Jackie's 4th year of ROOTing part 2

(Starting a new thread as the last one was getting a bit unwieldy).

Hi! I'm Jackie, and I'm back for my 4th year ROOTing! I'm English, but have lived in Scotland now for over 11 years, and Scotland is definitely now 'home'. I am in my 40s (although I prefer to think of it as my “ultra 30s”), married with a 3 year old daughter, who keeps me young when she doesn't wear me out! I work in community health, but am planning on setting up as a freelancer in 2017 and diversifying a bit, to enable me to work from home more. Reading-wise I'm more into non-fiction than fiction, but do have a fair bit of fiction waiting to be read, so my potential reads are nice and varied.

ROOTing has revolutionised my approach to Mt TBR since I joined this group in 2014, and I've loved being part of this group, you're brilliant motivators and cheerleaders! I'm going to carry on with the Jar of Fate system I started in 2016 (for the uninitiated, the JoF is a jar with each and every TBR title I own (not sure of the number, but I'm pretty sure now in excess of 300) on a colour-coded slip of paper, which I will pull out to decide my next read). This turned out to be a brilliant system for me, and I read loads more books in 2016 than I had in the two previous years (and probably the most I'd read in a year ever). Same as last year I'm combining the Jar of Fate/ROOTing with the Category Challenge, with the colours relating to specific categories in my challenge.

Last year I set my lowest ever target (12 books) and massively exceeded it; the previous 2 years I had a higher target (24) and then got stressed out about it. So I've had to think hard about what target to go for this year. I've decided to set it at 18, ie an average of 1.5 books per month. I exceeded this amount by quite a bit in 2016, and in 2014 and 2015 read just a little bit more than that (21 and 23 respectively, if I recall correctly). So 18 feels like it's achievable but not necessarily inevitable, which for me is a good balance – challenge enough without being stressy. {Edited 3.4.17 - I've updated my target to 48, as I am currently easily reading 4 books per month}.

I count all my TBR books as ROOTs, even those acquired in the same year. Both paper and ebooks count. Theoretically I am counting rereads too, as any book I reread will not have been read for years and years, but I'm unlikely to do this very often as I have so many TBRs still. Exceptions will be if I pull out (say) book 2 in a series where I've read book 1 already, but so long ago I can't really remember it. I'd read book 1 again in that scenario, and count it as a ROOT.

Also for the last 2 years I decided to track my acquisitions as well as my ROOTs. This was pretty eye-opening, but also useful to help me try to reduce my acquisitions and stand any chance at all of making a dent in Mt TBR. In 2015 my ROOTs:acquisitions ratio was around 1:3, which I managed to get just under 1:2 in 2016. This still represented a lot of acquisitions, given that I read quite a lot more in 2016 than 2015, so for 2017 I am aiming for 1:1.5. I also tracked the amount spent, and the format (paper/ebook). I think I'm going to do that again this year, and see if I can spend less on books in 2017 than 2016 (I'm going to nominally say £150 for the year, but I'm not sure how achievable that is!). I'm going, as far as possible, to stick with my resolve to not spend more than £2 per book.

Note to self so I don't have to look everywhere - code for inserting a picture (surrounded by less than and greater than signs): img src="URL" width=200 length=150

Ticker 1 - ROOTs read




Ticker 2 - acquisitions

ROOTS read (the first 18 are reviewed on my first thread).

1. Ben Goldacre - Bad Pharma. Finished 2.1.17. 4.5/5.
2. Ray Moynihan & Barbara Mintzes - Sex, Lies & Pharmaceuticals: How Drug Companies Plan to Profit from Female Sexual Dysfunction. Finished 16.1.17. 4.5/5.
3. Brian Jacques - Redwall. Finished 18.1.17. 3/5.
4. Gaston Dorren - Lingo: Around Europe in Sixty Languages. Finished 26.1.17. 3.5/5.
5. E. Nesbit - The Railway Children. Finished 30.1.17. 3.5/5.
6. Various - The Anti-Inauguration (no touchstone). Finished 11.2.17. 3.5/5.
7. Amy Brown - Breastfeeding Uncovered: Who Really Decides How we Feed our Babies?. Finished 13.2.17. 4.5/5.
8. Katie Kirby - Hurrah for Gin: A book for perfectly imperfect parents. Finished 16.2.17. 5/5.
9. Alice Oswald - The Thing in the Gap-Stone Stile. Finished 23.2.17. 3/5.
10. Jan Carson - Malcolm Orange Disappears. Finished 18.3.17. 4.5/5.
11. Na'ima B. Robert - From my sisters' lips. Finished 20.3.17. 3/5.
12. Jim Crumley - The Great Wood. Finished 22.3.17. 4.5/5.
13. Jill Paton Walsh - Fireweed. Finished 28.3.17. 4/5.
14. Amy Liptrot - The Outrun. Finished 2.4.17. 5/5.
15. Brian Wansink - Mindless Eating: Why We Eat More Than We Think. Finished 11.4.17. 3.5/5.
16. Ranya Idliby, Suzanne Oliver & Priscilla Warner - The Faith Club: A Muslim, A Christian, A Jew-- Three Women Search for Understanding. Finished 15.4.17. 4/5.
17. Neil Paynter - The Sun Slowly Rises (no touchstone). Finished 16.4.17. 3.5/5.
18. Joanne Faulkner - The Importance of Being Innocent : Why we Worry about Children. Finished 23.4.17. 4.5/5.
19. Dawn French - Dear Fatty. Finished 17.5.17. 4/5.
20. Cordelia Fine - Delusions of Gender: The Real Science Behind Sex Differences. Finished 18.5.17. 4/5.
21. Cornelia Mureșan - Schimbările comportamentului familial în România : o abordare din perspectiva cursului vieții. Finished 25.5.17. 3.5/5.
22. L.M. Montgomery - Anne of Green Gables (1). Finished 29.5.17. 4/5.
23. Tim Shipman - All Out War: The Full Story of how Brexit Sank Britain's Political Class. Finished 3.6.17. 4.5/5.
24. Paul R Ehrlich & Matthew Charles Matthias - Hope on Earth: A Conversation. Finished 5.6.17. 3/5.
25. Catherine Czerkawska - The Way it Was: A History of Gigha. Finished 11.6.17. 4/5.
26. Margot Lee Shetterly - Hidden Figures: The American Dream and the Untold Story of the Black Women Mathematicians Who Helped Win the Space Race. Finished 24.6.17. 4/5.
27. Jerome K Jerome - Three Men in a Boat—To Say Nothing of the Dog. Finished 29.6.17. 2.5/5.
28. Human Rights Watch Staff - Public Scandals-- Criminal Law and Sexual Orientation in Romania. Finished 9.7.17. 4.5/5.
29. Shane Claiborne & Tony Campolo - Red Letter Christianity. Finished 10.7.17. 4.5/5.
30. Pauline Nevins - "Fudge": The Downs and Ups of a Biracial, Half-Irish, British War Baby. Finished 24.7.17. 4/5.
31. Victor Malarek - The Natashas. Finished 26.7.17. 4/5.
32. John McCarthy & Sandi Toksvig - Island Race: An Improbable Voyage Round the Coast of Britain. Finished 27.7.17. 4.5/5.
33. Karl Pilkington - Happyslapped by a Jellyfish. Finished 31.7.17. 2/5.
34. David Welky - The Thousand-Year Flood: The Ohio-Mississippi Disaster of 1937. Finished 6.8.17. 4.5/5.
35. Jacky Donovan - Simon Ships Out. How one brave, stray cat became a worldwide war hero. Finished 6.8.17. 3/5.
36. James Rebanks - The Shepherd's Life: A Tale of the Lake District. Finished 13.8.17. 5/5.
37. Margaretta Eagar - Six Years at the Russian Court. Finished 18.8.17. 2/5.
38. Andre Alexis - Fifteen Dogs. Finished 20.8.17. 4/5.
39. Marta Dyczok - Ukraine's Euromaidan: Broadcasting through Information Wars with Hromadske Radio. Finished 27.8.17. 4/5.
40. Marie Colvin - On the Front Line: The Collected Journalism of Marie Colvin. Finished 27.8.17. 5/5.

