# Khadaji's Whatcha Readin' - February 2014
**URL:** https://boards.straightdope.com/t/khadajis-whatcha-readin-february-2014/680211
**Category:** Cafe Society
**Created:** [January 31, 2014, 4:24pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/khadajis-whatcha-readin-february-2014/680211 "2014-01-31T16:24:05Z")
**Posts on this page:** 20
**Page:** 2
### Author:  [@BetsQ](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/BetsQ)
#### Post date: [February 5, 2014, 8:55pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/khadajis-whatcha-readin-february-2014/680211/21 "2014-02-05T20:55:24Z")
I’m about a quarter of the way into The Cuckoo’s Calling by Robert Galbraith (J.K. Rowling). I don’t read a lot of mysteries, but I needed a change of pace and it was recommended to me. So far, the characters and the set up seem a bit cliched, but I’m still eager to learn what happens next.
I recently read John Scalzi’s Old Man’s War and The Ghost Brigades. They were both enjoyable reads, but I find his vision of the way humans interact with other species more than a little depressing. I really prefer for my sci fi to be optimistic. I’m still going to read the next in the series.
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### Author:  [@Malthus](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Malthus)
#### Post date: [February 5, 2014, 9:22pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/khadajis-whatcha-readin-february-2014/680211/22 "2014-02-05T21:22:49Z")
> [@CalMeacham](#):
>
> Finished **Free Radicals**. Also read **Bad News: The Best of Esquire’s Dubious Achievement Awards** , which covers them up through 1984. I’m sorry they stopped that feature.
> Right now I’ve got Poul Anderson and Gordon R. Dickson’s **Hoka!** on tap. I’ve always wanted to read the Hoka stories, and this collection gives me four of them, with illustrations (some by Phil Foglio from 12983!). The book says “Soon to be a Major Motion Picture!” on the back, but that clearly never happened.
>
> I’m also reading **Archimedes Nesselrode** by Justine Graykin. I heard her read part of it at Arisia 2014 two weeks back, and had to read the rest. She autographed my copy.
>
> [Archimedes Nesselrode: Graykin, Justine: 9781771151306: Amazon.com: Books](http://www.amazon.com/Archimedes-Nesselrode-Justine-Graykin/dp/1771151307)
>
> At the same session, I read part of my forthcoming novella _The Flight of the Hand Pfall_. I also read my _Dr. Seuss’ Beowulf_ (as appeared on this Board just before Christmas.) On her blog, Graykin wrote:
>
> I have substituted by Board name for my real-life name in the above…
>
> [http://justinegraykin.wordpress.com/](http://justinegraykin.wordpress.com/) Entry for 1/22/2014
Heh, that’s awesome. 😃 I loved the Seuss Beowulf, it deserves a wide readership. 🙂
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### Author:  [@SCAdian](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/SCAdian)
#### Post date: [February 5, 2014, 11:21pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/khadajis-whatcha-readin-february-2014/680211/23 "2014-02-05T23:21:20Z")
The current house book is _New Amsterdam_, by Elizabeth Bear. Only about 40 pages left, after which I’ll start on its sequel, _The White City_.
The current car book is _Twenty Blue Devils_, the ninth Gideon Oliver mystery by Aaron Elkins. Next, I think, will be an ARC of _The Martian_, by Andy Weir.
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### Author:  [@Eleanor\_of\_Aquitaine](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Eleanor_of_Aquitaine)
#### Post date: [February 6, 2014, 2:37pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/khadajis-whatcha-readin-february-2014/680211/24 "2014-02-06T14:37:36Z")
I’m nearly finished with Rebecca Goldstein’s book _Incompleteness: The Proof and Paradox of Kurt Gödel_. I have understood very little of it, and almost nothing about his actual proofs. I can grasp the importance of the liar’s paradox, but that’s it. The author lost me at the explanation of Gödel numbering.
The introduction is nice - she talks about the creation of the Institute for Advanced study in Princeton, and the unlikely friendship between Gödel and Einstein. Then she launches into a discussion of the Vienna Circle in the early 1920’s and the philosophies that Gödel’s work most disturbed: logical positivism and formalism. Then onto an explanation of the Godel’s proofs, which I skimmed over. Now she seems to be relating anecdotes about the man (the author met him once in a rare congenial mood at a party at Princeton) who was eccentric even for a genius. There’s a sad ending coming up: Gödel became so paranoid and delusional that he would only eat food that his wife prepared, and when she fell sick he starved himself to death.
I can’t really tell if the book any good or not, because it’s over my head, but it’s not what I was expecting. It’s part of the Norton “Great Discoveries” series, and the other two books in that series I’ve read (on Marie Curie and Ignac Semmelweis) were more accessible than this one.
