# Whatcha Readin' Oct 09 Edition **URL:** \ **Category:** Cafe Society\ **Created:** [September 30, 2009, 12:43pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/whatcha-readin-oct-09-edition/512095 "2009-09-30T12:43:55Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 20\ **Page:** 3
**Author:** ![Larry\_Borgia](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/larry_borgia/32/156_2.png) [@Larry\_Borgia](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Larry_Borgia)\ **Post date:** [October 2, 2009, 4:22pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/whatcha-readin-oct-09-edition/512095/41 "2009-10-02T16:22:38Z")
I’m reading Neal Stephenson’s early fiction. I’m almost done with _The Big U_ which is better than I thought. A really bizzare, surreal and violent campus comedy. It seems to be going off the rails towards the end. _Zodiac_ is next. ---
**Author:** ![overlyverbose](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/o/9dc877/32.png) [@overlyverbose](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/overlyverbose)\ **Post date:** [October 2, 2009, 4:30pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/whatcha-readin-oct-09-edition/512095/42 "2009-10-02T16:30:02Z")
> [@Redwing](#): > > **overlyverbose** , you find faerie fiction _more_ formulaic than romance? I’m genuinely curious, my understanding is that romance has requirements like X has to happen by page 30, unless you do Y, which allows you to go up to page 100 before X. (I can’t recall what X was, and my notes from that discussion are at home). Oops - I wasn’t clear. I usually find romance in general very formulaic, including romance that happens to include anything faery. I actually used to work as an author in the romance (well, more erotica than anything else) genre, another reason it’s comfortable for me. When it was becoming more mainstream, erotica allowed for a bit more leeway with respect to plot, but you still had to get tab A into slot B by a certain point or you risked losing your audience’s interest. But it paid well enough that it was well worth it. ---
**Author:** ![LawMonkey](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/l/d6d6ee/32.png) [@LawMonkey](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/LawMonkey)\ **Post date:** [October 2, 2009, 4:30pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/whatcha-readin-oct-09-edition/512095/43 "2009-10-02T16:30:19Z")
_The All-American Five Radio: Understanding and Restoring Transformerless Radios of the 1940s, 50s and 60s_, by Richard McWhorter. I’ve got another couple of old radio repair/restoration books kicking around from the library too, but their titles aren’t handy. This is all part of my current quixotic interest in fixing up old tube radios as a hobby, despite the fact that I don’t know the first thing about electronics. _The Post-American World_, by Fareed Zakaria. \* Imperium: A Novel of Ancient Rome\*, by Robert Harris (audiobook). This one has really got its hooks in me. The narrator is top notch, with that lovely English accent I tend to think of all Romans speaking with. 😉 While politics today tends to irritate me, there’s something about the distance of a few thousand years that makes Cicero’s bold decision to align himself with Pompeii, the Tribunate, and the mob utterly thrilling. My only regret is that audiobooks tend always to go too fast–probably because I find myself listening to them at all manner of odd moments, as well as when I’m exercising (their ostensible purpose). ---
**Author:** ![fusoya](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/f/ecccb3/32.png) [@fusoya](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/fusoya)\ **Post date:** [October 2, 2009, 6:41pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/whatcha-readin-oct-09-edition/512095/44 "2009-10-02T18:41:21Z")
Man, this thread makes me depressed. I’ve been reading Ayn Rand’s _The Fountainhead_ since July, and am still only on the beginning of Part 3 (roughly 400 pages in). The person who recommended I read it was able to get through the book again herself in a week… ---
**Author:** ![Khadaji](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/k/9e8a1a/32.png) [@Khadaji](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Khadaji)\ **Post date:** [October 2, 2009, 6:50pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/whatcha-readin-oct-09-edition/512095/45 "2009-10-02T18:50:08Z")
> [@fusoya](#): > > Man, this thread makes me depressed. I’ve been reading Ayn Rand’s _The Fountainhead_ since July, and am still only on the beginning of Part 3 (roughly 400 pages in). The person who recommended I read it was able to get through the book again herself in a week… Rand is a tough read. She says so little in so very many words. ---
**Author:** ![Mrs.Cake](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/2acd7d/32.png) [@Mrs.Cake](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Mrs.Cake)\ **Post date:** [October 2, 2009, 7:01pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/whatcha-readin-oct-09-edition/512095/46 "2009-10-02T19:01:13Z")
Just discovered Jason Fford in the last few weeks - burning through his books right now. Just finished “The Fourth Bear” and am currently reading “Something Rotten”. Taking a brief break from working through Colleen McCullough’s Rome series, but expect to get back to it shortly. ---