Books acquired

1. Ben Fogle - The Teatime Islands. From Barter Books (£2.88), acquired 2.1.17.
2. Robert MacFarlane - The Old Ways: A Journey on Foot. From Barter Books (£2.88), acquired 2.1.17.
3. Mark Carwardine & Stephen Fry - Last Chance to See: In the Footsteps of Douglas Adams. From amazon (free - gift voucher), arrived 18.1.17.
4. Timothy Garton Ash - The File: A Personal History. From amazon (free - gift voucher), arrived 23.1.17.
5. Douglas Adams & Mark Carwardine - Last Chance to See. From amazon (free - gift voucher), arrived 26.1.17.
6. John Galt - Annals of the Parish. From Project Gutenberg (free). Acquired 28.1.17.
7. Tzvetan Todorov - The Fear of Barbarians. Free ebook from UoC Press. Acquired 1.2.17.
8. Jonathan Haidt - The Righteous Mind: Why Good People are Divided by Politics and Religion. From amazon (free - gift voucher), arrived 4.2.17.
9. Various - The Anti-Inauguration: Building Resistance in the Trump Era (no touchstone). From Verso Books (free ebook), acquired 8.2.17.
10. Brian Anderson - Dog eat Doug Volume 2: It Came From the Diaper Pail. From kobo (free ebook via Bookbub), acquired 20.2.17.
11. Diana Gabaldon - Outlander. From kobo (£1.99), acquired 2.3.17.
12. Frank Kusy - Dial and Talk Foreign at Once (no touchstone). From kobo (free, via bookbub). Acquired 9.3.17.
13. Margot Lee Shetterly - Hidden Figures: The American Dream and the Untold Story of the Black Women Mathematicians who Helped win the Space Race. From kobo (£2.99). Acquired 9.3.17.
14. Henry Marsh - Do No Harm: Stories of Life, Death, and Brain Surgery. From kobo (£0.99). Acquired 9.3.17.
15. Neil Paynter - The Sun Slowly Rises (no touchstone). From Iona Community (£8.16). Acquired 9.3.17.
16. Richard Holloway - Godless Morality: Keeping Religion Out of Ethics. From an online acquaintance (£0.98 for postage only). Acquired 10.3.17.
17. Sue Monk Kidd - The Invention of Wings. From kobo (£0.99). Acquired 19.3.17.
18. Sinclair Lewis - It Can't Happen Here. From kobo (£0.99). Acquired 22.3.17.
19. Kathryn Stockett - The Help. From kobo (£0.99 - daily deal). Acquired 24.3.17.
20. Guy Sigley - Barney: A Novel. From kobo (free, via bookbub). Acquired 31.3.17.
21. Brian Wansink - Mindless Eating: Why We Eat More Than We Think. From amazon marketplace (£2.81). Acquired 1.4.17.
22. Various - Northumberland: Time and Place (anthology for the 10th anniversary of the Hexham Book Festival) (no touchstone). From Hexham Book Festival website (free ebook). Acquired 6.4.17.
23. Carrie Fisher - The Princess Diarist. From kobo (£1.99). Acquired 7.4.17.
24. Laura Bates - Everyday Sexism. From kobo (£1.99). Acquired 9.4.17.
25. HG Wells - The Time Machine. From Project Gutenberg (free). Acquired 17.4.17.
26. Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie - We Should All Be Feminists. From kobo (£0.99). Acquired 18.4.17.
27. Tim Shipman - All Out War: The Full Story of How Brexit Sank Britain's Political Class. From kobo (£1.99). Acquired 29.4.17.
28. Ed. Christine Holmberg, Stuart Blume & Paul Greenough - The Politics of Vaccination: A Global History (no touchstone). From Google notifications (free). Acquired 29.4.17.
29. Catherine Czerkawska - The Way it Was: A History of Gigha. From kobo (£5.63). Acquired 8.5.17.
30. Alan Johnson - This Boy. From kobo, via bookbub (£0.99). Acquired 14.5.17.
31. Simon Reid-Henry - The Political Origins of Inequality : why a more equal world is better for us all. Free UoC Press ebook. Acquired 1.6.17.
32. ed. Nikesh Shukla - The Good Immigrant. Birthday gift. Acquired 3.6.17.
33. Guy Deutscher - Through the Language Glass: Why the World looks Different in Other Languages. Birthday gift. Acquired 3.6.17.
34. Paul Kalanithi - When Breath Becomes Air. Birthday gift. Acquired 3.6.17.
35. Alastair McIntosh - Poacher's Pilgrimage (no touchstone, for some reason). Birthday gift. Acquired 3.6.17.
36. Wen Stephenson - What We're Fighting For Now is Each Other: Dispatches from the Front Lines of Climate Justice. Birthday gift. Acquired 3.6.17.
37. David Long - A History of London in 50 Lives. Birthday gift. Acquired 3.6.17.
38. Andre Alexis - Fifteen Dogs. Birthday gift. Acquired 6.6.17.
39. Ed Balls - Speaking Out: Lessons in Life and Politics. From kobo (£1.99). Acquired 6.6.17.
40. Owen Jones - The Establishment: And how they get away with it. From kobo (£1.99). Acquired 6.6.17.
41. Stephen Clarke - Annoying the French Encore. From kobo (£0.99). Acquired 15.6.17.
42. Frank Kusy - Too Young to be Old (no touchstone). From kobo (free, via bookbub). Acquired 25.6.17.
43. Madeleine L'Engle - Two-Part Invention: The Story of a Marriage. From kobo (£1.99, via bookbub). Acquired 4.7.17.
44. Ben Goldacre - Bad Science. From kobo (£1.99). Acquired 6.7.17.
45. Diana Gabaldon - Voyager (No 3 in the Outlander series). From the library sale rack (£0.20). Acquired 17.7.17.
46. Lisa Genova - Still Alice. From kobo (£0.99). Acquired 22.7.17.
47. Kathryn Burtinshaw & John RF Burt - Lunatics, Imbeciles and Idiots: A History of Insanity in Nineteenth-Century Britain and Ireland. From kobo (£0.99). Obtained 26.7.17.
48. Owen Hatherley - The Ministry of Nostalgia. From Verso Books sale (£1.00). Acquired 27.7.17.
49. L.A. Kauffman - Direct Action: Protest and the Reinvention of American Radicalism. From Verso Books sale (£1.00). Acquired 27.7.17.
50. Ann Pettifor - The Production of Money: How to Break the Power of Bankers. From Verso Books sale (£1.30). Acquired 27.7.17.
51. Stefan Collini - Speaking of Universities. From Verso Books sale (£1.70). Acquired 27.7.17.
52. Andy Merrifield - The Amateur: The Pleasures of Doing What You Love. From Verso Books sale (£1.50). Acquired 27.7.17.
53. Diana Wynne Jones - Howl's Moving Castle. From kobo (£0.99). Acquired 29.7.17.
54. Alan Johnson - Please, Mister Postman. From kobo (£1.99). Acquired 1.8.17.
55. Dan Fagin - Toms River. From kobo (via bookbub) (£1.73). Acquired 9.8.17. (***note to self- all books up to and including this one now in the Jar of Fate***)
56. Adam Nicolson - Atlantic Britain. From Barter Books (free with BB credit). Acquired 19.8.17.
57. Madeleine L'Engle - A Circle of Quiet. From kobo, via Bookbub (£1.86). Acquired 24.8.17.
58. Andrew Rumsey - Parish: An Anglican Theology of Place. From Greenbelt Festival (£15). Acquired 28.8.17.
59. Keith Hebden - Re-enchanting the Activist. From Greenbelt Festival (E8.99). Acquired 28.8.17.
60. Jennifer Worth - Farewell to the East End. From Barter Books (free with BB credit). Acquired 29.8.17.
61. Donald Woods - Biko. From Barter Books (free with BB credit). Acquired 29.8.17.
62. Jasper Fforde - Lost in a Good Book. From kobo (£0.99). Acquired 31.8.17.
63. ed. Mindy Klasky - Nevertheless, She Persisted. Free from LT (Early Reviewer). Acqured 5.9.17 (would have been 31.8.17 but it went to my spam folder first and I only just found it!).
64. Diane Ackerman - The Zookeeper's Wife. From kobo (daily deal £1.99). Acquired 9.9.17.

Running tally of acquisitions:

