# Khadaji's Whatcha Readin' thread - December 2014 Edition **URL:** \ **Category:** Cafe Society\ **Created:** [December 1, 2014, 3:00pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/khadajis-whatcha-readin-thread-december-2014-edition/706032 "2014-12-01T15:00:02Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 20\ **Page:** 5
**Author:** ![jtur88](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/j/e9c0ed/32.png) [@jtur88](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/jtur88)\ **Post date:** [December 18, 2014, 11:33pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/khadajis-whatcha-readin-thread-december-2014-edition/706032/81 "2014-12-18T23:33:06Z")
How come I’ve never heard of Shirfley Hazzard before? I’m reading ‘The Great Fire’, and it is by far the best book I’ve read this year. It’s taking me a long time because I keep going back and rereading sentences just to savor them. ---
**Author:** ![LavenderBlue](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/l/e95f7d/32.png) [@LavenderBlue](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/LavenderBlue)\ **Post date:** [December 19, 2014, 2:01am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/khadajis-whatcha-readin-thread-december-2014-edition/706032/82 "2014-12-19T02:01:53Z")
> [@Eleanor\_of\_Aquitaine](#): > > I finally read _The Hunger Game_s - my son is a fan. I liked the writing well enough, but I couldn’t get past the contrived premise. The author wasn’t able to convince me that this Capitol city would so enjoy watching children tortured on live television. > . I totally agree with you. It was so cruel it didn’t seem real. i also had a hard time buying the notion that a starving sixteen year old could outwit almost everyone else. I am reading\*\* The War on Women in Israel: A Story of Religious Radicalism and the Women Fighting for Freedom\*\* by Elana Sztokman. It is depressing as well but meshes well with what my Israeli friends have told me. The Israelis have to stop giving the damned Haredim so much power. ---
**Author:** ![chiroptera](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/c/df705f/32.png) [@chiroptera](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/chiroptera)\ **Post date:** [December 19, 2014, 2:36am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/khadajis-whatcha-readin-thread-december-2014-edition/706032/83 "2014-12-19T02:36:51Z")
I’m almost done with Dean Koontz’s _[Innocence](http://www.amazon.com/Innocence-A-Novel-Dean-Koontz/dp/0553808036)_. As always, he writes a tight story at an 8th grade reading level so it’s an easy and engaging read. ---
**Author:** ![sinjin](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/ebca7d/32.png) [@sinjin](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/sinjin)\ **Post date:** [December 19, 2014, 5:04am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/khadajis-whatcha-readin-thread-december-2014-edition/706032/84 "2014-12-19T05:04:41Z")
> [@Eleanor\_of\_Aquitaine](#): > > I finally read _The Hunger Game_s - my son is a fan. I liked the writing well enough, but I couldn’t get past the contrived premise. The author wasn’t able to convince me that this Capitol city would so enjoy watching children tortured on live television. This. I thought it was sooooo stupid. Don’t understand the wild popularity of stupid. ---
**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:** [December 19, 2014, 11:47pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/khadajis-whatcha-readin-thread-december-2014-edition/706032/85 "2014-12-19T23:47:10Z")
I finished the complete manga series **No. 6** by Asuko Asano & Hinoki Kino. It’s a graphic adaptation of a series of lite novels in Japan. I’m told that the adaptation is quite faithful to the books. I enjoyed it quite a bit, it was tense and I cried a couple times. Part of it I knew ahead of time, the pitfalls of having read too much SF in my life. My only complaint was that there just wasn’t enough time to adequately explore the behavior of the main character, he would one moment be super sweet and niave and the next be a killing machine. I’m sure the books go into it more fully but I would have liked some explanation of why he was that way. ---
**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:** [December 20, 2014, 1:17am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/khadajis-whatcha-readin-thread-december-2014-edition/706032/86 "2014-12-20T01:17:45Z")
Finished _A Bend in the River_, by VS Naipaul. An ethnic-Indian shopkeeper in a small central-African town in the post-colonial 1960s. Very good, but I did not enjoy it as much as Naipaul’s _A House for Mr. Biswas_. Next up? Will know after I hit the library and/or bookstore today. ---
