# Khadaji's Whatcha Reading Thread - May 2020 edition **URL:** \ **Category:** Cafe Society\ **Created:** [May 1, 2020, 4:31pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/khadajis-whatcha-reading-thread-may-2020-edition/852990 "2020-05-01T16:31:43Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 20\ **Page:** 2
**Author:** ![TroutMan](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/troutman/32/6721_2.png) [@TroutMan](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/TroutMan)\ **Post date:** [May 4, 2020, 3:35pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/khadajis-whatcha-reading-thread-may-2020-edition/852990/21 "2020-05-04T15:35:51Z")
I just finished _The Glass Hotel_ by Emily St. John Mandel. I went into it knowing very little other than it plays with the timeline like her previous book _Station Eleven_. I’m not quite sure yet how I feel about it. Her writing is beautiful and the characters are engaging, but it wasn’t what I expected. I think I’ll come to like it more as I turn it over it my mind. ---
**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:** [May 4, 2020, 3:36pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/khadajis-whatcha-reading-thread-may-2020-edition/852990/22 "2020-05-04T15:36:58Z")
> [@Dung\_Beetle](#): > > Thanks for the kindness! I will be okay. If this is the worst effect the pandemic has on me, I’m one of the luckiest people in the world. I keep repeating basically the same to myself daily. I’m bored senseless but we’re all still ALIVE to be bored! 😃 ---
**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:** [May 4, 2020, 3:49pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/khadajis-whatcha-reading-thread-may-2020-edition/852990/23 "2020-05-04T15:49:21Z")
Finished _City by the Bay: Stories of Novaya Rossiya_, by Walter H. Hunt. Meh. It was an interesting concept for an alternate history (most of West Coast of current U.S. was settled by the Russians and the American and French Revolutions never happened), but the plots (it’s a collection of short stories) weren’t interesting. Also, I don’t like it when many of the characters in an alternate history are real people, living lives very similar to those they had in reality. Lastly, something was wrong with the typography. Many pages were filled with incorrectly indented sentences. Now I’m reading _On Stories and Other Essays on Literature_, by C. S. Lewis. ---
**Author:** ![CalMeacham](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/calmeacham/32/35_2.png) [@CalMeacham](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/CalMeacham)\ **Post date:** [May 4, 2020, 4:13pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/khadajis-whatcha-reading-thread-may-2020-edition/852990/24 "2020-05-04T16:13:42Z")
Finished Harry Turtledove’s _Down in the Bottomlands_. The volume not only includes his Hugo-winning novella (which has an entire Wikipedia page devoted to it, with maps – [Down in the Bottomlands - Wikipedia](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Down_in_the_Bottomlands) )but also L. Sprague de Camp’s _The Wheels of If_ (Which I read many years ago, but have forgotten most of) and Turtledove’s _The Pugnacious Peacemaker_, which is a sequel to The Wheels of If. I’d been wondering why those three stories were assembled into one volume. It’s undoubtedly because it gave an excuse for republishing the novella in book form (just by itself wouldn’t be economically feasible --it’s too short). The other two stories had been published together before – and you need both, because reading Turtledove’s sequel alone leaves you at a loss without the background from the de Camp story. Besides, they all fit together well as works of Alternative History, and Turtledove always said that it was de Camp’s alternative history fiction that got him started on that road. Now I’m finally getting to Jack Williamson’s _Hocus Pocus Universe_, which I’ve been curious since I saw the cover of Science Stories #1 in the first edition of the Science Fiction Encyclopedia. The story’s only been reprinted twice, both times within the past ten years, and not easily available. (Science Stories only ran four issues, all before I was born). ---
**Author:** ![CalMeacham](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/calmeacham/32/35_2.png) [@CalMeacham](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/CalMeacham)\ **Post date:** [May 4, 2020, 4:18pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/khadajis-whatcha-reading-thread-may-2020-edition/852990/25 "2020-05-04T16:18:49Z")
Here’s that cover, BTW. They used it on the most recent reprinting, too: [![](http://www.philsp.com/data/images/s/science_stories_195310.jpg) ](http://www.philsp.com/data/images/s/science_stories_195310.jpg) ---
**Author:** ![yanceylebeef](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/yanceylebeef/32/12290_2.png) [@yanceylebeef](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/yanceylebeef)\ **Post date:** [May 4, 2020, 6:42pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/khadajis-whatcha-reading-thread-may-2020-edition/852990/26 "2020-05-04T18:42:18Z")
i just started 88 Names by Matt Ruff, and have Lawrence Wrights prescient pandemic novel The End of October next in the TBR pile. ---