2.1.17 - 2 books (0 free, 2 paid-for), total spent £5.76. 0 ebooks, 2 paper books.
18.1.17 - 3 books (1 free, 2 paid-for), total spent £5.76. 0 ebooks, 3 paper books.
23.1.17 - 4 books (2 free, 2 paid-for), total spent £5.76. 0 ebooks, 4 paper books.
26.1.17 - 5 books (3 free, 2 paid-for), total spent £5.76. 0 ebooks, 5 paper books.
28.1.17 - 6 books (4 free, 2 paid-for), total spent £5.76. 1 ebook, 5 paper books.
1.2.17 - 7 books (5 free, 2 paid-for), total spent £5.76. 2 ebooks, 5 paper books.
4.2.17 - 8 books (6 free, 2 paid-for), total spent £5.76. 2 ebooks, 6 paper books.
8.2.17 - 9 books (7 free, 2 paid-for), total spent £5.76. 3 ebooks, 6 paper books.
20.2.17 - 10 books (8 free, 2 paid-for), total spent £5.76. 4 ebooks, 6 paper books.
2.3.17 - 11 books (8 free, 3 paid-for), total spent £7.75. 5 ebooks, 6 paper books.
9.3.17 - 15 books (9 free, 6 paid-for), total spent £19.89. 8 ebooks, 7 paper books.
10.3.17 - 16 books (9 free, 7 paid-for), total spent £20.87. 8 ebooks, 8 paper books.
19.3.17 - 17 books (9 free, 8 paid-for), total spent £21.86. 9 ebooks, 8 paper books.
22.3.17 - 18 books (9 free, 9 paid-for), total spent £22.85. 10 ebooks, 8 paper books.
24.3.17 - 19 books (9 free, 10 paid-for), total spent £23.84. 11 ebooks, 8 paper books.
31.3.17 - 20 books (10 free, 10 paid-for), total spent £23.84. 12 ebooks, 8 paper books.
1.4.17 - 21 books (10 free, 11 paid-for), total spent £26.65. 12 ebooks, 9 paper books.
6.4.17 - 22 books (11 free, 11 paid-for), total spent £26.65. 13 ebooks, 9 paper books.
7.4.17 - 23 books (11 free, 12 paid-for), total spent £28.64. 14 ebooks, 9 paper books.
9.4.17 - 24 books (11 free, 13 paid-for), total spent £30.63. 15 ebooks, 9 paper books.
17.4.17 - 25 books (12 free, 13 paid-for), total spent £30.63. 16 ebooks, 9 paper books.
18.4.17 - 26 books (12 free, 14 paid-for), total spent £31.62. 17 ebooks, 9 paper books.
29.4.17 - 28 books (13 free, 15 paid-for), total spent £33.61. 19 ebooks, 9 paper books.
8.5.17 - 29 books (13 free, 16 paid-for), total spent £39.24. 20 ebooks, 9 paper books.
14.5.17 - 30 books (13 free, 17 paid-for), total spent £40.23. 21 ebooks, 9 paper books.
1.6.17 - 31 books (14 free, 17 paid-for), total spent £40.23. 22 ebooks, 9 paper books.
3.6.17 - 37 books (20 free, 17 paid-for), total spent £40.23. 22 ebooks, 15 paper books.
6.6.17 - 40 books (21 free, 19 paid-for), total spent £44.21. 24 ebooks, 16 paper books.
15.6.17 - 41 books (21 free, 20 paid-for), total spent £45.20. 25 ebooks, 16 paper books.
25.6.17 - 42 books (22 free, 20 paid-for), total spent £45.20. 26 ebooks, 16 paper books.
4.7.17 - 43 books (22 free, 21 paid-for), total spent £47.19. 27 ebooks, 16 paper books.
6.7.17 - 44 books (22 free, 22 paid-for), total spent £49.18. 28 ebooks, 16 paper books.
17.7.17 - 45 books (22 free, 23 paid-for), total spent £49.38. 28 ebooks, 17 paper books.
24.7.17 - 46 books (22 free, 24 paid-for), total spent £50.32. 29 ebooks, 17 paper books.
26.7.17 - 47 books (22 free, 25 paid-for), total spent £51.31. 30 ebooks, 17 paper books.
27.7.17 - 52 books (22 free, 30 paid-for), total spent £57.81. 35 ebooks, 17 paper books.
29.7.17 - 53 books (22 free, 31 paid-for), total spent £58.80. 36 ebooks, 17 paper books.
1.8.17 - 54 books (22 free, 32 paid-for), total spent £60.79. 37 ebooks, 17 paper books.
9.8.17 - 55 books (22 free, 33 paid-for), total spent £62.52. 38 ebooks, 17 paper books.
29.8.17 - 61 books (25 free, 36 paid-for), total spent £88.37. 39 ebooks, 22 paper books.
31.8.17 - 62 books (25 free, 37 paid-for), total spent £89.36. 40 ebooks, 22 paper books.
5.9.17 - 63 books (26 free, 37 paid-for), total spent £89.36. 41 ebooks, 22 paper books.
9.9.17 - 64 books (26 free, 38 paid-for), total spent £91.35. 42 ebooks, 22 paper books.

Happy new thread! It all looks very neat and organised :)

Happy New Thread!

Happy New Thread, Jackie!

Happy new thread!

Enjoy your new thread

Thank you everyone! It feels like ages since I finished a book, but now have not one but two to report!



Now, I have to say that I am not a big consumer of celebrity memoirs, in fact I am really struggling to think if I have ever read another one before, but last year Bookbub alerted me that Dawn French's Dear Fatty was on offer in the kobo store, so I thought I'd give it a go (thanks to Bookbub I've picked up a handful more celeb memoirs since, too). I love Dawn French, not just her on-screen personas (Vicar of Dibley, French & Saunders, Comic Relief etc) but also whenever I've seen her interviewed she seems very grounded and all-round lovely. This book came out in 2008, so some of the newer things in her life (including breaking up with Lenny Henry, which I'm still sad about!) don't feature in this, it finishes more or less with the final French & Saunders tour. It is written in the form of letters to various friends, family members and other celebs, and so is quite an episodic look at her life, but that is really effective, it really worked for me as a format. It was also in parts very very moving - her dad committed suicide when she was 19, and he is a constant presence throughout the book, with very many of the letters written to him telling him about all the things that have happened in her life that he wouldn't have known anything about. I found quite a few passages where I felt a strange wateriness in my eyes because of that - she never lays it on with a trowel, it is just very subtle glimpses of grief, but beautifully done. I thought I would have more laugh out loud moments with it than I did, mostly it produced wry and knowing smiles rather than laughter, although her final letter to Jennifer Saunders (the 'Fatty' of the title, Fatty is Dawn's nickname for Jennifer) had me absolutely howling, especially the anecdote when they were in a panto audience. There were also a few of the letters (primarily to Madonna, but also some of the ones to other celebrities) which just didn't work for me, it felt like she was trying too hard to be funny, whereas in the letters to her family and friends she was just her naturally funny self.

Overall I'd definitely recommend this as a good read, even for people who (like me) don't really do celebs. 4/5.

Cordelia Fine's Delusions of Gender: The Real Science Behind Sex Differences does what it says on the tin, really. She discusses popular (mis)representations of gender and brain research, outlining what the research actually does or doesn't show, to puncture popular neurosexism and shows how important the influence of culture, parenting, environment etc is on both implicit and explicit views on gender. This is popular feminism at it's most accessible, in my view - she's not stuffy, this is very readable and approachable, and in my view really important. It covers similar ground to Pink Brain, Blue Brain by Lise Eliot, which I read a few years ago, and I'd recommend both books. 4/5.

Sounds like two good reads. I'm with you on the celeb culture thing but Dawn French is a worthy exception.

I loathe gender stereotyping - I might get this book as a gift for my brother and his wife who are trying to bring up four daughters as something other than princesses.

Just stopping in to wish you a lovely weekend, Jackie.

>11 floremolla: Not sure what you mean by princesses, but I sort of like that idea. I like (demand) that men hold doors open for me, escort me up stairs, pull my chair out at a restaurant, etc. I also would not get involved with a man who could not support me (although I've been married for 42 years--so that isn't an issue!) because I, personally, wanted to stay home and raise my children myself. Is that a princess? If so, I be one! That being said, I can outwork most men and in my younger days cut, chopped, and stacked wood. I am a female in a predominantly male world--most history profs are male and hold my own, quite good!

>13 Tess_W: I was meaning in the sense of being shallow and dependent (or as the Urban Dictionary puts it: "A girl who's been pampered, sheltered and spoiled her whole life to the extent that she has no idea about the real world").

I guess we're all somewhere on the princess scale! I'm at the other end - not a radical feminist but brought up to be independent and (for good or otherwise) it stuck with me. I didn't change my name when we married (I've been a Ms since 1977) we've never had a joint bank account and we shared child care, cooking and chores as our respective jobs allowed.

I also worked in a male dominated profession but even the alpha males were savvy of gender politics so it was rare to be treated differently or overtly 'ladylike'. Must admit though I was always glad to be spared the worst of the ribald joking and laddish behaviour that went on when I was out of the room. :)

>13 Tess_W: >14 floremolla: I don't know about in the US, but here it seems that the whole princess thing (as in, Disney princesses, girly dresses and accessories, etc etc) is being marketed very aggressively to children and parents, to the extent that it's now quite difficult in many shops to find a single item of clothing for girls that isn't pink and frilly (or boys clothes that aren't either dull and functional, or covered in pictures of trucks), and corresponding expectations that girls will naturally be 'girly' - giggly, shallow, interested in ponies and princesses - whilst boys all want to play with trucks, robots, etc, and be rougher and more boisterous - which then filters into their choices and expectations at school and beyond. We're not denying my daughter the chance to be girly when she wants - she likes dancing in a dress she can swirl around, and loves her dolls and soft toys - but we're also giving her lots of chances to play with toys and other things that aren't stereotypically girly. Looking up from typing, I can see our living room floor is currently covered in train track, and some of her favourite books are about pirates and dragons and robots. It's only a small thing, but I hope that as she grows up she can see that we are supporting her to do and be whatever she wants, and not what society/marketers say she should be. One of her favourite things is sitting in her dad's workshop while he works on his electronics and gadgets, helping him, whilst another of her favourite things is to help him in the kitchen with baking bread (one of the ways I'm doing my bit to bust gender stereotypes is to be a terrible cook so he does it all! lol).

>15 Jackie_K: I do see lots of pink things as I shop for things for my granddaughters.......I had only sons, and they were expected to help clean house, wash dishes, cook, do laundry, etc. They also used to play with my Barbie dolls and somebody gave them one of those mini-kitchen plastic ensembles and they loved to play with that. But actually, their favorite thing was putting blankets and sheets over the furniture to make a cave or a tent. When they were really small they played more with the boxes that gifts came in than the actual gifts themselves.

>14 floremolla: I hope I'm not shallow and dependent! I could live quite nicely without my husband or any guy so I guess I'm not! My husband and I have never had joint checking or savings accounts--no way, things have to be done right, my way! LOL

>16 Tess_W: Yes, I think the love of boxes and wrapping paper when very little is a gender-neutral thing! My daughter carried round a bit of wrapping paper from one of her 1st birthday presents for weeks afterwards!