**Author:** ![AuntiePam](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/a/f19dbf/32.png) [@AuntiePam](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/AuntiePam)\ **Post date:** [October 2, 2009, 8:41pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/whatcha-readin-oct-09-edition/512095/47 "2009-10-02T20:41:39Z")
Finished _The Darkest Room_ by Johan Theorin – it was darn near perfect. A couple of mysteries, some spookiness, and a surprise that didn’t feel contrived. It’d be a great Halloween read. _The Gates_ by John Connolly just arrived. It’s YA horror/fantasy, similar (even the dust jacket) to _The Book of Lost Things_, which I quite liked. Connolly’s Charlie Parker books have an almost-supernatural feel but it seems like he doesn’t really want to go there. I think he’d like to write straight-up horror and I don’t know why he doesn’t just go for it. ---
**Author:** ![Proudest\_Monkey](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/proudest_monkey/32/13257_2.png) [@Proudest\_Monkey](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Proudest_Monkey)\ **Post date:** [October 2, 2009, 11:59pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/whatcha-readin-oct-09-edition/512095/48 "2009-10-02T23:59:46Z")
I just finished the latest Jack Reacher adventure by Lee Child– **Gone Tomorrow** , and it made me want to investigate the role played by native Afghani tribeswomen vs. Russian and American soldiers. That bit about removing their eyelids and focusing their heads to force them watch themselves being flayed is nightmare fodder. Any Reacher fans out there? Who could play him in a movie? I am 2/3 of the way through **Julie and Julia**. Wish there were more Julia and less Julie. I also just finished an audiobook by Harlan Coban called **The Innocent**. Piece of crap really, but it accompanied me during my morning walk (which these days takes place in the 5:15 a.m. darkness, in which any diversion is welcome). ---
**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:** [October 3, 2009, 1:56am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/whatcha-readin-oct-09-edition/512095/49 "2009-10-03T01:56:55Z")
My niece read _Sabriel_ awhile back and really liked it. Don’t know if she read the rest of the series, though. For Halloween-season reading, I’d recommend Ray Bradbury’s witty, evocative and sometimes quite chilling short-story collection (his first!), _The October Country_. Lots of good stuff in there. I just finished _Master of War_ by Benson Bobrick. It’s a bio of Gen. George H. Thomas, a still-underappreciated Union general during the Civil War. A Virginian, he remained loyal to the Union; he never lost a battle and had much lower casualties among his troops than Grant and Sherman (who, Bobrick makes a pretty good although somewhat overexcited case, did all they could to undercut and/or backstab him). Thomas wasn’t flashy or egotistical, never wrote his memoirs and died of a heart attack not long after the war, so today he doesn’t have the fame he really deserves. I’m also close to finishing Joe Haldeman’s short-story collection, _Dealing in Futures_. There’s some very good writing in there. I’ll tell you more about it when I finish it. ---
**Author:** ![wonderlust](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/wonderlust/32/7237_2.png) [@wonderlust](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/wonderlust)\ **Post date:** [October 3, 2009, 2:34am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/whatcha-readin-oct-09-edition/512095/50 "2009-10-03T02:34:59Z")
> [@Jettboy](#): > > Last week I read _Pandemonium_, by Daryl Gregory; a fantastic tale of an alternative America where people are randomly possessed by outside personalities popularly known as “demons” (although they are _not_ the hellish minions of Satan from Christian mythology). Usually the “demons” leave after a while, but in one man’s case he carries the intruder into his adulthood. Easily one of the best reads I’ve had this year. That’s good to know. I bought it a while back and then forgot why. 🙂 ---
**Author:** ![Khadaji](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/k/9e8a1a/32.png) [@Khadaji](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Khadaji)\ **Post date:** [October 3, 2009, 11:15am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/whatcha-readin-oct-09-edition/512095/51 "2009-10-03T11:15:31Z")
For a light and quick Halloween read take a look at Zelazny’s \*A Night In The Lonesome October \* ---
**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:** [October 4, 2009, 2:51am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/whatcha-readin-oct-09-edition/512095/52 "2009-10-04T02:51:51Z")
Just today, I zipped through Cormac McCarthy’s short 1973 novel (almost a novella, even) _Child of God_, about a mentally-disturbed Tennessee backwoodsman and his grim hobbies of murder and necrophilia. No quotation marks to be found in it, either. Meh. I’d give it a C. ---
**Author:** ![twickster](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/t/ec9cab/32.png) [@twickster](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/twickster)\ **Post date:** [October 4, 2009, 3:00am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/whatcha-readin-oct-09-edition/512095/53 "2009-10-04T03:00:08Z")
Would it’ve scored better with more punctuation? 😉 ---
