jessibud2's ROOTing attempt for 2014

Hi all. I am fairly new here and am still bumbling my way around. I've just joined the 75 book challenge but even before that, I had made a promise to myself to make at least every other book I read in 2014 one from Mt. TBR. This ROOT challenge looks like just the *accountability* I need to keep me honest. I am also on Bookcrossing so I actually have a dedicated bookshelf just for Bookcrossing Mt. TBR books! Those are the ones I intend to tackle so I can move them along. In the unlikely event that I can ever actually empty that bookshelf, there are piles of unread books in every room in my house, just waiting to fill the void. I'm sure you are all shocked to hear this...;-)

Full disclosure: I am the most non-techie person I know and therefore, I have no idea how to create (or use!) a ticker. I've peeked at others in this thread and they look great but I may just have to be satisfied with a running list of titles, for now. And that is fine for me. (unless one *must* have a ticker for this challenge. Then I may be in trouble...)

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January 1, 2014 - I am posting my potential, but by no means complete, list of books from my Bookcrossing TBR shelf. My intent (though the reality of it is subject to change without warning!), is to read a book from this list as every other book read this year. Some are big books, some smaller; some paperback, some hardcover. I don't count pages and have been trying to read through my hardcovers in order to get them off the shelves and out of the house. But I don't lug hardcovers around with me in my bag so that's a bit slower going. And I am not a fast reader.

Here's the tentative list, and in no particular order (I leave that purely to whim and mood!) :

Don't Let's Go To the Dogs Tonight - An African Childhood - Alexandra Fuller
Roxanna Slade - Reynolds Price
The Paperboy's Winter - Tim Bowling
The Age of Hope - David Bergen
The Ghost of Hannah Mendes - Naomi Ragen
Three Daughters - Letty Cottin Pogrebin
Snow - Orhan Pamuk
A Parrot in a Pepper Tree - Chris Stewart
A Pound of Paper - John Baxter

I will post a link and a review as I finish each one.

Let the reading begin!

There are directions for tickers in the other threads, but I will repeat for you here if you like:
Go to http://www.tickerfactory.com/ezticker/ticker_designer.php?type=14
Choose the background and counter you like
Copy the HTML to your thread and the ticker thread
Click the link in your thread to go back to your ticker to edit it as you finish books

Easypeasy. :) You don't "have to," of course, but it's very simple, and it does help cyderry to keep track of our totals for the group tickers.

Oh, and, welcome to the group! :))

OH! It worked! Thanks so much!! (I'm setting my goal low in the hope that I will achieve it! To move the turtle along, I just go back to this thread and edit it, manually moving it forward?)

ETA I changed the turtle to a cat. I thought I was creating a second ticker for another thread but apparently not. Oh well, the cat stays)

Haha you're welcome. And your goal is just fine!

To move the turtle, click on him and you'll go to your tickerfactory page, you input your password and update your total and click "next" and when you come back to your thread here, you'll see him moved ahead. :)

Welcome to the club, jessibud. And believe me you get used to moving tickers in no time.

Thanks. I noticed that at the tickerfactory site, it suggested I download something to my computer. But when I started to do that, it was for some video thing, so I stopped and clicked it off. I was hoping that doing just what you said, above, would be all and I'm happy that I don't need to do more than that!

@#6 - Thanks, Connie! Practice makes perfect. With me, lots of practice! :-)

Welcome and good luck!

@# 9 - Thanks for the welcome. I see you are from Ottawa. Were you affected by the ice storm? We may be in for round 2 this weekend... :-(

Not too badly, I don't think. We got more snow than ice. And we didn't lose power. How did you do?

Welcome to the group. And I see you are from Toronto! Did you lose power? I live in BC interior, we've only had a couple of inches of snow so far. Usually we get a foot every day. Weird weather.

@# 11, 12 - Hi. I was without heat or power for only 2 days but there are still some areas of the city that are into day 6 without power! I can't even begin to imagine. And this weekend the temps are up, causing thawing and lots of ice on trees to melt, which, we are being warned, could cause more outages as it could take down more wires. If this is any indication, it's going to be one long nasty winter. You are right about weird weather, though! I feel as though I should be reading more weather-themed books. But then again, maybe not. I'd rather *escape* this reality.....

I'm so happy I am living in The Netherlands reading all this.

I have been wondering how people were doing in Ontario and New Brunswick in the ice storms. We see them every night on the news but it is hard to figure out where the actual outages are. I have relatives in Ontario but I don't think they were affected. I live in the Lower Mainland of BC and agree that the weather has been weird this year - we actually had snow twice before it was officially winter and that almost never happens. It all seems back to normal rain now.