On a lighter note, I just read Michael Chabon’s short novel _The Final Solution_, which has an aged, fading Sherlock Holmes roused by the mystery behind a mute 9-yr-old German Jewish refugee boy with a pet African gray parrot which recites strings of numbers in German, and which goes missing after a murder. The book is too slight to be completely satisfying, but Chabon’s writing is marvelous. I particularly enjoyed the chapter written from the parrot’s point of view.
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### Author:  [@Chefguy](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Chefguy)
#### Post date: [February 6, 2014, 2:50pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/khadajis-whatcha-readin-february-2014/680211/25 "2014-02-06T14:50:37Z")
Just started reading **Guns, Germs and Steel** , by Jared Diamond. It’s a weighty tome; if the prologue is any indication, I’ll still be reading this in the March edition of this thread.
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### Author:  [@CalMeacham](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/CalMeacham)
#### Post date: [February 6, 2014, 3:19pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/khadajis-whatcha-readin-february-2014/680211/26 "2014-02-06T15:19:44Z")
I finished _Archimedes Neselrode_, which I really liked. Next up is a copy of _The Year’s Best Science Fiction 11 (1949)_. I’d missed this series when it was new, but was reminded of it when I picked up NESFA’s attempt to revive it at the New England Book Fair last year.
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### Author:  [@Roundabout](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Roundabout)
#### Post date: [February 6, 2014, 4:13pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/khadajis-whatcha-readin-february-2014/680211/27 "2014-02-06T16:13:31Z")
I’m towards the end of _The Autobiography of Malcolm X_. It’s an informative look at African-American life in the early 20th century.
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### Author:  [@Sean\_Factotum](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Sean_Factotum)
#### Post date: [February 7, 2014, 1:22pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/khadajis-whatcha-readin-february-2014/680211/28 "2014-02-07T13:22:45Z")
I think I’ve forgiven Stephen King for _Under The Dome_ and the last volume of the Dark Tower series. I recently finished _Joyland_, and just started _Doctor Sleep_ (the sequel to _The Shining_.)
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### Author:  [@Raza](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Raza)
#### Post date: [February 7, 2014, 3:59pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/khadajis-whatcha-readin-february-2014/680211/29 "2014-02-07T15:59:17Z")
I am about halfway through **Farewell: The Greatest Spy Story of the Twentieth Century** by Kostin and Raynaud, a fascinating look at one of the greatest, if largely unknown, western intelligence successes of the century - and it largely just fell in our lap. An easy read; they don’t get bogged down in unnecessary details, but give as accurate a picture as possible of the spy and his environment. It puts the Reagan years, and the US’s relationship with France, in a new light (at least for me).
If you enjoy the FX show _The Americans_ I think you will enjoy this book.
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### Author:  [@DZedNConfused](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/DZedNConfused)
#### Post date: [February 8, 2014, 1:33am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/khadajis-whatcha-readin-february-2014/680211/30 "2014-02-08T01:33:36Z")
Finished **The Black Ice** by Michael Connelly. It is the 2nd Harry Bosch book and I enjoyed it a lot even though I worked out the plot twist about 20 pages ahead of Harry… I do like the way Connelly is parceling out bits of Harry’s Backstory.
I’ll start **The Confessor** by Daniel Silva in the next couple of days. So far I am 1 for 1 on the series.
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### Author:  [@bup](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/bup)
#### Post date: [February 8, 2014, 4:02pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/khadajis-whatcha-readin-february-2014/680211/31 "2014-02-08T16:02:16Z")
Well, I haven’t finished this novel - _**[Green Dolphin Street](https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/527189.Green_Dolphin_Street)**_ by Elizabeth Goudge, and I may never. I was reading it with my wife, whom I just lost, and finishing it just sounds like torture right now.
Nevertheless, I want to trumpet as much as I can the greatness of this book. Truly a forgotten classic. At times I thought I was reading Dickens. I don’t know why this book isn’t huge. I’m not sure I want to tell you much about the book - it was wonderful for me not knowing anything about it except a recommendation that it was good, and letting it sell me on itself.
It’s a period piece - set in the 1830’s (written in the 1940’s) in the British Empire, and it’s the story of a few lives that intertwine. Sounds staid, but isn’t.
If you make the effort to seek it out, I think you’ll be glad you did.
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### Author:  [@Elendil\_s\_Heir](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Elendil_s_Heir)
#### Post date: [February 8, 2014, 7:21pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/khadajis-whatcha-readin-february-2014/680211/32 "2014-02-08T19:21:51Z")
Thanks for the tip! Always good to hear of a book which stirs someone’s passion.
