Khadaji’s Whatcha Reading Thread - September 2026 edition

[CalMeacham]

@Catamount

I need to find Someone You Can Build a Nest In to be a completist. (Helps that he’s only got three novels out for that goal.)

I read this last year, because Wiswell was going to be GoH at a convention I went to, but he had to cancel. An admirably weird book (It’s sort of a Beowulf-like story, told from the point of view of the monster), but I haven’t read the other two yet.

[Elendil_s_Heir]

@DZedNConfused

I finally finished Old Man’s War by John Scalzi. I liked it, mostly, but I’ll be honest, I prefer his quirky fantastical works over the hard SF. KPS and Constituent Service are my two favorite works of his so far.
I do enjoy his imagination and creativity… and I admit to being a sucker for snarky narrators.
Thank you @Elendil_s_Heir for introducing me to John Perry and the Consu, I am intrigued to see how the Universe survises humans AND Consu in the same plain of existence.

Thanks! Very glad to hear you enjoyed it.

[Left_Hand_of_Dorkness]

@Catamount

I need to find Someone You Can Build a Nest In to be a completist. (Helps that he’s only got three novels out for that goal.)

Here’s what I wrote when I read this book:

@Left_Hand_of_Dorkness

• Someone You Can Build a Nest In, by John Wiswell. I was hooked by the second paragraph, when the narrator talks about eating her siblings in the body her father. Weird alien point-of-view characters are fun. By 25% of the way through the book, I’d transitioned to hate-reading it. This alien organism who barely has any contact with humanity–much less with GenZ social media–is constantly talking about “abuser personality” and “holding people accountable” and “being in denial” and “consensual touch” (keep in mind, the alien obsessing over consensual touch also eats people and absorbs their skeletal system). The author’s note talks extensively about being disabled, and the book was a very thinly veiled allegory for growing up neurodiverse, and it missed the fucking mark so bad. For a much better take on a similar idea, check out Ann Leckie’s brilliant Translation State.

[Dendarii_Dame]

Finished Out of the Clouds: The Unlikely Horseman and the Unwanted Colt Who Conquered the Sport of Kings, by Linda Carroll and David Rosner, which I enjoyed; and 1901, by Robert Conroy, which I did not.

Next up: Absolute Wonder Woman: The Last Amazon, by Kelly Thompson; and Quest in Paradise, by David Attenborough.

[Frodo]

@Dendarii_Dame

and 1901, by Robert Conroy, which I did not.

I was going to warn you but didn’t want to be a negative nelly.