Khadaji's Whatcha Readin' thread -- June 2018 Edition

Cafe Society
41

I finally got a copy of Anthony Horowitz’s The Word is Murder from the library (apparently it’s very popular, because I requested it about 4 months ago). So far it’s pretty good, with Horowitz writing himself and his real-life experiences into a fictional murder mystery. If it’s as entertaining as Magpie Murders I’ll be a happy reader.

Other than that, I continue to work my way through the Agatha Christie catalog, having just finished Cat Among the Pigeons and Death in the Air. Not too much to say about them except that they’re pretty damn good, as is the case with most of Christie’s work.

42

Finished That Day the Rabbi Left Town, by Harry Kemelman. As usual with cozies, I was much more interested in the characters’ regular lives than the mystery. Whodunnit was pretty obvious.

Started Head On, by John Scalzi.

43

I’m about midway through Arm of the Sphinx, the second in the Books of Babel series by Josiah Bancroft. It’s a fantasy/adventure story about a man seeking his lost wife in the Tower of Babel. I hesitate to gush about a book I haven’t finished yet, BUT. These books are so immersive and so beautifully written. I am just so happy and content reading this right now, like I’ve been looking for this book all my life!

There, now I’ve gone and been all weird about it. It doesn’t suck at all, is what I mean to say. :o

44

Ha! I just finished reading Senlin Ascends.

It’s like Jorge Luis Borges went and had a Steampunk baby. :smiley: Very weird in a good way, and very readable!

45

I also re-read Greeks Bearing Gifts, the latest Bernie Gunther novel by Philip Kerr – one of the best noir series ever written. Even after 12 books, it is still great, he hasn’t flagged at all.

I was very sad to learn he recently passed away, killed by cancer. Apparently he was working right up to his death on the last Bernie novel, to be published later this year or early next year …

46

I’m a big Scalzi fan. I really enjoyed Lock In, the first book in the series, and am looking forward to reading Head On. Hope you like it.

47

Kitchen Confidential, Anthony Bourdain

48

Awww. :frowning:

49

Finished Maelstrom by Jordan L Hawk, the 8th Whyborne & Griffin book and possibly the last I’ll read. So when you write yourself into a corner you Deus ex Machina your plot to get out of said corner…

The dynamics between the characters were well done, the pacing fabulous, a few background characters come into the light and there’s some nifty character development between Whyborne and his father, but that Deus ex Machina at the end…

50

I just finished reading The Mysterious Stranger and Other Stories by Mark Twain (and whomever finished the unfinished “Eseldorf” version of the story). It was a pretty biting satire on “be careful what you wish for”, but the ending was especially trippy.

51

Finished The Last Aloha, an award-winning first novel by Gaellen Quinn. Historical fiction set in late-19th-century Hawaii. Was okay. It’s ability to hold the reader’s interest may depend on the reader’s interest in Hawaii. Covers the events leading up to the overthrow of the Hawaiian monarchy and annexation by the US in the late 19th century. All the Hawaiians are noble and good, almost all the white Americans are greedy and insensitive. The thing is there is some truth to this, but I started picturing every single white male character as Snidely Whiplash. And of course, if we had not grabbed Hawaii, Russia, Japan, Britain and even Germany were eying it, so I think it all worked out for the best anyway myself. The book cannot hold a candle to James Michener’s wider-ranging Hawaii, but then, what book could?

Have started Sleeping Beauties, by the father/son team of Stephen and Own King.

52

Just read the plot description on Wiki. Sounds bizarre.

53

I read “The Mysterious Stranger” in eighth grade. Pretty well messed with my head. It was in a collection of Twain stories our English teacher gave us–we were supposed to read more milquetoast stories like “The Celebrated Jumping Frog of Calaveras County” or whatever; when I mentioned “Mysterious Stranger” to my English teacher, she was alarmed.

It’s good stuff.

54

Just finished* Head On*, by John Scalzi. I liked this book a lot, possibly more than* Lock In*, which it’s a sequel to. I hope Scalzi writes more books in this series.

Just started Skulduggery Pleasant, by Derek Landy.

55

Ooh, I love this book.

56

Recent reads:

A Face Turned Backward, by Lauren Haney. Historical mystery set in ancient Egypt. It’s an interesting setting but it manages to be readable but bland.

A Place of Confinement, by Anna Dean. Historical mystery set in Regency England. Definitely trying for an Austen vibe and mostly successfully.

The Deep End, by Julie Mulhern. Historical mystery set in the 70s. Really entertaining.

A Man of Some Repute, by Elizabeth Edmondson. Historical mystery (I sense a theme!) set in 50s England. Quite retro feeling, in a good way.

Murder with Fried Chicken and Waffles, by A.L. Herbert. Poorly written cozy set in Maryland really close to where I live. I wouldn’t have finished it otherwise.