**Author:** ![Politzania](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/p/3ab097/32.png) [@Politzania](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Politzania)\ **Post date:** [December 20, 2014, 2:31am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/khadajis-whatcha-readin-thread-december-2014-edition/706032/87 "2014-12-20T02:31:40Z")
Well, one of my New Year’s Resolutions really needs to be to write at least 2-3 sentences about each book I have read/am reading - cause my “Needs Review” shelf is GoodReads is embarrassingly large. So here goes in an effort to catch up a bit before then: _**[Neil Patrick Harris: Choose Your Own Autobiography](https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/20170296-neil-patrick-harris)**_ - audiobook version, which required a bit of tweaking to the format, but it worked reasonably well. Bonus - audiobook was performed by NPH himself! In terms of a memoir, it was informative without being voyeuristic (mostly) and Neil didn’t seem to whitewash his past too badly, and his love for his husband and children shone through. Being a Disney (and Christmas fan) I especially enjoyed the chapter on his yearly participation in the Epcot Candlelight Processional program. I’ve put the Kindle version of this bio on my wish list, but may be revisiting the audiobook again in the feature. _**[The Bone Clocks](https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/20819685-the-bone-clocks)**_ by David Mitchell (library book) While I still haven’t figured out quite what the title has to do with anything in the book, I found this novel engrossing - I enjoyed the “mundane” elements of the story at least asmuch as the mystical - I kinda want to be Holly Sykes when I grow up! However, I kinda have to agree a bit with fellow GoodReader Nataliya when she wrote that “the overt inclusion of fantastical elements is what weakened the story.” While I found the good vs evil confrontation compelling, it felt like a separate story only peripherally related to Holly and Hugo. I enjoyed Mitchell’s \* The Thousand Autumns of Jacob de Zoet \* as well as _Black Swan Green_, both of which remained moored in the “real world”. I still have _Cloud Atlas_ to read, and plan to get around to it fairly soon. Something like _**[Bradbury Stories: 100 of His Most Celebrated Tales](https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/9619.Bradbury_Stories)**_ is best read a bit a time; ebook format makes this a lot easier. While I’ve read several of these before (and a couple are on my all-time Favorite Short Story list!) there were plenty of new-to-me discoveries as well. Plenty of highlights with evocative turns of phrase, and sometimes more than a grain of truth: _“That’s all science fiction was ever about. Hating the way things are, wanting to make things different.”_ Recommended if you are a Bradbury fan, or would like to know if you should be one. Glad to have this in my collection. ---
**Author:** ![Sattua](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/sattua/32/11906_2.png) [@Sattua](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Sattua)\ **Post date:** [December 20, 2014, 3:00am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/khadajis-whatcha-readin-thread-december-2014-edition/706032/88 "2014-12-20T03:00:54Z")
Love Bradbury’s short stories. My parents had a volume that was complete at the time it was published, sometime in the late 70s or early 80s, and I read through it. It’s really educational to read a “complete run” of an author in one big jag, to see his highlights and his lowpoints and his “M. Night” points. Makes the author seem vulnerable, if that makes sense. ---
**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:** [December 20, 2014, 5:47am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/khadajis-whatcha-readin-thread-december-2014-edition/706032/89 "2014-12-20T05:47:33Z")
I was a big Bradbury fan as a teenager, and really ought to go back and re-read him sometime. > [@Thing\_Fish](#): > > Just finished\*\* Little Failure\*\*, by Gary Sheyngart, which I recommend very highly. It’s the author’s blackly humorous autobiography. He immigrated to the USA from the USSR at age 7 and struggled in various ways to fit in for a very long time, many of which reminded me of my own childhood, not to overshare. It also reminds you of how devastated the (former) USSR was by WWII and how pretty much everyone there has some horrible trauma just a few generations back in their family tree… I’ve heard good things about this book. Sheyngart is an Oberlin grad, as am I, and he’s gotten some attention among alums. For a fictional look at the long shadow WWII cast over the Soviet people, I recommend _Tool of the Trade_ by Joe Haldeman, my favorite sf spy novel. Just finished, in the last couple of days, David Sedaris’s audiobook _Holidays on Ice_, a great collection of Christmas-themed comic short stories and essays (including the deliriously funny "SantaLand Diaries), and _Captain Trips_, Roberto Aguirre-Sacasa’s first volume of graphic novels based on Stephen King’s _The Stand_, which is written pretty well but illustrated somewhat amateurishly. ---
**Author:** ![pohjonen](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/pohjonen/32/423_2.png) [@pohjonen](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/pohjonen)\ **Post date:** [December 21, 2014, 12:04am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/khadajis-whatcha-readin-thread-december-2014-edition/706032/90 "2014-12-21T00:04:37Z")
[Those Who Wish Me Dead](http://www.amazon.com/Those-Who-Wish-Me-Dead-ebook/dp/B00FPQA76Q/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1419119940&sr=8-1&keywords=Michael+Koryta) by Michael Koryta. I finished it over a mere two days. Really liked it, and I’m jaded and hard to enthrall in my old age. The villains reminded me a bit of Anton Chigurh in No Country for Old Men. ---