**Author:** ![movingfinger](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/7ab992/32.png) [@movingfinger](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/movingfinger)\ **Post date:** [October 5, 2009, 5:54am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/whatcha-readin-oct-09-edition/512095/54 "2009-10-05T05:54:57Z")
I just finished \*\*The Wind Whales of Ishmael \*\*by Philip Jose Farmer. Ishmael, yes, that Ishmael, pops to the surface (along with Queequeg’s coffin) after the sinking of the Pequod only to discover that a few million years have passed, and the earth has changed somewhat. In only 153 pages Farmer uses the phrase “sailed close-hauled” at least nine times, which has to be some sort of record. I have started \*\*Hemingway’s Chair \*\*by Michael Palin. ---
**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:** [October 5, 2009, 1:27pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/whatcha-readin-oct-09-edition/512095/55 "2009-10-05T13:27:39Z")
[Catching Fire](http://www.amazon.com/Catching-Fire-Second-Hunger-Games/dp/0439023491/ref=sr_1_2?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1254748582&sr=8-2), the second book in the Hunger Games series by Suzanne Collins. I’m really digging these books! I doubt they’re YA literature that will endure through the ages, all I know is that I’m dying to get home today and find out what happens next. ---
**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:** [October 5, 2009, 4:44pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/whatcha-readin-oct-09-edition/512095/56 "2009-10-05T16:44:40Z")
> [@twickster](#): > > Would it’ve scored better with more punctuation? 😉 Well… it sure wouldn’t have hurt. 😃 ---
**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:** [October 7, 2009, 1:59am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/whatcha-readin-oct-09-edition/512095/57 "2009-10-07T01:59:49Z")
Just finished Joe Haldeman’s 1985 short-story collection _Dealing in Futures_. I’d read it not long after it first came out, and remembered very little of it, so it was like new to me. The best IMHO were “Seasons,” about xenoanthropologists on another world, studying a primitive tribe which inexplicably turns on them; “Blood Sisters,” about a private eye in the not-so-distant future who protects a cloned beauty; “Lindsay and the Red City Blues,” a seriously weird tale about an American tourist in Marrakesh who has the vacation from hell; and “There’s No Future in It,” a time-travel story with a very clever twist ending. Two thumbs up. ---
**Author:** ![koeeoaddi](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/koeeoaddi/32/408_2.png) [@koeeoaddi](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/koeeoaddi)\ **Post date:** [October 7, 2009, 2:11am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/whatcha-readin-oct-09-edition/512095/58 "2009-10-07T02:11:59Z")
I’m about 3/4 of the way through _Path of Glory_, by Jeffrey Archer and I hate to say it, but it sucks at sea level and it sucks at altitude. Disappointing that this author chose two of my most obsessive areas of geekery – mountain climbing and the First World War – and managed to bore the livin’ crap out of me. Just get to the summit, already. Or not. Or whatever. :rolleyes: ---
**Author:** ![LunarPlexus](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/l/7ab992/32.png) [@LunarPlexus](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/LunarPlexus)\ **Post date:** [October 7, 2009, 2:55am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/whatcha-readin-oct-09-edition/512095/59 "2009-10-07T02:55:48Z")
> [@Elendil\_s\_Heir](#): > > Just today, I zipped through Cormac McCarthy’s short 1973 novel (almost a novella, even) _Child of God_, about a mentally-disturbed Tennessee backwoodsman and his grim hobbies of murder and necrophilia. No quotation marks to be found in it, either. Meh. I’d give it a C. > [@twickster](#): > > Would it’ve scored better with more punctuation? 😉 > [@Elendil\_s\_Heir](#): > > Well… it sure wouldn’t have hurt. 😃 I was kinda bothered by the punctuation thing until I ventured out on the internet to see if anybody had an explanation. I’m no more enlightened on THAT front, but the first 10 links I read made me less inclined to care all that much. I thought _I_ was a bitter pedantic jerkoff… ---
**Author:** ![Enterprise](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/e/76d3ee/32.png) [@Enterprise](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Enterprise)\ **Post date:** [October 7, 2009, 4:39pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/whatcha-readin-oct-09-edition/512095/60 "2009-10-07T16:39:44Z")
> [@LunarPlexus](#): > > I was kinda bothered by the punctuation thing until I ventured out on the internet to see if anybody had an explanation. I’m no more enlightened on THAT front, but the first 10 links I read made me less inclined to care all that much. I thought _I_ was a bitter pedantic jerkoff… I don’t know if you’re saying that no quotation marks bothers you, but I’ve read McCarthy’s _The Road_ and _Blood Meridian_, as well as David Guterson’s _Our Lady of the Forest_, which share this trait. It’s singularly annoying, pretentious, faux-stylish. You’re free to claim I’m not getting it, but frankly, I don’t think there’s much to get… [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/whatcha-readin-oct-09-edition/512095.md?page=2) [Next page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/whatcha-readin-oct-09-edition/512095.md?page=4)