If Fried Chicken Could Fly, by Paige Shelton. Cozy with weird supernatural elements that I found tedious.

Rosemary Remembered, by Susan Wittig Albert. Cozy with no one acting like a normal person would act.

Strawberry Shortcake Murder, by Joanne Fluke. Cozy with no one doing anything but eating cookies for breakfast and other ridiculous conceits.

Independence Slay, by Shelley Freydont. Competent cozy.

Out of the Dust, by Karen Hesse. Newbery. Atmospheric novel in verse set during the Dust Bowl.

The Body in the Cast, by Katherine Hall Page. Entertaining cozy. Not challenging in the slightest.

Lovely in Her Bones, by Sharyn McCrumb. Summed up in my Goodreads review: “It’s an easy read, but the characters are all dimwits and there is a lot of jarring bigotry and really weird ideas about race.”

Louisiana Longshot, by Jana Deleon. Very funny mystery. A competent Stephanie Plum.

Armchair Economist: Economics & Everyday Life, by Steven E. Landsburg. Interesting/entertaining pop economics but with lots of unsupported assertions and ends on a sneering tone.

The Lie Tree, by Frances Hardinge. Creepy YA fantasy. So well written.

Three-Day Town, by Margaret Maron. Fairly limp cozy, with a final scene that made me cringe (I started a thread on it)

Marriage, a History: From Obedience to Intimacy or How Love Conquered Marriage, by Stephanie Coontz. Really entertaining pop history on the sociology of marriage. Highly recommended.

The Summer of the Swans, by Betsy Byars. Newbery. It surprised me, but didn’t really impress. Needed more time/space to develop. More “the afternoon of the swans.”

DNFs

Wish You Were Here, by Rita Mae Brown. Just no.

Gay-Neck: The Story of a Pigeon, by Dhan Gopal Mukerji. Newbery. I read an excerpt, which is all I’ve found on Kindle. It did nothing for me.

57

There was characterisation in that book? I must have missed it. :wink:

Granted, I read it all in one go one night to avoid working on my submissions for a court case the next day …

The thing I remember from it was that the Western Allies saw by satellite that the mujaheddin had set fire to the Soviet oil fields, but then were completely taken by surprise when the Soviet moved to capture other oil sources.

But I thought the two guys who settle it all at the end were pretty good. (Oops, is that a spoiler?)

58

Just finished one book on Canadian history and started one on North American history.

The Canadian one (although it’s a bio of an American) was The Elusive Mr Pond. Peter Pond was a fifth - generation Connecticuter, who joined up with British forces to help capture Canada during the Seven Years’ War (that’s the French and Indian Wars to most of you :wink: ). He was at the British disaster at Fort Carillion, and then in 1760 at the fall of Montreal. He wrote in his diary, “All Canady under British control .”

And then he started his real career: fur-trading! He was one of the first investors-partners in the North-West Company in Montreal, an amalgam of hard-bitten French, American and Scottish (of course) traders. And then he set off across the continent, to the untapped beaver territory of Lake Athabasca. He would go out with trading supplies in spring, winter over, and come back to Montreal the next fall, all by canoe.

He’s believed to have killed at least one trader in a duel, and maybe another.

When he retired to Connecticut, he was giving geography advice to Ezra Stiles, President of Yale, and his maps may have been influential on Mackenzie and then Lewis & Clark.

What I found fascinating was that he was going through the northern reaches of my own province. I recognised names of rivers and places, and had some revelations: “That’s why La Loche is there! It’s the watershed between Rupert’s Land and the Mackenzie Basin!”

The author did a good job of it, but it’s a bit of a slim volume, with lots of “If only Pond had continued his diary!” " If only Pond had sat for his portrait!" “If only the North-west archives had been better preserved.”

But at least it had a good story or two about the Beaver Club in Montreal, the rowdy forerunner of the later, sedate, Golden Square Mile, which governed Canadian commerce for about a century.

That’s the one I just finished. Now I’m starting Staking Claims to a Continent: John A Macdonald , Abraham Lincoln and Jefferson Davis, and the Making of North America. It’s about the competing nation-state projects that all went on in North America in the 1860s - two succeeded, one failed.

I find the thesis interesting because most books treat Canada as separate from the US, or the US/CS struggle. The US is usually a looming dangerous presence in the books covering the founding of Canada. I’m curious to see how the author pulls them together as a comparative analysis, or defaults to US/CS struggle, and Canada on a separate track.

59

I’m re-reading Brokaw’s “The Greatest Generation”, which I enduringly like.

Finished King’s “The Outsiders”. It was decent. Kinda meh though to be honest.

60

Huh. I always figured he was Cree or Dene since there was a First Nation named after him (or named after the lake that’s named after him).