Hi jessi. Welcome & good luck with your challenge.

@#15 - Here in Toronto, we are pretty much fully restored, except for a very few left. I feel lucky to have only been without power for the first 48 hours. I think New Brunswick and the rest of the Maritimes are having a much rougher time of it.

That said, it's still pretty damned cold here! (-10C, right now with a wind chill equivalent of -18C). But it's sunny and not snowing :-)

@#16 - Thanks! I am about to edit my first message to reflect a true beginning. Here goes!
And good luck to you, too

Welcome and good luck for your challenge. It has been a very stimulating experience for me, and I actually picked up some techie stuff as well!

@#19 - Thanks! I am hoping to finish my first book of 2014 in the next day or 2!

Just stopped by to say 'hi', jessibud2. How is your first book of the year going? You may already know this, but when you are ready to update your ticker because you've finished your book, just click on it and it will take you to a screen where you can edit/update it. Have a nice day!

@# 21 - Thanks for stopping by and for the ticker update info. Good to know. Because I teach all day long, and don't usually get home till close to dinner time, by the time I get to read (during the work week), it's bedtime and I don't often get through many pages before falling asleep. This is one of the reasons I always try to have an audiobook going in my car; that gives me at least a good hour or more of solid reading during my daily commutes. I am not a fast reader at the best of times; however, I think today is the day! Book #1 will be finished today! :-) Ticker update to follow tonight!

Oh, yes, audiobooks are wonderful! I have a whole stack of them this year that hope are going to help me get out and walk for some exercise.

First one finished!

Don't Let's Go To the Dogs Tonight

I am beginning another from my list tonight, February, by Lisa Moore. I hope to finish it before February actually ends!

What a perfect timing for the title, February!

I have a book called Now in November and I'm wondering if it would be a worthwhile thing to try to find books with all the months in the titles, and how nifty that would look on a shelf. Not the most sensible of book thoughts...

Just post a list, Merryann!

@# 25 - There is also a lovely book by Richard B. Wright called *October* that I read a couple of years ago. If I can find my review of it, I will post a link here for you.

Well, I seem to be having some trouble with adding books to my library list at the moment. Here is a link to this book anyhow, but it's from my Bookcrossing account:

http://www.bookcrossing.com/journal/8348583/

>26 connie53:, 27, I'd better stop thinking about gathering 'month' books. By today's estimate, when I have all my books on the shelves, and shelves everywhere I can cram them in the house, I will still have 15 - 20 boxes of books with no home.

I clicked the link and looked at 'October' and tried to NOT get interested in it, but it does look like a pretty good book. Sigh.

BB's all over, I imagine, Merryann.

I'v been looking for a March book, but all I found were books about long walks ;-))

We could make it a 'Take it or Leave it' challenge in the 75 group: 'read a book with March in the title. No, wait! I'm getting sidetracked again!

I just finished The Recipe Club by Andrea Israel and Nancy Garfinkel. It wasn't on my original list, above, but I picked it up at our bookcrossing meetup this past weekend and just started reading.

I generally love this type of book, written almost entirely in letter form, the epistolary novel. (I also love saying that word, epistolary. So classy). I loved that recipes played such a huge part of the story, too.

The problem was, though, that I just didn't love the characters. Except for Val, one of the two main characters, pretty much every other person in this story that spanned decades felt like over-the-top dysfunctional caricatures, to the point that I felt myself rolling my eyes at times. Enough of the dialogue didn't ring true for me, even made me angry, perhaps because I felt this book had the potential to be really good and the authors just didn't take it down that road. Was it because they were 2 authors, trying to write one book? I don't know but for me, it was just a disappointment.

Congratulations on finishing another ROOT, albeit a new one. (My albeit wants to hang around in the classy company of epistolary.)

I hear people mentioning bookcrossing but am not really sure what it is. Is it a group of people who meet periodically and swap books? Is that on a loaning basis or a giving basis? Is it part of Library Thing or something else entirely?

I think bookcrossing is worldwide! But that's all I think I know. Just google it!

I will. I am still getting used to the power of google. :)

I google all the time!

This challenge seems to be going slowly for me but at least it's moving. #3 from my shelf is done: Bob Greene's: And You Know You Should Be Glad

This was an enjoyable if poignant, read.

Moving is good. Shelly! Just keep moving!

#4 flies off the shelf and into the bag to take to next week's bookcrossing meetup: A Parrot in the Pepper Tree, by Chris Stewart, was a fun read. I hadn't realized it was a sequel but it didn't matter. I actually picked this one up at a meetup quite awhile ago and don't know why it took me so long to get to it.