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### Author:  [@Chefguy](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Chefguy)
#### Post date: [February 8, 2014, 7:41pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/khadajis-whatcha-readin-february-2014/680211/33 "2014-02-08T19:41:52Z")
> [@bup](#):
>
> Well, I haven’t finished this novel - _**[Green Dolphin Street](https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/527189.Green_Dolphin_Street)**_ by Elizabeth Goudge, and I may never. I was reading it with my wife, whom I just lost, and finishing it just sounds like torture right now.
>
> Nevertheless, I want to trumpet as much as I can the greatness of this book. Truly a forgotten classic. At times I thought I was reading Dickens. I don’t know why this book isn’t huge. I’m not sure I want to tell you much about the book - it was wonderful for me not knowing anything about it except a recommendation that it was good, and letting it sell me on itself.
>
> It’s a period piece - set in the 1830’s (written in the 1940’s) in the British Empire, and it’s the story of a few lives that intertwine. Sounds staid, but isn’t.
>
> If you make the effort to seek it out, I think you’ll be glad you did.
And [here’s](http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8wwxaJ80nCg) the great Bill Evans tune of the same name.
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### Author:  [@AuntiePam](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/AuntiePam)
#### Post date: [February 8, 2014, 7:45pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/khadajis-whatcha-readin-february-2014/680211/34 "2014-02-08T19:45:47Z")
> [@bup](#):
>
> Well, I haven’t finished this novel - _**[Green Dolphin Street](https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/527189.Green_Dolphin_Street)**_ by Elizabeth Goudge, and I may never. I was reading it with my wife, whom I just lost, and finishing it just sounds like torture right now.
Bup! ☹
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### Author:  [@koeeoaddi](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/koeeoaddi)
#### Post date: [February 8, 2014, 10:26pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/khadajis-whatcha-readin-february-2014/680211/35 "2014-02-08T22:26:32Z")
I just finished **The Abominable** , by Dan Simmons and I loved it! I hesitate to recommend it, though. You have to not mind the occasional hundred page information dump on the evolution of the ice axe, the 12 point crampon and the mechanics of oxygen delivery. Then you have to be down with the step by step upward struggle with all the obligatory maladies, equipment failures, weather woes, hidden crevasses, and impossible rock climbing technicalities. Oh, …and there’s a slightly creaky (okay, _really_ silly) development as if Hitler wasn’t bad enough just killing millions of people, Dan Simmons had to go and… that you’ll just have to go with.
I couldn’t put it down, dammit, and I’m sorry it’s over.
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### Author:  [@koeeoaddi](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/koeeoaddi)
#### Post date: [February 8, 2014, 10:28pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/khadajis-whatcha-readin-february-2014/680211/36 "2014-02-08T22:28:42Z")
Aw, **bup** , I missed your post. I’m so sorry. ☹
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### Author:  [@hogarth](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/hogarth)
#### Post date: [February 9, 2014, 12:12am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/khadajis-whatcha-readin-february-2014/680211/37 "2014-02-09T00:12:52Z")
I finished Voltaire’s “Candide” a few days ago. I never realised how short it was (novella-length).
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### Author:  [@Dung\_Beetle](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Dung_Beetle)
#### Post date: [February 10, 2014, 2:18pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/khadajis-whatcha-readin-february-2014/680211/38 "2014-02-10T14:18:23Z")
**bup** , my thoughts are with you. I hope you have caring people to be with right now, I’m so sorry.
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### Author:  [@Catamount](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Catamount)
#### Post date: [February 10, 2014, 3:03pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/khadajis-whatcha-readin-february-2014/680211/39 "2014-02-10T15:03:02Z")
First of all, **{{{bup}}}**.
Second of all, I’ve officially decided I do not like, nay, cannot stand Christopher Moore. My Older Sister gave me a copy of _The Stupidest Angel_ last year and I’ve put off reading it until I finally decided to give it a chance. I got five pages into it before I decided it was not funny in any way. I can see why she thought I’d like it because I love Douglas Adams and dry wacky British humour, but this is not the same. The only way I can describe it is this is what Hollywood thinks dry British humour is like without any of the wit. It’s now sitting in the used bookstore bag so someone who likes that sort of thing can get it.
I still love the Vish Puri mysteries. I got the latest one, [The Case of the Love Commandos](https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/17571626-the-case-of-the-love-commandos), from the library and I’m about three chapters in. Already Mummy-ji is taking over an investigation for Vish. 🙂
Since I’m done with Dickens, the next Weighty Tome in the alluvial plain of Mt. ToBeRead is the Thomas North translation of Plutarch’s Lives. It’s a 70-year-old copy with a lovely old book smell. It’s also [absolutely hilarious in places](http://ryl.livejournal.com/857992.html).