>17 Tess_W: You're not shallow and dependent at all! But it scares me how many young girls I see who are being taught/socialised at the youngest of ages to see themselves as weaker and not as good at certain things (and how many young boys who are being similarly taught/socialised that certain jobs or attitudes or whatever are their rights as boys). My daughter's nursery is brilliant at not doing that, but I do remember my daughter coming home one day saying X job (I can't remember now what X was) wasn't for girls (I think one of the other boys there had told her that), and was glad that it was my husband who told her that wasn't true.

>15 Jackie_K: sounds like you have a good balance in the face of the marketing onslaught (much worse now than when my kids were small) - the point of course isn't that girls shouldn't be girly, but that they shouldn't be restricted by their sex in their interests, their career aspirations and in expressing themselves. Same with boys.

>17 Tess_W: never thought for a minute you were 'that guy'! And I agree, my way is also the right way ;)

Catching up, and from your previous thread: Congratulations!! even baby steps of decluttering are indeed huge and feel so satisfying!!

Happy new thread!
Lol -- I love your "ultra 30s" definition ;)

I also can't believe you moved your goal to one that was nearly 3 times your original goal!! And you're well on pace to meet it. I love those years :)

>9 Jackie_K: sounds fun! I don't know who that is... would you recommend it even to someone who doesn't know the celebrity?

>10 Jackie_K: ok. :) I sent this recommendation to my RL book group - I think they'll like it too... maybe we'll read it next year for a meeting! (2017 books are already all picked)

My 2 cents on the princess'ing of young girls (brief ;)):
Men should be willing to hold doors open for girls (e.g., and in reference to Tess's comment), but should not demand to do so and should not do so because they think the girls are "weaker" in some way that requires it. Men & Women can DO different things and even HAVE different roles in different contexts, but there should be equal respect among the genders that actually exists, not just theoretically. I think that women who are "princesses" treat themselves as the "weaker" gender in fundamental ways that seem to undermine the belief that women are just as intelligent, capable, and hard-working as men. Does a disservice to us all. (... but I don't have strong opinions about it or anything... ;P)

>21 avanders: I think that Dear Fatty is a good read, but I don't know how good any celeb biography is if you don't know anything about them, if that makes sense? As I was reading I could picture her, and some of the other people she was talking about (it helped that I liked a lot of her work so could do that) - I'm not a big celeb biography reader, but I can't imaging wanting to read one of someone I didn't actually know. Having said that, if you're going to read a good biography of someone you're not familiar with, this is as good a one to read as any! I certainly wouldn't not recommend it, if that makes sense!



And in other news, *fanfare*!!!! I have finished the Romanian book I started to read in January, and am feeling extremely chuffed with myself! Cornelia Mureșan's Schimbările comportamentului familial în România : o abordare din perspectiva cursului vieții ("Changes in familial behaviour in Romania: an approach from a life course perspective") is a text book which covers the author's work on the Romanian national Gender and Generation Survey 2005. I spotted it in a bookshop in Bucharest the last time I was there (2012) and bought it based on the title, which is vaguely related to my PhD topic so I thought I stood a good chance of knowing enough of the topic-specific vocabulary to be able to read it. Turns out that was right, so that was a relief! I generally read 2-4 pages at a time, which is why it took so long, but slow and steady wins the race. To start with it is more technical in looking at the data and how they interpreted it; I will be honest that I skimmed quite a lot of this as I am not a quantitative researcher, so the formulae and technicalities went over my head really (I would have skimmed this bit if it had been in English too!). After that it dealt with specific issues raised in the surveys - fertility, marriage, caring responsibilities - which I found much more interesting. I'm not sure it told me much I didn't already know, and as a qualitative researcher it left me with probably more questions about the people behind the figures, but I can definitely see that it is a quality piece of work. 3.5/5.

>22 Jackie_K: well done - I think you should get double kudos for completing this! we are so spoilt with accessibility to so much in our language that it takes a special effort to read in one that is foreign to us, whereas our European neighbours are much likely to give it a go, or even do it as a matter of course.

You've inspired me to give it a go at some point! :)

>23 floremolla: Cool! Which language would you go for?

I have a few books in French (I did French A'level a million years ago, and at that time, when I was 18, I was pretty good at it), but they are at a very basic level (mainly Asterix books!). I struggle now to speak French or understand much spoken French, but I can usually manage to read it, up to a point. I think having the French already made learning Romanian so much easier, as they are both Latin languages and pretty close to each other. It does mean though that on the rare occasions I try to speak French, I usually find Romanian comes out instead!

(edited as a word was missing!)

>22 Jackie_K: that definitely makes sense!
Some of those books stand up even if you don't know the person well... e.g., I'd recommend Tina Fey's Bossypants (the first 2/3) just because it's funny, even if you don't know her. I think. ;) But for some, it definitely helps to "know" the person who's speaking.. sounds like that's the case w/ Dear Fatty :)

& Congrats on finishing the Romanian book!!

>24 Jackie_K: yes probably French. When I retired I started using the free Duolingo app then downloaded a few Michel Thomas Method (conversational style) lessons (which aren't free). He makes it sound very easy but of course it works for short term memory and you'd have to be using it frequently to get any real benefit.

By the way - and since we're all about books here! - Michel Thomas, who was Polish, is the subject of a biography covering his experiences during WW2 where his multi lingual skills saved his life on several occasions The Test of Courage: Michel Thomas - I don't usually enjoy biographies but my husband pressed me to read it because it was so interesting and I had to agree!

>26 floremolla: That's not one I've ever heard of, I'll have to look out for it! Thanks!

I really want to go to bed, but my eReader has just started updating new software, so I am hanging on till it's finished, as one of my current reads is sitting on it! I'm a bit nervous, I did once have an upgrade which seemed to send the machine a bit doolally, and I needed quite a lot of help from the kobo facebook page (which is infinitely more helpful than its official customer services) to get it up and running again. So every time it upgrades my heart is in my mouth till it's done!

.
.
.

Well - it's upgraded, and the new home page is totally different. Argh! I'm old enough to not do change as well as I used to! Now if it gets fixed when it ain't broke, it just gets on my nerves! Going to have to use good reading time trying to figure out where to find everything now!

>27 Jackie_K: I also hate updates that change the look of things. I hope you can figure it out real quick.

>28 connie53: I'm glad it's not just me! The changes aren't too bad, in that I could find everything, but it's just jarring when you expect it to look one way, and it is completely different.

I had been hoping to complete my current book by the end of May, but it's a bit of a chunkster and despite spending what feels like hours on it my kobo is still showing 7 hours left to go and only just over 50% read! I pulled out another chunkster from the Jar of Fate too, which will take me probably a couple of months, so I'll be relying on my Category Challenge books (which are mercifully a bit shorter) to keep me on target!

>27 Jackie_K: these updates are a nuisance - always seeming to arrive at an inconvenient time. I've lost count of the times I've been working to a deadline and run up against something that's changed. Googling the problem usually gets me a solution thankfully.

>29 Jackie_K: the chunksters really slow things down....and it's difficult to find 7 hours some weekends! I just bought Don DeLillo's Underworld on Amazon and had no idea it's an 800 page chunkster. I can see it slipping to the bottom of the TBR pile with a massive thud. :(

>27 Jackie_K: ha I know the feeling.. you're exhausted, but of *course* you're not going to go to bed until you have your reading set up... ;)

Sorry about the changes! You'd think they'd take their uses preferences into consideration when updating.... ah well.

>29 Jackie_K: two chunksters! Well, you can do it :)
You know, that's one of the discouraging things for me about reading on the kindle -- I can't *see* my progress in the same way... even though it says 50% and 7 hours to go, I can't see the physical part of the book I've already read. I don't know why, but that makes a difference to me. It's not as satisfying seeing the number...

>31 avanders: I think I prefer chunksters on the kobo - the chunkster I just pulled out of the jar is a paperback of just over 750 pages, and I'm already imagining the wrist strain! (even while I can't wait to actually start the book, it's going to be a good one!) The other thing about the kobo, which I really didn't like at first but now really appreciate, is that it doesn't give an overall page count for the whole book, just for the chapter - it's only when you close the book at the end of a reading session that it tells you the percentage read and the number of hours left to read. To start with I didn't like that feature at all, and wanted to know in page numbers where I was in the book as a whole, but now I'm used to it, I find if I finish a chapter and open the first page of the next one, I can see there are only X pages in the next chapter so I think I might as well read that one too - I think it's meant that I've read more at each sitting than I would have done if I didn't know at the start how many pages the next chapter would be.

(I'm not sure if that made any sense! It did to me!)

>32 Jackie_K: makes perfect sense to me! That's one of the reasons I like my ereader...I want to know how much I have left....it picks up your reading speed and estimates really good! I try to read 10% of a book per day, so I can easily tell.

>33 Tess_W: Yes, I've found that it's been pretty accurate in working out my reading speed. Where it's less accurate (although it looks like maybe this new update will sort out this glitch) is in giving my total hours read overall (ie since I started loading books on it and reading them in the first place). Up until now it's only counted the epub books and not the pdf books I've read on it, and for the last two or three books the 'total hours read' has fluctuated wildly between 60-something and 700-and-something hours! (yesterday it was showing as a hundred-and-something which I think is more accurate, and had also increased the number of books so I think it might be including pdfs too. If that's the case then that's definitely a big improvement!)