#5 goes to meetup today. This book, Bizarre Books, lives up to its very title. It was one weird collection of bizarre titles!

I wonder if any of the winners or nominees of the Diagram Prize appeared in that book. The Diagram Prize is an annual award for books with odd titles. http://www.thebookseller.com/diagram-prize

Have a good meetup! I hope the weather is better your way. We're getting a heck of a lot of snow right now -- it started early this morning and we're forecast to get about 10 cm or so. And to think two years ago at this time we were in the 20s Celsius!

We woke up to a white world but it seems to be melting now. They said we'd get about 5 cm but I think we got lucky. Whatever, it's too much already. I am so sick of winter.

As for the Diagram Prize, I will have to check that out. This whole book is just a list of contenders, it seems, lol. Pretty wacko stuff!

#6 - Blackbird Singing - I picked this book up at our bookcrossing meetup last weekend, couldn't resist. Paul has always been my favourite Beatle ;-)

Ok, true confession: I have written poetry, but oddly, have never been much of a fan of reading poetry. Unless it's in music/lyric form. Don't ask me why.

I have always adored Paul McCartney. I think he is a brilliant writer, great singer, and not too hard on the eyes, either. I wanted to really read this book but somehow, it wasn't working out too well, at first. I found it difficult to just *read* words I only knew as a tune, if that makes any sense. Then, I got an idea.

As I paged through, sitting in front of my computer, I enlisted the help of youtube. And through the magic of the internet, I listened to as many of these poems as I could, if they had been recorded (not all had been, of course). One after another, it was a trip down memory lane, watching Paul sing, alone, in live concerts, at the White House, with his various bands, over the years. I even found some great video clips of conversations (for example, with Carl Perkins); yes, I am easily sidetracked but why not?

This was one of the most enjoyable *reads* I've had in a long time!

What a lovely way to read the book! Sounds very peaceful and enjoyable. :)

Just finished reading a book I've had for ages, Oliver Sacks's The Man Who Mistook His Wife for a Hat.

(Madeline, I am trying your touchstone hint. Let's see if it works for me)

I wrote a short review but I am not sure if it will show on this link (if the links works for me).

edited to add that the link works but I don't see my review there. Hmm, I wonder where it went? I know I clicked *save* after writing it.

Oh that was my most recent ROOT too - great minds and all that! (if that's not an ironic expression, given the book's subject!)

Ok, I redid it. Try that link now, the review appears to be there

>46 jessibud2: I tried the link and it shows!!

My ticker reports that this is only #11 from my ROOT books though it feels as if it ought to be more. I think I am forgetting to record some of my reads here.

Anyhow, this #11 is Elizabeth Berg's The Year of Pleasures and I enjoyed as I expected I would. She is one of my favourite authors.

#12 - Diamonds Forever, edited by W.P. Kinsella. Yes, the author of Field of Dreams and tons of other baseball-related books has put together a sweet little book of baseball wit, wisdom, quotes and anecdotes. It's one of those gift-book sized things that's been sitting on my shelf for ages. I've been trying to get through some of my baseball books to take with me on my upcoming trip to the Baseball Hall of Fame at the end of the month, so I can release them in that area (bookcrossers will know what I mean by this!) This book does not show up in the LT search system. Several other titles similar do, though (mostly Diamonds ARE Forever)). No matter.

Probably the most famously and oft-quoted baseball personality was Yogi Berra ("It's deja vu all over again"), but there are several others though not all are meant to be funny. A small sample:

"A hot dog at the ball park is better than a steak at the Ritz" - Humphrey Bogart

"You gotta be a man to play baseball for a living but you gotta have a lot of little boy in you." - Roy Campanella

"If you build it he will come" - W.P. Kinsella (from Field of Dreams)

"Little League baseball is a very good thing because it keeps the parents off the streets." - Yogi Berra

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I feel almost like this is cheating because the book is so small and I read it all in one sitting. But a book is a book and it's one less on my shelf right now so there you have it!

Of course it counts. Sounds like a nice little book, too. :)

Sounds like a jewel!

# 13 - Fathers, sons, and brothers : the men in my family by Bret Lott. I have loved other books by this author so decided to pull this one off the shelf as it's been there for ages. This book, however, is not a novel but rather a collection of essays, in somewhat random chronological order, weaving together memories of his own childhood with his 2 brothers, his relationship with his father, and putting it all into perspective as he now is the father of 2 boys. There was a real feel of nostalgia in this collection and I like Lott's ability to understand and explore the emotions beneath the surface as well as his ability to draw parallels between the then and the now. The now, of course, was many years ago and his 2 young sons are likely now in their late 20s or early 30s.