# Whatcha readin' (March 09) Edition **URL:** \ **Category:** Cafe Society\ **Created:** [February 28, 2009, 12:36pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/whatcha-readin-march-09-edition/487783 "2009-02-28T12:36:51Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 9\ **Page:** 8
**Author:** ![schnuckiputzi](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/ecb155/32.png) [@schnuckiputzi](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/schnuckiputzi)\ **Post date:** [March 27, 2009, 6:32pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/whatcha-readin-march-09-edition/487783/141 "2009-03-27T18:32:14Z")
That crosses The Thirteenth Tale of my immediate list, because I need to recover. I’m currently reading The Doomsday Book, as recommended here (or Giraffe…I get confused) and also working through the stories of Lovecraft from [www.dagonbytes.com](http://www.dagonbytes.com). Love online texts – free reading! ---
**Author:** ![Eleanor\_of\_Aquitaine](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/e/a88e4f/32.png) [@Eleanor\_of\_Aquitaine](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Eleanor_of_Aquitaine)\ **Post date:** [March 27, 2009, 7:19pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/whatcha-readin-march-09-edition/487783/142 "2009-03-27T19:19:58Z")
> [@Eutychus](#): > > Finally getting around to “The Yiddish Policeman’s Union” by Michael Chabon and enjoying it immensely. I liked that one, and I liked _The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier & Clay_ even more. ---
**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:** [March 28, 2009, 1:04am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/whatcha-readin-march-09-edition/487783/143 "2009-03-28T01:04:44Z")
> [@Eutychus](#): > > I love Dorsey! It’s a wild, hilarious ride. If it’s not too late, though, I would suggest picking up a copy of “Florida Roadkill” first. It’s not really a sequel, per se, but a continuing story that runs though all of Dorsey’s books. Pretty much all of the characters and situations that appear in “Hammerhead” are introduced in Roadkill. > > And Serge Storms is a great character. My favorite line about him (from “Roadkill”) : “Serge’s attention-deficit disorder was the first of many hyphens. Obsessive-compulsive, manic-depressive, anal-retentive, paranoid-schizophrenic. He was believed to be the only self-inflicted case of shaken-baby syndrome.” Thanks for the heads up! No, it’s not too late, as I’ve not started it yet. I’ll set that aside for now and look for _Florida Roadkill_. Meanwhile, I’ll start _Wild Ducks Flying Backward: The Short Writings of Tom Robbins_ instead, lent to me by the same person. ---
**Author:** ![delphica](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/e9a140/32.png) [@delphica](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/delphica)\ **Post date:** [March 28, 2009, 1:24am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/whatcha-readin-march-09-edition/487783/144 "2009-03-28T01:24:15Z")
> [@Dung\_Beetle](#): > > Finished The Séance this weekend and I thought it was marvelous. The plot does get quite complicated, but part of my difficulty may have been that I couldn’t devote large blocks of reading time, but rather a few minutes here and there. Oh man, I was at the library and I saw a book that made me say to myself “Hey, someone mentioned this in the SDMB March reading thread” … but when I got home, what I picked up was _The Spiritualist_ by Megan Chance, and also seems to be about fakey séances. Darn it! Well, maybe this one will be good as well, and I can always look for _The Séance_ later. ---
**Author:** ![Khadaji](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/k/9e8a1a/32.png) [@Khadaji](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Khadaji)\ **Post date:** [March 31, 2009, 3:32pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/whatcha-readin-march-09-edition/487783/145 "2009-03-31T15:32:42Z")
[April’s thread](http://boards.straightdope.com/sdmb/showthread.php?p=10990323#post10990323) ---
**Author:** ![Sigmagirl](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/c89c15/32.png) [@Sigmagirl](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Sigmagirl)\ **Post date:** [March 31, 2009, 3:44pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/whatcha-readin-march-09-edition/487783/146 "2009-03-31T15:44:18Z")
> [@Sigmagirl](#): > > Just beginning \*The Monsters of Templeton \*by Lauren Groff, recommended by a friend. Takes place in an alt-version of Cooperstown, New York, in which monsters reside in Glimmerglass Lake as named by James Fenimore Cooper. May be a little on the fantasy side for my taste but my friend was very enthusiastic. Finished. Very little fantasy, really; and it really was not alt-Cooperstown: the only thing changed was the name. Everything else was exactly as it is, down to the layout of the town. ---
**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:** [March 31, 2009, 5:59pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/whatcha-readin-march-09-edition/487783/147 "2009-03-31T17:59:19Z")
> [@delphica](#): > > Oh man, I was at the library and I saw a book that made me say to myself “Hey, someone mentioned this in the SDMB March reading thread” … but when I got home, what I picked up was _The Spiritualist_ by Megan Chance, and also seems to be about fakey séances. Darn it! Well, maybe this one will be good as well, and I can always look for _The Séance_ later. The Spiritualist looks like it has some potential… I didn’t pick it up because I’m not much into crime-solving, but let us know what you think! ---
**Author:** ![plankter](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/p/7ba0ec/32.png) [@plankter](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/plankter)\ **Post date:** [March 31, 2009, 7:08pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/whatcha-readin-march-09-edition/487783/148 "2009-03-31T19:08:14Z")
Earlier I mentioned I had almost finished Plait’s _Death From the Skies!_, about potential threats to Planet Earth. In an amusing coincidence, one of the last perils mentioned in that book turned up at the end of the other book I was reading, _Bright of the Sky_: The disaster in question was a spontaneous collapse of the cosmos to a lower energy state, annihilating everything in the process. The rulers of the novel’s other universe were revealed to be planning a deliberate collapse of our universe to provide a power source for theirs. _Horizon_ by Lois McMaster Bujold was a satisfying conclusion to the Sharing Knife series. I know it’s primarily a romance, but there’s a terrific monster (villain?) to battle before the end, so I wouldn’t hesitate to recommend this volume to a reader who would otherwise be put off by the “R” word. I also read _A World Too Near_ by Kay Kenyon, the sequel to _Bright of the Sky_. I was mildly annoyed when the ending copped out of a conclusion it had been building towards, but I’m going to read the next volume anyway. On the “losable books” front, I finished _Enchanter_ by Sara Douglass and I have the third volume ready when I need something to read that won’t cost me twenty bucks to replace. ---
**Author:** ![delphica](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/e9a140/32.png) [@delphica](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/delphica)\ **Post date:** [March 31, 2009, 8:47pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/whatcha-readin-march-09-edition/487783/149 "2009-03-31T20:47:42Z")
> [@Sigmagirl](#): > > Finished. Very little fantasy, really; and it really was not alt-Cooperstown: the only thing changed was the name. Everything else was exactly as it is, down to the layout of the town. I liked this book very much, it was one of my favorite reads of 2008, but I was a little disappointed by this point. I had been looking forward to figuring out how to match up fictional things in the book with real things in the town, and it turns out … it was just the real town with a different name. [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/whatcha-readin-march-09-edition/487783.md?page=7)