Just to go back a minute to our recent 'princess' conversation, I saw this article today about a book I've already got on my wishlist but will probably buy for my daughter soon: http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/education-39115031?SThisFB I have a couple of friends who have already bought it for their daughters (slightly older than mine) and who really like it.

We had a lovely day out today at the beach (for those who know Scotland, we went to North Berwick, on the east coast - it's about an hour's drive for us) - sometimes there's nothing quite like sea air, bucket and spade and ice lollies, not to mention that lovely feeling of warm(ish) sand between your toes! My husband and daughter had a quick dip in the tide pool, and I sat on the towel and read my book. It was so lovely! We thought we'd better make the most of the weather, as the forecast is for heavy rain tomorrow (why yes, it is a Bank Holiday! Of course heavy rain is forecast!).

>35 Jackie_K: sounds like a worthwhile book - it's such a pity you have to spend time reinforcing messages that ought not to be needed in a civilised society. Our daughter, now 27, wanted nothing more than to be like her brother. Never mind princesses, she called herself Stuart and it was a trial getting her to wear a dress. Nowadays kids like that are taken for counselling. I really sympathise with parents these days!

Sounds like a lovely day. Haven't been in North Berwick for years but Scotland is hard to beat when the sun shines :)

>36 floremolla: Yes, I've always said the same myself, there's nowhere like Scotland when the weather's good. Of course, you don't move to Scotland for the weather, but it's nice to have a little reward for moving every now and then!



I've sneaked one more ROOT under the wire for May, I'm pretty sure this will be my last for the month. I started reading it a couple of months ago, got distracted (as I always do with fiction), but then picked it up again yesterday (I didn't fancy reading my chunkster about Brexit on the beach!!) and then got caught up in it and finished it this morning. LM Montgomery's classic Anne of Green Gables (1) is a book I got from Project Gutenberg, which I am very grateful for in giving me the chance to belatedly educate myself on classics I really should have read years ago! It took me a while to get into this one - orphan Anne is adopted by middle-aged spinster/bachelor sister and brother Marilla and Matthew, and lives with them on their farm. Imaginative Anne soon wins everyone's hearts and grows and thrives and teaches everyone not to be so buttoned-up, having various mishaps along the way but it all adds to how adorable she is. I'm such an old cynic that it took me a while to be grabbed by this, but I was rooting for poor Gilbert Blythe throughout, and this morning when I was getting to the end of it I found myself with watery eyes while reading it, so maybe I'm not such a crusty old thing after all! I will at some point get the other books in the series, but I think I'll wait for Mt TBR to reduce a little first! 4/5.

I don't think I'm going to finish any more books this month, so I'm going to do an early monthly round-up as I'm going away for our Hebridean adventure at the end of the week, and have to fit in quite a lot between now and then! This was a good month for me - 4 ROOTs read, and only 2 acquired! One was specifically sought out for my holiday, and the other was a 99p buy via bookbub. The two acquisitions were:

* Catherine Czerkawska - The Way it Was: A History of Gigha (no touchstone for some reason, but the book's LT page is here: https://www.librarything.com/work/19621185/book/141870155 ).
* Alan Johnson - This Boy.

I'm also the right side of my 1:1.5 aimed-for ratio of ROOTs:acquisitions - I've read 22, and acquired 30, up till now. I've also so far only spent just over £40, so my yearly aim of no more than £150 spent on books is looking good at the moment! That also means that, although several of the books were more than the £2 I'm aiming for, I've had enough freebies to mean that the average spend per book thus far is just under £1.40, so I'm pleased with that! Also, 21 of the 30 have been ebooks, so it's not been a huge addition of stuff to find a place for!

Good stuff, all round! I think I must be spending your underspend....

>32 Jackie_K: That is definitely also a problem ... holding the chunksters is not fun! But psychologically, I seem to prefer it ;P
That's interesting that the information provided/not provided helps push your reading along! I wonder if that's intentional :)

>33 Tess_W: I find that the kindle doesn't estimate my reading speed that well.... but I think that's more my fault than the eReader's fault.. I am not that consistent of a reader ;p Sometimes I'm really fast, sometimes I get easily distracted..

>34 Jackie_K: You would think that that is something it could keep track of ... actual time spent reading...

>35 Jackie_K: Oh I've heard of that -- looking forward to your thoughts on it when you get it :)

Mmm heavy rain sounds amazing.
()

>37 Jackie_K: I love Anne of Green Gables... I also want to read other books in the series... I am also waiting until Mount TBR has eroded a bit... ;p

>38 Jackie_K: woo hoo, great job on the ratio this month!

>39 floremolla: Well, then I shall be happy that my thriftiness is contributing to a higher cause! (or something!!)

>40 avanders: If you are a true pluviophile (great word!), then you need to move to Scotland! (especially the west). Our holiday is looking like it will be warm and wet, although I'm hoping that we have some dry spells too as one of the things Gigha is apparently well-known for is its lovely beaches, and I'm hoping we can check several of them out!

I really enjoyed Dear Fatty when I read it, but then I loved Dawn French as the Vicar of Dibley and in Murder Most Horrid. I never saw French and Saunders which probably would have helped a bit when I read the book. I also have Delusions of Gender on my shelves, glad to hear you rate it highly. I hear you on the new technology. I was resisting downloading a new operating system for my phone but then apps started not working. The weather app was one, at least it was stuck on a day when it was 18c and sunny. Not that that happens much here but it was nice to be reminded. Any way I did the download but the new weather app was in Fahrenheit. It took me quite a while to figure out how to change it.

Have a great holiday in the Hebrides.

>42 Familyhistorian: I didn't actually see any Murder Most Horrid (and I think that might have happened after the book was published - she mainly talked about Comic Strip, French & Saunders and Vicar of Dibley, all of which are great!). I do really love her though - she's one of those people you can absolutely imagine having a drink with and just enjoying her company.

As I think I mentioned, I'd say Delusions of Gender covers similar ground to Pink Brain, Blue Brain, but from what I remember the latter is a bit more thorough (and I remember smaller print and more pages!!), whereas the former is aimed at a more popular audience - that is not a downside though! Both of them are well worth a read.

I still haven't worked out the weather app on my phone - the closest I've ever been able to get it to me is Glasgow, but as Glasgow is further west the weather is usually wetter on the app than above my head! In all honesty, when this phone gets tired I'm probably going to go back to a granny-phone and just make and receive calls and texts, like the good old days! I can't be doing with all the extras, nearly all of which I have never used.

>41 Jackie_K: oh my gosh, I SO am and I would LOVE to move to Scotland (or even Seattle!), but my husband is the opposite. And the constant sun seems to do less damage to my psyche than the constant rain does to his....
For you, I hope you have some dry weather during your holiday to enjoy the beaches!

Happy birthday, Jackie! I hope you have a wonderful time on your trip to the Hebrides. I'm currently reading Le rayon vert in my lunch breaks which is like a travel guide around the islands. I would love to visit!

>45 MissWatson: Thank you very much! I will check out that book, it looks and sounds interesting! It is very peaceful here on Gigha, and I am feeling very relaxed! (and old, but we won't think about that!). I have also got an absolutely excellent present stash of 6 new books (5 of which were from my wishlist), have finished my first ROOT today, which I think I will write about probably when I'm back home, I still need to process it (beyond "excellent but so depressing"!).

Oh,

!

Yay on the new books & on finishing a ROOT!

Happy birthday! Hope the weather has defied the forecast as it has here inland. I trust you'll be celebrating in style this evening ;)

Happy Birthday, Jackie. Hope you're having a wonderful day.

Happy birthday, Jackie. Hope it is blessed.

>47 avanders: >48 floremolla: >49 Robertgreaves: >50 Tess_W: Thank you very much!

And, er, a correction. I got home today from holiday, so now I can report an excellent present stash of 7 books, not 6, as there was another one sitting waiting for me to return! I'm now very thankful that I only got 2 books last month, as the presents have tipped me just over my 1:1.5 ratio again, but only just so it's still eminently salvageable!

Coming up, a couple more ROOTs read...

A bit of an epic (apparently the paperback is nearly 700 pages), this took me a big chunk of my May reading but I didn't quite manage to finish it in time for my May totals. Tim Shipman's All Out War: The Full Story of how Brexit Sank Britain's Political Class is a really excellent, although thoroughly depressing, look at the lead-up to (and immediate aftermath of) the vote taken in the UK last year to leave the EU. The author is the political editor of the Sunday Times, so already had pretty good access to all the movers and shakers, and this is a very very thorough account of every aspect of all the various sides and groups campaigning for our vote. Obviously knowing the outcome, it wasn't a huge 'what's going to happen here?' kind of thing, but instead it meant that everything I read was read with hindsight, which meant that there were quite a lot of aspects of the 'Leave' campaigns where I found myself thinking "actually, that was really clever, that must have made a huge difference", and aspects of the 'Remain' campaigns which in and of themselves might not have been too disastrous, but knowing the outcome meant that I had my head in my hands more than once thinking 'you ****** idiots'. Essentially, a campaign that became more about maintaining Tory unity after the vote, coupled with the Labour party leadership being pretty much absent, has to take a large chunk of the responsibility, in my view.