**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:** [December 21, 2014, 5:25am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/khadajis-whatcha-readin-thread-december-2014-edition/706032/91 "2014-12-21T05:25:32Z")
> [@Elendil\_s\_Heir](#): > > I’ve read both editions of _The Stand_ and would recommend you read the original work. Then, if you love it, go for the “complete and uncut edition.” What was added for that would, I think, be of interest only to a hardcore _Stand_ fan and King completist. > [@Siam\_Sam](#): > > Finished _A Bend in the River_, by VS Naipaul. An ethnic-Indian shopkeeper in a small central-African town in the post-colonial 1960s. Very good, but I did not enjoy it as much as Naipaul’s _A House for Mr. Biswas_. > > Next up? Will know after I hit the library and/or bookstore today. Our library has _The Stand_ but only the updated 1990 version, so that will have to do. I checked it out yesterday (Saturday). We’ll be upcountry for an extended New Year’s trip starting after next weekend, and I’ll start on it then. But I also checked out some more John Grisham and will now read _The Client_ first since that one’s a hardcover and I don’t want to schlep it around the country. (_The Stand_ is big, but this copy is at least a paperback.) We saw the Tommy Lee Jones/Susan Sarandon film version of it 20 years ago, but I don’t remember that much about it. ---
**Author:** ![chiroptera](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/c/df705f/32.png) [@chiroptera](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/chiroptera)\ **Post date:** [December 21, 2014, 1:48pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/khadajis-whatcha-readin-thread-december-2014-edition/706032/92 "2014-12-21T13:48:48Z")
> [@Siam\_Sam](#): > > Our library has _The Stand_ but only the updated 1990 version, so that will have to do. I checked it out yesterday (Saturday). We’ll be upcountry for an extended New Year’s trip starting after next weekend, and I’ll start on it then. > > But I also checked out some more John Grisham and will now read _The Client_ first since that one’s a hardcover and I don’t want to schlep it around the country. (_The Stand_ is big, but this copy is at least a paperback.) We saw the Tommy Lee Jones/Susan Sarandon film version of it 20 years ago, but I don’t remember that much about it. I recently finished re-reading the updated version of\* The Stand\*. I’m a King fan and found it great fun but check out [this thread](http://boards.straightdope.com/sdmb/showthread.php?t=743101&highlight=stephen+king) about errors in books - there’s a bit of a SK pile-on. 🙂 See how many errors you can spot! (Ignore the fact that I misspelled the author’s name in my post. Oops.) I just started John Cleese’s _[So, Anyway](http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/038534824X/ref=s9_al_bw_g14_i3?pf_rd_m=ATVPDKIKX0DER&pf_rd_s=merchandised-search-7&pf_rd_r=16VVZA8H8TETGNMV9FKQ&pf_rd_t=101&pf_rd_p=1995469442&pf_rd_i=2)_… I had no idea he almost became a lawyer. ---
**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:** [December 21, 2014, 2:01pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/khadajis-whatcha-readin-thread-december-2014-edition/706032/93 "2014-12-21T14:01:05Z")
> [@chiroptera](#): > > I recently finished re-reading the updated version of\* The Stand\*. I’m a King fan and found it great fun but check out [this thread](http://boards.straightdope.com/sdmb/showthread.php?t=743101&highlight=stephen+king) about errors in books - there’s a bit of a SK pile-on. 🙂 See how many errors you can spot! (Ignore the fact that I misspelled the author’s name in my post. Oops.) Of special note is the misspelling of Killeen, Texas as Kileen in _11/22/63_. That shows you how long it’s been since I’ve lived in Texas. I didn’t even catch that when I read the book! ---
**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:** [December 21, 2014, 6:58pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/khadajis-whatcha-readin-thread-december-2014-edition/706032/94 "2014-12-21T18:58:30Z")
With King you can always tell yourself it’s an alternate universe. Speaking of which, just finished _American Nightmares_, the second volume of the _Stand_ graphic novels. As before, well-written, pretty true to the book, but amateurishly illustrated. ---
