Post date:** [October 23, 2025, 6:09pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/khadaji-s-whatcha-reading-thread-october-2025-edition/1023626/57 "2025-10-23T18:09:45Z")
> [@Left\_Hand\_of\_Dorkness](#): > > I fucking **hate** the writing of Seanan McGuire, and had I known this was a pseudonym, I would never have picked up the book. I thought _Into the Drowning Deep_ was a barn burner of a read. It’s not perfect but tons of fun (creepy ass mermaids take over a ship and eat a bunch of scientists.) It was pretty woke, now that you mention it. We had an autistic character, a lesbian character, and a Deaf character. They were all scientists and I thought all that was pretty cool. I won’t deny there was something very vaguely preachy about it. But at the same time, I found it gripping. ---
**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:** [October 24, 2025, 11:05am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/khadaji-s-whatcha-reading-thread-october-2025-edition/1023626/58 "2025-10-24T11:05:55Z")
I started and then quickly gave up on _A Flicker in the Dark_ by Stacy Willingham. The first chapter made me question her choice of adjectives. The second chapter started with the main character trying to shove her own tongue down her throat to scratch an itch. Then the short sentences. Fragments, really. All the time. Trying to convey the MC’s disjointed thoughts. But it was when the MC literally _phoned in_ not one but two prescriptions that I knew I was done. It might just be me for that last part because part of my job is proposing prescriptions to PCPs. They don’t “call in” medications, they escribe them. The information on the proposal is much more detailed than the “medication name, dosage, patient’s name, p-a-t-i-e-n-t-’-s-n-a-m-e” messages that the MC left. At the very, very least there should have been instructions. How many times a day does the patient take the medication? How many milligrams per day? Are generic substitutions allowed? I know it’s just one little scene that probably won’t recur again in the novel, but it really bugged me. Also, did she even discuss prescribing anti-anxiety medication with the patient? The patient’s parent/guardian since she’s a pediatric psychiatrist? And why is the patient lying on a leather couch like it’s Freudian times? All the therapy appointments I’ve had, we’re sitting in regular chairs facing each other. On the other hand, I’m rereading Umberto Eco’s _Foucault’s Pendulum_, which I love. And I just finished _The Tomb of Dragons_, the third book in Katherine Addison’s Cemeteries of Amalo series and it was great. ---
**Author:** ![Quimby](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/q/22d042/32.png) [@Quimby](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Quimby)\ **Post date:** [October 24, 2025, 1:33pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/khadaji-s-whatcha-reading-thread-october-2025-edition/1023626/59 "2025-10-24T13:33:32Z")
Finished Absolute Batman and Superman and liked both so decided to try Absolute Wonder Woman and wow it was pretty great. My favorite of the three. Really leans into the Greek myth aspects of her story. ---
**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:** [October 24, 2025, 1:47pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/khadaji-s-whatcha-reading-thread-october-2025-edition/1023626/60 "2025-10-24T13:47:03Z")
> [@Spice\_Weasel](#): > > I thought _Into the Drowning Deep_ was a barn burner of a read. It’s not perfect but tons of fun (creepy ass mermaids take over a ship and eat a bunch of scientists.) > > It was pretty woke, now that you mention it. We had an autistic character, a lesbian character, and a Deaf character. They were all scientists and I thought all that was pretty cool. I won’t deny there was something very vaguely preachy about it. But at the same time, I found it gripping. Oh, wow–I didn’t even realize that was her! I’d forgotten the woke aspects, but remembered that the story didn’t do it for me: it didn’t piss me off in the way this book did, but there was something fundamentally implausible, even for a fantasy, about the whole thing for me. And I tend to love woke books. I’m reading one now–_The Sapling Cage_, a YA story about a trans girl who hides her AMAB status to join a coven of witches–and am really enjoying it. I think that Grant/McGuire just has an approach to humans that I don’t like. I find her writing to be didactic and obvious instead of empathetic and insightful, like she’s writing to score points instead of to tell a good story or figure out what it means to be human. But plenty of folks love her stuff, so I guess it’s just a bad fit for me. [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/khadaji-s-whatcha-reading-thread-october-2025-edition/1023626.md?page=2) [Next page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/khadaji-s-whatcha-reading-thread-october-2025-edition/1023626.md?page=4)