**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:** [May 4, 2020, 7:03pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/khadajis-whatcha-reading-thread-may-2020-edition/852990/27 "2020-05-04T19:03:39Z")
Prepping for John Scalzi’s _The Last Emperox_, I’m skimming through the previous book in the trilogy, _The Consuming Fire_. Good stuff (a distant-future interstellar empire deals with the imminent loss of FTL travel), and now it’s fresher in my mind. ---
**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:** [May 5, 2020, 2:47pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/khadajis-whatcha-reading-thread-may-2020-edition/852990/28 "2020-05-05T14:47:07Z")
Started today on [If It Bleeds](https://www.amazon.com/If-Bleeds-Stephen-King/dp/1982137975/ref=tmm_hrd_swatch_0?_encoding=UTF8&qid=1588689905&sr=1-1), Stephen King’s newest. Yes! It finally came! I have peace in my soul once again. Still mad at you, Amazon. ---
**Author:** ![CalMeacham](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/calmeacham/32/35_2.png) [@CalMeacham](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/CalMeacham)\ **Post date:** [May 5, 2020, 2:52pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/khadajis-whatcha-reading-thread-may-2020-edition/852990/29 "2020-05-05T14:52:36Z")
Finished _Hocus Pocus Universe_ (Interesting, but not really worth the wait. But at least the cover is relevant to two scenes in the story). Now on to **Heaven, by Hotel Standards** by Susan Wilson. It’s the history of Boston’s Parker House hotel, the self-proclaimed Longest Continuously Running Hotel in the US. I’d hoped to learn something for my next book, but it turns out that Wilson, the author and official Parker House Historian, doesn’t know what I need to know. I wrote to her to verify this, and now she asked me to send _her_ material. The title is great. It derives from a story about Mark Twain when he was staying there: > [@](#): > > In March of 1877, humorist Mark Twain was staying at the Parker House in room 168. A reporter from the _Globe_ entered Twain’s room, shuttled in by a porter. After a pause of several moments, Twain swiveled around in his large easy chair and faced his visitor. With a local newspaper in hand and puffing on a large cigar, Twain observed to the reporter, “You see for yourself that I’m pretty near heaven – not theologically, of course, but by the hotel standard.” ---
**Author:** ![BetsQ](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/b/fbc32d/32.png) [@BetsQ](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/BetsQ)\ **Post date:** [May 5, 2020, 4:38pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/khadajis-whatcha-reading-thread-may-2020-edition/852990/30 "2020-05-05T16:38:17Z")
**Elendil’s Heir** , we watched the LOTR movies with our teenagers this week. It was the first time I’d seen them since I watched them in the theater–it was fun to revisit them. I did read a fluffy hand-me-down from my teenage daughter. Fangirl, by Rainbow Rowell, is about a college freshmen who is an obsessive writer of fan-fiction. Various relationship issues ensue. It kept me pleasantly distracted for a couple of days. What I find fascinating about this book is that Rowell then went on to write a couple of books about the characters her Fangirl protagonist was writing fan-fiction about. Martha Wells’ latest Murderbot book came out this week. I’ll be reading that soon. ---
**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:** [May 6, 2020, 12:13am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/khadajis-whatcha-reading-thread-may-2020-edition/852990/31 "2020-05-06T00:13:26Z")
A few nights ago, I finished reading [Other Words for Home](https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/35398627-other-words-for-home) to my 11-year-old daughter. This is a beautifully-written prose-poem novel about a girl who loves movies, loves the spotlight, who moves from Syria to the United States and navigates the strange cultural space she finds herself in. I kept bracing for the inevitable Newbery-bait trauma, the death that would teach a Very Important Lesson, and I love the book all the more for avoiding this cliche. Definitely worth reading! ---
**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:** [May 6, 2020, 3:26am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/khadajis-whatcha-reading-thread-may-2020-edition/852990/32 "2020-05-06T03:26:47Z")
> [@BetsQ](#): > > **Elendil’s Heir** , we watched the LOTR movies with our teenagers this week. It was the first time I’d seen them since I watched them in the theater–it was fun to revisit them… We’ve talked about doing that, too. It’s been awhile since I’ve seen them, and despite some nits to pick, I really do love 'em. ---