A few general thoughts as I read:

* This is a very Westminster-centric account. Which reflects both the background of the author, and the bulk of the campaign itself. With a handful of honourable exceptions (Ruth Davidson came out very well, overall) there was very little space given to the other nations of the UK or of Gibraltar.
* It was a very male-centric account. Like the campaign itself, again. Until they got to the Tory party leadership contest after David Cameron resigned, women were very much bit-part players in this account.
* It was a pretty (though not entirely) Tory-centric account. Like the campaign itself, again. (you get the picture).

Even with those caveats, however, and the fact that I am still so upset and angry about the result and the way the country is headed, with a bunch of rank amateurs supposedly taking us into these important negotiations, this was so well written that I found it hard when I was reading to put it down. 4.5/5.

I'd LOVE to see a similar book on the 2014 Scottish independence referendum. That would really really be worth a read.

Paul R. Ehrlich & Michael Charles Tobias' Hope on Earth: A Conversation was a free ebook I got last year from the University of Chicago Press (they do a different free ebook every month). The authors are, respectively, a professor in population studies and conservation biology, and an ecologist/film-maker, and this book is in the form of a conversation between the two on the ethical issues around climate change and ecology. I found it really unsatisfying until very close to the end, and actually nearly gave up on it, but I'm glad I stuck with it because the last 3 chapters were what I was hoping for in the whole book. What let the book down, in my view, was the conversational structure - it was pretty much the transcript (with a few details such as book titles and suchlike presumably added later) of conversations, so it was really bitty and I found it difficult to pin down at times what they were actually trying to say (not helped by the second author's constantly banging on about vegetarianism, which I found really distracting). Throughout I thought that a much better format would have been for both authors to have written separate essays and then written a response to each other. The last 3 chapters pretty much ditched the conversation structure and were more long-form, including a 3rd academic, John Harte, detailing a particular experiment he has been involved with for many years in Colorado measuring the effects of global warming. If the whole book had been like this it would have been brilliant. As it was, the final 3 chapters brought it up to a 3 star total for me - if it had continued in the conversational format I would have given it a much grumpier 2 stars.

Good stash, Jackie! Birthday books shouldn't count as acquisitions if it means you then have to restrict yourself for the rest of the year. No?

>52 Jackie_K: sounds interesting but too depressing to read...and of course there's the question of the role of media tycoons like Rupert Murdoch encouraging their papers to print biased news. It suits them to be out of Europe, removing layers of regulations and making it easier for them to influence the government. Wikipedia has an article on UK newspaper bias and they are mostly shown to be right wing, serving the interests of their owners.

I await the outcome of the GE with interest, now that Corbyn has sneaked up the ratings it's getting rather interesting!

>54 floremolla: I'm awaiting the outcome with resignation, I think. All Out War really didn't paint Corbyn in a very good light, and also I'm not at all convinced that the sneaking up the ratings is going to be enough. I'm expecting the SNP to lose a few seats, but not very many - my prediction (worth exactly what you paid for it!) for Scotland is SNP: 50, Labour: 1, Lib-Dem: 1 or 2, Con: 3 or 4.

My predictions are often fairly close but never spot on! In 2014's Indyref I predicted No would win 54-46 (the end result was 55-45), that's the closest I've been! For Brexit, I predicted 51-49 to Remain, and look where we ended up. I'm not sure, in terms of unrest and general political horribleness, that if it had been 51-49 to Remain that things would be all that much different to now, sadly.

>55 Jackie_K: I think you won't be far off there. The last electoral boundary changes (under Cameron) made it difficult for Labour ever to win in England or UK, so it would take a huge swing to achieve it. The bookies in Scotland are going for SNP 48, Con 6, Lib Dem 4, Lab 1. Something there for everyone!

>56 floremolla: Well, today's the day. It looks like I'm going to have to don wetsuit and flippers to actually get to the polling station - it's definitely very Scottish out there today!

Someone on another website I frequent posted earlier today on a thread about the election, "I'm watching an episode of The Handmaid's Tale to cheer myself up...". I think that pretty much sums up the national mood, from here at any rate!

I'm quite enjoying the live BBC coverage here: http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/live/election-2017-40171454 I feel much more enthusiastic about hashtags like #petsatpollingstations than I do about most of the candidates.

>57 Jackie_K: yes got soaked ourselves! Looks like Labour haven't done enough to swing the voters in their favour. At least Scotland still might have 'options', but I feel sorry for the rUK as I anticipate the demise of the NHS and social welfare, allied with a hard Brexit. :(

Love the #petsatpollingstations :)

>57 Jackie_K: >58 floremolla: The Guardian is currently predicting a hung parliament (just gone 1 am BST).

>59 Robertgreaves: wow, that was nerve wracking! Hung parliament and Scotland has taken a sudden liking to the Tories. I'm looking forward to the post-election analysis of who voted what, and why. There's some talk of another general election in six months....

>60 floremolla: To be honest, I'll be surprised if it lasts that long. Plenty of scope for people to get intransigent and defeat whichever government it is on major issues.

I don't think I'll be giving up the day job to become a pollster just yet! I'm now in a Tory constituency (he won with a majority of just 148). Interesting times...

ROOT #25 for the year, and #3 for June, is now finished. I bought Catherine Czerkawska's The Way it Was: A History of Gigha last month prior to my trip to Gigha last weekend. Czerkawska is primarily a fiction author (with her stories often based on an island which is basically Gigha, although not named as such), but she has also written a few non-fiction books, including this one. It covers various aspects of Gigha's history, right up to and beyond the community buy-out of the island in 2002. I found it very interesting, although to start with I thought it was a bit dry, and I felt a bit tired with what felt like quite long tangents - until I realised that actually that's how I tend to write too, and then I found myself warming much more to it! And actually, the tangents were never usually particularly tangential, it was just a lot of background leading to her main point. The book has clearly been very well-researched, and the author makes it clear when she is speculating rather than using rock-solid sources. Her obvious love of the island is infused throughout (she is not a Gigha resident, but has visited frequently over many years). I think I'd like to read some more about the community buy-out (one of my favourite books is Alastair McIntosh's Soil and Soul: People Versus Corporate Power, which includes a lot of detail about the community buy-out of the island of Eigg, a bit further north. Having now been to Gigha I'd love to read a similar blow-by-blow account of the process there). 4/5.

>63 Jackie_K: sounds like a great local read!

>64 Tess_W: It was a good read, yes, albeit the view of an outsider. But an outsider who was very knowledgeable about the island, and clearly loved it.

Hi Jackie!

I'm back after a month in California. Mom's mail is forwarded, her safe deposit box permanently closed, and the house on the market. Back to retirement!

Drawing a line in the sand, and just moving forward seems wisest, otherwise I'd never get caught up!

But I did just scan and saw the princesses discussion. I really despise the 'Princess-ification' of little girls and parents letting their little girls wear princess dresses in public all the time. I think in some ways it has helped foster the Bridezilla phenomenon. Separate but related is the boy-bashing that I saw when daughter was in school.

eep! Time flies by and all of a sudden I'm so far behind on these posts again!

>51 Jackie_K: oh so fun! Love that feeling of new stash o' books ... it seems to make the holiday last even longer when they come from that! And to still be just around the 1:1.5 ratio is great! :)

>57 Jackie_K: lol I love that image -- donning wetsuit & flippes ;)

>66 karenmarie: So glad you're back with us! I hope that you are able to slip effortlessly back into retirement! (which is still my dream, but sadly I need to still work in order to reach that blessed point...).

>67 avanders: The ratio is looking a bit more precarious, as I may have acquired a few more other books as well (ahem. What?!).

lol well, we all know "it happens" ;P
I had a craaazy couple of months and I'm still trying to work myself back from the book-buying ledge....

My turn..... you both have acquired a few books recently. My birthday is coming up on the 26th, I turn 64, a serendipitous year since my lucky number is 8, and I may, just may, go on a book buying spree. I don't count Friends of the Library Sales since that's just finding good stuff on offer, but going through my wishlist and discovering new books in series I follow and buying books. Whee!

>70 karenmarie: Wheeeeeeeeee!

>70 karenmarie: my turn the following week - 4th July! I'll be scouring my wishlist for ideas too and dropping heavy hints ;)

I'm getting book shopping envy! I've been on a book diet for the last 3-4 months and pledged to myself to stay on it till Christmas when I'm sure I'll get some gift cards! Ohhhhhhhh, so tempting!

I am really enjoying all this planning of new book hauls! Funnily enough, although last year I did have a little book splurge for my birthday, this year I just didn't want to to the same extent - I keep looking at the Jar of Fate and feeling daunted by what's already in it! (I'm still plucking up the courage to actually count how many TBRs I have). Not that I'm saying no to new books, of course, and I take as much joy from a new stash as always, just that I knew this time that I was likely to get several books for my birthday, so didn't feel the need to raid my wish list to treat myself this time. My Thingaversary is coming up in August, but as I'm likely to be doing a Barter Books trip in August I'll probably just count my purchases from there for that. And in the meantime, I shall vicariously enjoy other people's epic book hauls!