**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:** [December 22, 2014, 3:20pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/khadajis-whatcha-readin-thread-december-2014-edition/706032/95 "2014-12-22T15:20:00Z")
I finished _The Vanishing_, by Wendy Webb. It was touted as a scary tale about a haunted mansion, but it was just ridiculously cozy. The main character throws away her shameful past and is swept into a paradise filled with hot baths, protective dogs, a studly stable guy, vintage evening gowns that fit her like a glove, glasses of brandy, maids carrying trays of delicious food, a library full of rare books, etc. Oh, and something about ghosts. Whatev. This was really more of a romance novel, with an implausible twist at the end that turned it from silly into downright dumb. Maybe if the author tried telling it to us around the campfire at midnight while holding a flashlight under her chin…nah, not even then. Started this morning on [The Life We Bury](http://www.amazon.com/Life-We-Bury-Allen-Eskens/dp/1616149981/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1419260848&sr=1-1&keywords=the+lives+we+bury), by Allen Eskens. \*\* Hopeful Crow\*\* recommended it back at the beginning of the thread and it’s pretty good so far. ---
**Author:** ![LawMonkey](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/l/d6d6ee/32.png) [@LawMonkey](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/LawMonkey)\ **Post date:** [December 22, 2014, 3:53pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/khadajis-whatcha-readin-thread-december-2014-edition/706032/96 "2014-12-22T15:53:40Z")
> [@Elendil\_s\_Heir](#): > > With King you can always tell yourself it’s an alternate universe. In this specific case, I think it actually is. It’s been a while since I read _ **11/22/63** _, but I recall there being at least one Dark Tower dogwhistle in there–maybe a Takuro Spirit or something. ---
**Author:** ![Sattua](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/sattua/32/11906_2.png) [@Sattua](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Sattua)\ **Post date:** [December 22, 2014, 4:32pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/khadajis-whatcha-readin-thread-december-2014-edition/706032/97 "2014-12-22T16:32:06Z")
Let’s talk about what I’m not reading. Yesterday evening I considered starting: Mrs. Frisby and the Rats of NIMH Catch-22 The Time Traveler’s Wife Unfortunately, NONE of those are available for Kindle… and I am so spoiled by the digital revolution that either going to the library or housing another dead-tree book is unthinkable. So I guess I"m not reading them. My next idea was Flowers For Algernon, which I haven’t read since I was about ten years old. Guess what? It’s on Kindle! Guess what else? The Kindle edition costs almost $8. For the digital version of a wafer-thin book that has been out for decades. Fuggedaboudit. I am back to Zilpha Keatley Snyder’s _The Changeling_ now. I have been holding off on reading the end for months, because I’m so afraid of what might happen. YA fiction always does that to me–I expect gut-wrenching disaster. ---
**Author:** ![LawMonkey](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/l/d6d6ee/32.png) [@LawMonkey](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/LawMonkey)\ **Post date:** [December 22, 2014, 4:34pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/khadajis-whatcha-readin-thread-december-2014-edition/706032/98 "2014-12-22T16:34:54Z")
> [@Sattua](#): > > Unfortunately, NONE of those are available for Kindle… and I am so spoiled by the digital revolution that either going to the library or housing another dead-tree book is unthinkable. So I guess I"m not reading them. Ain’t it the truth? It’s really quite hard for me to go for a dead tree book any more. I never thought I’d fall for digital books as hard as I have. ---
**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:** [December 26, 2014, 3:57pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/khadajis-whatcha-readin-thread-december-2014-edition/706032/99 "2014-12-26T15:57:36Z")
> [@Hopeful\_Crow](#): > > I’m excited that my e-copy of **The Life We Bury** by Allen Eskins came in today. I’d gotten about two thirds of the way through a few weeks ago when it had to go back to the library. Here, at least, you can’t extend your time with e-books. I guess because they only have a limited amount of them. So I had to get on the waiting list to get it back. > > It’s about a college student who has to do a story about someone’s life for one of his classes. He winds up at a nursing home interviewing a man who had been convicted of the rape and murder of a young girl 30 years before. He was only let out of prison to go to the nursing home because he was dying of cancer. The student, with the help of his neighbor, puts the pieces together and concludes that the man didn’t do it and he sets off on finding who did. This is while he has to deal with his alcoholic mother and autistic brother. Eskins has a thoughtful and touching way of writing. I’m going to put this on my Must Read Again list. I finished this one day before yesterday and it was pretty darn good! I’ll be looking forward to more from this author. ---
**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:** [December 26, 2014, 8:47pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/khadajis-whatcha-readin-thread-december-2014-edition/706032/100 "2014-12-26T20:47:30Z")
I’m reading **Twelve Desperate Miles: The Epic WWII Voyage of the SS Contessa** , by Tim Brady. It’s interesting. [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/khadajis-whatcha-readin-thread-december-2014-edition/706032.md?page=4) [Next page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/khadajis-whatcha-readin-thread-december-2014-edition/706032.md?page=6)