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### Author:  [@Meurglys](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Meurglys)
#### Post date: [February 10, 2014, 3:08pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/khadajis-whatcha-readin-february-2014/680211/40 "2014-02-10T15:08:07Z")
> [@koeeoaddi](#):
>
> I just finished **The Abominable** , by Dan Simmons and I loved it! I hesitate to recommend it, though. You have to not mind the occasional hundred page information dump on the evolution of the ice axe, the 12 point crampon and the mechanics of oxygen delivery. Then you have to be down with the step by step upward struggle with all the obligatory maladies, equipment failures, weather woes, hidden crevasses, and impossible rock climbing technicalities. Oh, …and there’s a slightly creaky (okay, _really_ silly) development as if Hitler wasn’t bad enough just killing millions of people, Dan Simmons had to go and… that you’ll just have to go with.
>
> I couldn’t put it down, dammit, and I’m sorry it’s over.
I read it when it came out and was enjoyed it/them, more or less, until the final sections when the ‘Abominable’ surfaced.
After that the dates just didn’t hang together for the plot to work for me. I said this at the time elsewhere:
Book ruining [spoiler]A huge amount of detail about almost everything the plot touches on, which is mainly Alpine and Himalayan climbing in the late 19th and early 20th Century. Actually, the bulk of the book is climbing detail, especially once the action moves to Mount Everest. His fictitious events are described with every bit as much detail as the real historical action, which becomes a bit wearing after a while and the ending, instead of a neat wrap-up is staggered over several incidents spanning decades as loose ends are coped with.
The Abominable was truly abominable but it’s eventual use seemed too late for maximum effect; 4 months earlier might have been better, or some other event years before maybe. And the ‘happy ending’ postcard was completely unnecessary, imo.
Also, his using his Secret Service position in Greece to hear apparently common (military) gossip which has never surfaced since, and using the same contacts later to find stuff out, contrasted oddly with his using these very channels but coming up blank about other things which should have been no harder to find trace of… All somewhat unsatisfactory.
A decent map/profile view of Everest would have helped, too!
\*\*
If you read this, it’ll ruin the book:\*\*
To be blunt, with the photographs Churchill could have destroyed Hitler’s reputation anytime from the mid-1920s onward but chose to allow him to gain power and conquer much of Europe before using them. I know he wasn’t in power for much of the time but he still had the contacts to use them successfully.
Yes, preventing the invasion of Britain was a good time to use them, but, except for linking in the Hess flight to Scotland\*, surely the German decision not to crush the British army at Dunkirk in May 1940 was at least as good a hook for the end of the novel. An entire army of almost 350,000 men (British, French & Belgian) could have been destroyed or captured and there would have been no ‘Dunkirk spirit’. Even Churchill himself called it a ‘miracle of deliverance’.
\*Actually, Operation Sea Lion was postponed indefinitely in September 1940 and abandoned in January 1941 and Hess’s flight, which he implies was the means of communication, wasn’t until May 1941 so the end just doesn’t make sense to me.
[www.da.mod.uk/colleges/jscsc/jscsc-library/archives/opera](http://www.da.mod.uk/colleges/jscsc/jscsc-library/archives/opera)…
It would have worked much better for me if he had ditched the putative Hess connection and moved the blackmail up to the time of Dunkirk.
‘blackmail’ timeline:
late 1937 - Duke of Windsor visits Germany and tells Hitler about the photos
May/June 1940 - Dunkirk (apparently not part of any deal)
Sept 1940 - Operation Sea Lion delayed
January 1941 - Operation Sea Lion shelved
May 1941 - Hess flies to Scotland to negotiate destruction of photos
So, nothing happens for over three years after Hitler is approached, and the threat is withdrawn months before the negotiations are complete (or maybe even fully started!)
Doesn’t really hang together to me.[/spoiler]
But you’ve read it more recently; maybe I’ve misinterpreted something along the way…
Apart from that, the thriller by **Joe Haldeman** , _Work Done for Hire_ wasn’t very good, with a rather rushed ending, and _The Rabbit Back Literary Society_ by **Pasi Ilmar Jaaskelainen** also fell apart a bit at the end. It was a ghost story of sorts, but with too much left unresolved. Maybe I’m getting harder to please!
But now, for no particular reason, I’ve decided to finally read _Red Mars_ (and hopefully the other two as well) by **Kim Stanley Robinson**. I’ve been meaning to read it for years - since 1992, I guess, when I got it! I’m now about as far in as I got on my previous attempt and still going strong! 🙂
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