In other news, I have a non-ROOT to report. I've largely confined all my reading to ROOTs, and trying not to get library books out, but I spotted this one in the library and fancied reading it, and am glad I picked it up.



Ben Rawlence's Radio Congo: Signals of Hope from Africa's Deadliest War is the tale of his journey a few years ago from Goma to the eastern Congolese city of Manono, not much heard-of even within Congo never mind further afield. He describes the characters he meets, the journeys he makes, the places he sees, and the history that imbues them all. This is a really well-written account (as I would expect from a journalist and researcher), I could picture a lot of what he described thanks to the quality of his writing. Congo of course has such a heart-breaking past, and challenging present and future, but Rawlence does see hope, ultimately, in the enterprising and hospitable people he meets. This is a journey that the vast majority of us will never take, so I very much enjoyed this particular bit of armchair travel. 4/5.

>70 karenmarie: so much fun!! And quite warranted ;)
I like your description of friends of the library sales ... finding good stuff on offer ;D

>72 floremolla: fun! ... you get presents for the 4th of July? Or .. that's your bday? 🙃

>73 Tess_W: book buying diets are so hard! But you've done so well so far! You can do it!

>74 Jackie_K: I wonder if that would work for me ... if putting all my tbr in a jar of fate so I have to confront it and be daunted by it, to help me refrain from buying new books.... 🤷🏽‍♀️ Prob not ... 😜
But I'm glad it helps you! Plus there always barter books... ;)

Glad you enjoyed your book - I never regret a non-ROOT read when it's good... when it's not so good, well that's another question...

>75 avanders: 4th July is my birthday - not a holiday here so it's all about me ;)

Hi Jackie! Books is books. I keep threatening to go on a book-buying splurge for my Thingaversary but haven't yet. We'll see if I actually do the book-buying birthday splurge.

I'm both proud and ashamed to say that I have 1,744 books tagged 'tbr'. I can't imagine fitting all the titles into a Jar of Fate. I could print off a list of them, but if I got random and picked one, knowing me, I wouldn't want to read IT, I'd want to read something else. I'm fickle that way.

>75 avanders: >77 karenmarie: I think I have a good amount of books for the Jar (which is transparent - it's actually an old Canderel jar, I have no idea how I got it as I have never, to my knowledge, bought or consumed Canderel!). I've got a few of the slips set aside in an envelope as I specifically want to read them for a couple of the CATs in this year's Category Challenge, and that envelope is pushing the others down to about two-thirds full (although pressure would mean I could squeeze quite a lot more in than that). I think I have between 300-400 books in there, I reckon it would take around 600 before I'd need to find a bigger jar (I'm reading as fast as I can, so hopefully it won't come to that!!).

>77 karenmarie: Wow, Karen, that's a lot of TBR's!

Bless the Internet! Now I know what Canderel is.

Too many, Tess. I've read two chunkster series in the last two years - Outlander in 2015 and Poldark in 2016-2017, and a few other chunksters too, which has reduced the number of books I've read and reduced the possibility of reading more of my tbr.

>80 karenmarie: Maybe that's why I didn't clear out as many books last year--I was reading ALL the Outlanders in 2016. I want to start the Poldark's, I think I have 3 of them on my ereader.

>80 karenmarie: >81 Tess_W: For me, the best way to read chunksters is just a few pages at a time, over a long period, with other books on the go at the same time. Even when a chunkster is amazing, the sight of all those pages (especially if it is a paper book) makes my heart sink. Usually my pace picks up in the last couple of hundred pages though - if I've made it that far I'm invested in finding out what happens in the end! So the other year when I planned to read War and Peace in a year, it ended up taking me (only!) 10.5 months as I raced through the last 200 pages! (my plan, IIRC, was to read around 35 pages a week for a year. I mostly stuck to that, till I could see the end was in sight!)

>82 Jackie_K: good and timely advice as I've fallen behind with my non-fiction!

>76 floremolla: oh, well that makes sense! Hee hee, it should be all about you ;)

>77 karenmarie: Fitting the titles in a jar might be a concern... writing them all out, though, that's why I hesitate!

>78 Jackie_K: Oh that's a good idea to set aside a few of the slips for your challenges :) I don't know what Canderel is... a sweetener (from google)? I had put the slips of paper with the books from my RL book group's "jar" of fate in one of those coffee gift boxes that I had lying around... I can't find a picture on line, but it's probably 3 inches square and 10 inches tall? Anyway, I had over 60 books in there at one point, and it felt like I had nothing in there -- i.e., the papers didn't even come up a third of the way in the box. So that little box could probably fit several hundred titles... maybe a bigger jar could fit all of my TBRs in it? (>1000) But, again, taking the time to write it all out.... ;)

>82 Jackie_K: yeah, that's a good plan for chunksters, maybe especially for classic chunksters ;)

I've finished ROOT #26 for the year, #4 for June (I may sneak another one in before July, but although one of the books I'm reading is relatively short - 179 pages - I'm not gripped by it so it's going quite slowly. We'll see!). Margot Lee Shetterly's Hidden Figures: The American Dream and the Untold Story of the Black Women Mathematicians Who Helped Win the Space Race was a fascinating and moving read, of an aspect of history that I, like millions of others, were pretty ignorant. The women portrayed in this book are so impressive, achieving what they did not only in the midst of a less enlightened era in terms of gender, but also of course in terms of spectacular institutionalised barriers put up against them purely because of their skin colour. I know that the UK really doesn't have a stellar history either when it comes to either of these issues, but nevertheless I still found myself stopping and realising with shock how much of the discrimination they faced, enshrined in law, was so very very recent. Not that things are perfect now, of course, but it was interesting to me to see how, in parallel with the focus on the work in aeronautical engineering and then the space programme, the book also looked at what was happening nationally in the civil rights movement and the progress being made (I'd have liked a bit more on this, to be honest, although I appreciate that a book needs its focus!). There's a film tie-in with the book, I'd like to see that too. 4/5.

>83 floremolla: I've now started my current chunkster (just over 750 pages). It has 115 chapters, and I am aiming for one chapter a day (apart from holidays, I don't want to cart it round in my luggage!) which by my reckoning means I will finish it around early November(ish). Obviously if I fancy reading more than that I will, but a chapter a day as a goal is definitely manageable, as they are short chapters! And that way it also gives me the energy to tackle other books at the same time.

>84 avanders: I started writing them out not realising how many I had! (at the time I'd estimated about 100, I was horrified to discover it was considerably more than that! I estimate that it's now over 300, but I'm not sure how many over 300 it is. One day I'll pluck up the courage to count them all up!). The other thing which was time consuming, but actually very very therapeutic, was colouring them all in (each colour relates to a particular category - 3 different fiction categories, a couple of regional categories, general non-fiction, biography, religion, travel, and a couple of academic/professional ones). Even though I might not continue with the Category Challenge next year (I'll wait and see what the CATs are - I wasn't going to do it this year either, but two of the CATs were perfect for me, so I joined in again!) I'm still glad they're now colour-coded, it means I pick out a different colour each time so I don't get several of the same type of book one after the other.

And yes, Canderel is an artificial sweetener. I think my mum maybe gave me the empty jars when I was a student to store stuff (I had two of them at one point - I'm not planning on getting that many more unread books!), but I don't actually remember her ever using Canderel either! It will have to remain a mystery.

In other news, my daughter asked us to go to the library this morning, so we did, as we're both really pleased that she loves the library and books and it's still a treat for her to go there. Despite my good intentions to focus on my own TBRs, I got 2 books out for myself. I keep meaning to use the library for books that I want to read but can live without owning, but both of these look like the kind of book I would want to own, so even though I'll read and return them I may well end up buying them to have my own copy too. (what do you mean, addicted?)

Hi Jackie!

Congrats on the library visit. I loved going to the library with my daughter when she was little.

I gave up on library books when fines went to $.25/day and I started paying almost as much to borrow them as to buy them. Of course now it's easier with on-line renewals, but then it wasn't, and they only loaned them for two weeks at a time before you had to turn it in or renew it in person.

Yes, you're addicted. I am, too. I simply need to embrace it and not feel guilty over it. I'm getting better at that every day!

>85 Jackie_K: I've heard good things about both the book and the movie. The biggest shock I ever got about how recent blatant racism was(is) here in the southern United States was when I realized that a woman my age went to a segregated school K-12. This was in the 1970s. My daughter went to the same school in the mid-1990s, fully integrated.

>86 Jackie_K: That's not addicition, it's precaution. They may not be on the shelves any more when you want to read them again.
At least that's what happens here in Germany. These days libraries are so much under pressure to look at their "turnover", anything that isn't taken out is culled.

>87 karenmarie: I never minded paying fines (I was usually only overdue by about a week, and our fines were something tiny like 5p a day), as I assume that the fines at least go directly into library coffers (rather than the bottomless pit that is the council budget). Actually the other week I was expecting to pay a fine on a couple of my daughter's books, but they told me that books taken out for children are no longer charged fines (this is a very recent thing), even if they're late. Adults are still charged though! (quite right too!)

>88 MissWatson: That's interesting - I don't know how it works here, but I hadn't heard about 'culling' less popular books. I suppose if there's only so much physical space for the books and they need space for new acquisitions it makes sense - do the discarded books end up in a library sale?