**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:** [May 6, 2020, 3:28pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/khadajis-whatcha-reading-thread-may-2020-edition/852990/33 "2020-05-06T15:28:18Z")
Finished _On Stories and Other Essays on Literature_, by C. S. Lewis. , by C. S. Lewis, which I enjoyed. Now I’m reading _The City & the City_, by China Mieville. ---
**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:** [May 6, 2020, 4:17pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/khadajis-whatcha-reading-thread-may-2020-edition/852990/34 "2020-05-06T16:17:00Z")
> [@Dendarii\_Dame](#): > > Now I’m reading _The City & the City_, by China Mieville. Ooh, I loved this one! ---
**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:** [May 6, 2020, 4:34pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/khadajis-whatcha-reading-thread-may-2020-edition/852990/35 "2020-05-06T16:34:23Z")
I finished the graphic novel _Citizen of the Galaxy_, based on the Robert A. Heinlein juvenile, adapted by Rob Lazaro and Eric Gignac. It’s pretty true to the original. The artwork is so-so. I’ve also started _The Ask_ by Sam Lipsyte, a comic novel about a fundraising drone for a mediocre university in New York City (the staff even call it Mediocre U.) who’s fired for being rude to a pushy, entitled undergrad, but then abruptly rehired when a wealthy alum insists he will deal only with the drone. It’s not as funny as it could be, but I’ll stick with it for now. ---
**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:** [May 6, 2020, 7:10pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/khadajis-whatcha-reading-thread-may-2020-edition/852990/36 "2020-05-06T19:10:39Z")
I’ve been listening to a lot of podcasts lately, Our Fake History and Dark Histories being my favorite two. So the latest DH history was of The Balham Mystery or the poisoning of Charles Bravo, which I read a book about several years ago. So I pulled **Death at the Priory** by James Ruddick off the shelf, blew the dust off and started to reread it to see if his conclusion was different than DH’s. ---
**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:** [May 6, 2020, 9:53pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/khadajis-whatcha-reading-thread-may-2020-edition/852990/37 "2020-05-06T21:53:35Z")
Finished _Voodoo River_, by Robert Crais. His fifth novel. The star of a popular TV show, who was adopted as a baby and is now concerned about her fast-approaching middle age, hires detectives Elvis Cole and Joe Pike to travel to Louisiana, find her birth family and bring back information on their medical history. It seems like a clear-cut case, but it turns out other people are looking for her biological family too, and some of these other searchers are turning up dead. The author just happens to be from Louisiana himself. There is an interesting variation on [Chekhov’s gun](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chekhov%27s_gun) that could be called “Chekhov’s turtle.” Good, but not as good as the first four. Next up is _This Side of Paradise_, by F Scott Fitzgerald. ---
**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:** [May 8, 2020, 2:07pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/khadajis-whatcha-reading-thread-may-2020-edition/852990/38 "2020-05-08T14:07:09Z")
Finished [This Is How You Lose the Time War](https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/43352954-this-is-how-you-lose-the-time-war) last night. I really enjoyed this, definitely the strangest semi-epistolary novel I’ve ever read. The story, despite its short length, took me awhile to complete, because the plot appears to stall out about halfway through the book. But push through that, and in retrospect it’s moving forward, only subtly and in a direction that’s not immediately apparent. This is, I think, a book that will stay with me. It’s got the cleverness you’d expect from a time-travel book but beyond that there’s a loveliness to the imagery and an emotional resonance that not many time-travel books achieve. ---
**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:** [May 8, 2020, 8:56pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/khadajis-whatcha-reading-thread-may-2020-edition/852990/39 "2020-05-08T20:56:15Z")
Finished _The City & the City_, by China Mieville. It’s brilliant–definitely the best mystery I’ve read this year, and one of the best novels. Now I’m reading _The Season: A Social History of the Debutante_, by Kristen Richardson ---
**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:** [May 9, 2020, 12:03am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/khadajis-whatcha-reading-thread-may-2020-edition/852990/40 "2020-05-09T00:03:05Z")
Just this afternoon started _The Last Emperox_ by John Scalzi, the last in his distant-future sf epic trilogy, and in the first 50 pages there are already two major shifts in the storyline. I’m digging it. [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/khadajis-whatcha-reading-thread-may-2020-edition/852990.md?page=1) [Next page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/khadajis-whatcha-reading-thread-may-2020-edition/852990.md?page=3)