I think over in the States the massive library sales are much more of A Thing than here. In our library I noticed a small trolley with books (one side kids' books, other side adults') with a hand-written sign saying 'all books 20p', but that's it - there's certainly not an event as such.

>89 Jackie_K: Yes, space is part of the problem, but they make room somehow for five or ten copies of a current potboiler (and charge extra if you want to borrow it immediately) while non-fiction is not replaced when it falls apart.

>90 MissWatson: Oh that's very annoying! (speaking as a reader who generally much prefers non-fiction and rarely goes for the potboilers). It is a very graphic representation of the relative value that is placed on non-fiction, isn't it? :(

>92 MissWatson: Yes, it is.

I've managed to sneak one final ROOT under the wire for June - #5 for the month, #27 for the year to date. Jerome K Jerome's Three Men in a Boat—To Say Nothing of the Dog is a classic which often finds itself on those lists of books that must be read before you die, reach 40, can call youself a bookworm, etc, and I'd always meant to read it but never got round to it till now. It's meant to be one of the quintessential English comedies, so I was looking forward to a light, entertaining read. Unfortunately, for the most part I found it really really dull, not funny at all, and I'm left wondering what all the fuss is about.

I'm glad I stuck with it to the end though, partly so I can at least say I've read it (and tick it off any lists that come my way on social media), and partly because the one thing that made me smile (the bit in the pub where everyone claimed to have landed the stuffed trout above the door) appeared then, along with a completely-out-of-character but surprisingly sensitively treated vignette (seeing a dead body in the river, which turned out to be that of a 'fallen woman' who had committed suicide). Those two events added an extra half star to my overall score - 2.5/5.

Anticipation is everything--sorry it was a dud!

>94 Tess_W: Yes you're right. I've read much worse, and wouldn't *not* recommend it (if that makes sense), it was just disappointing that it wasn't as good as I'd been led to expect!

>93 Jackie_K: Yours isn't the first review I've read on LT saying it was a disappointment. You've given it a very honest rating - I tend to think the problem lies with me if I don't enjoy a critically acclaimed 'classic'!

>96 floremolla: It was probably hilarious at the time - I guess our comic sensibilities alter with our contemporary context. The problem might well be with me when I don't 'get' a classic, but I still want to enjoy what I'm reading, so my rating will reflect that. I felt like a bit of a philistine the other year when I only gave War and Peace 3 stars, but I just couldn't get beyond Tolstoy's asides into political history theorising, which I found both arrogant and dull! If he'd just stuck to the story I'd have given it a higher rating!

>97 Jackie_K: I find endless digressions irritating but I feel I ought to read W&P at some point. Audio with a good narrator might be the way to go for that one!

>98 floremolla: Yes, I don't really do audio but a good version of W&P would be good. A couple of years ago Radio 4 did a big dramatisation of it, which played out over about 10 hours on New Year's Day. I meant to listen to it as that was the year I had decided to tackle W&P, but I missed the first bit and never managed to catch up. I was very chuffed with myself that I got through the book without the benefit of a dramatisation (radio or TV) to help me keep my head round the huge cast of characters and events! (I find it almost impossible to read Dickens unless I've first seen a film or TV series so I have a rough idea of what's going on and who's who!)

>99 Jackie_K: I saw the BBC dramatisation of W&P a couple of years ago and it was entertaining and quite easy to follow but I know what Russian literature is like for huge casts of characters and each one being known by several names and nicknames!

>100 floremolla: I enjoyed that too (probably because it largely avoided the extraneous political/history stuff!). The guy who played Pierre was *exactly* how I had imagined him when I read the book - luckily for me, the dramatisation was aired just a few months after I'd finished reading the book, so it was all still fresh in my mind.

I also read War and Peace. I know there was a big hub-bub about which translation to get. I got the oldest one (now considered "not good") and loved the book. The only short-coming I would say is that Tolstoy used very similar names for different characters and sometimes used endearments and nicknames for which the reader was unprepared. In the 1st half of the book I had to make a list of characters and what they did (if I knew) to keep them straight. At the half way point I no longer had to peek. I, too, saw the PBS dramatization and liked it very much. I think it followed the story well. Boy that Tolstoy sure does a lot of philosophizing and battle strategy!

>102 Tess_W: My edition was 1750 pages, and I reckon it could have been closer to 1000 if he'd cut out the philosophy etc! I felt bad at not liking all that, and at least I can say I did read it all, but I felt better when my Russian literature-expert friend told me that everybody skims over those bits!

Well it's the end of the month and so time for my acquisitions round-up. It's been my most acquisitive month of the year so far, but in my defence, birthday! 7 out of the 12 acquisitions (books 2-8) were birthday gifts, and a further 2 were freebies (one from UoC Press, and one via Bookbub).

The books this month were:

1. Simon Reid-Henry - The Political Origins of Inequality : why a more equal world is better for us all
2. ed. Nikesh Shukla - The Good Immigrant
3. Guy Deutscher - Through the Language Glass: Why the World looks Different in Other Languages
4. Paul Kalanithi - When Breath Becomes Air
5. Alastair McIntosh - Poacher's Pilgrimage (no touchstone, for some reason)
6. Wen Stephenson - What We're Fighting For Now is Each Other: Dispatches from the Front Lines of Climate Justice
7. David Long - A History of London in 50 Lives
8. Andre Alexis - Fifteen Dogs
9. Ed Balls - Speaking Out: Lessons in Life and Politics
10. Owen Jones - The Establishment: And how they get away with it
11. Stephen Clarke - Annoying the French Encore
12. Frank Kusy - Too Young to be Old (no touchstone)

A good haul, all told! I read 5 ROOTs in June too, so that's good going (I'm aiming for 4 a month), especially as I also squeezed in an extra library book too. Ratio-wise I've got a bit of catching up to do to regain the 1:1.5 ROOTs:acquisitions goal, but hopefully if I don't acquire many in July then I can get caught up again with that.

For the year to date then, I've read 27, acquired 42, and spent £45.20. I'm particularly pleased with the amount spent, as I was aiming for no more than £150 for the year. Of the 42 acquisitions, 22 were freebies, and 26 are ebooks.

I'm just over half-way to my goal at this half-way point, so I'm pleased with that too (27 read out of an aimed-for 48).

At some point before the end of the year I will hopefully have plucked up the courage to actually count my TBRs. I think there's between 300-400 there, but exactly how many is a bit unclear (mainly due to denial on my part, if I'm honest).

Congratulations on your progress this year, Jackie, and birthday acquisitions are special.

I find it interesting that you don't catalog your TBRs. My philosophy is different, but whatever works for you. *smile*

>103 Jackie_K: I'll second the congratulations! I always admire the breadth of your subject matter and *must* read more non-fiction this month.

>104 karenmarie: I'm kind of with you on that, Karen. I've catalogued all of my books but only put fiction in my TBR collection. Some of my non-fiction is more for reference than for reading all the way through, but I really should review it to get a *true* picture of Mount TBR.

>104 karenmarie: >105 floremolla: I started off wanting to just add things to LT as I started them (or had read them already, in the case of books read before I joined). That's the system I'm still using, for now. But conversations on here made me think how useful it would be (eg in the event of an asteroid landing on top of the house) to have somewhere online a catalogue of everything in case it needed replacing. I still think I'll do that at some point, but I'm still recovering from writing out all the TBRs for the Jar of Fate!

>105 floremolla: and >106 Jackie_K: I come from an IT background, which is a lot of categorization of data and reporting of data. I never ever considered NOT putting all my books in LT, since the reason I originally joined LT was to catalog my books. I decided that each book had to be classified in two ways via tags. This was all before Collections, mind you. I'm not quite sure what I would have done had I joined after Collections was added as a feature.

1. Category: fiction, nonfiction, reference. Nonfiction is different from reference, as you pointed out floremolla. For me reference includes dictionaries, thesauruses, cookbooks (although I have read some of them, for sure), encyclopedias, Bibles, how-to, etc.

2. Status: read, To Be Read (tbr), Not To Be Read (ntbr), started, abandoned. All reference is ntbr, and some fiction and nonfiction are - typically books given to me or inherited by me that I keep for sentimental value but will never pull out to actually read.

My method would probably give most people the heebie-jeebies, but I love having my books tagged these two ways.

My method is a hybrid between all of you! I catalog everything! I then divide even further: paper or ebooks or audio books. Then I have the usual: read, read but unowned, to be read. I also tag in what year I read it.

I am not very consistent. Physical books get entered immediately, ebooks when I actually start reading them.

Books get tagged for:
date written ('contemporary' if the author's lifetime overlapped with mine, otherwise 'early 20th century' and then by century),
form (novel,play, poetry etc.),
genre if applicable (detective, historical, SF),
series if applicable,
translation if applicable,
author's nationality,
ebook if applicable,
TBR ('unread' or 're-read') if applicable.

I am not wholly consistent in applying this.

This is my first year of using LT so I've been learning a lot from others as I go along and also improvising to suit myself.

I've been diligently putting books into collections and not been consistent with tags. I've lost count of how many collections I have but there's a mixture of:

'classifications' such as fiction, non-fiction, poetry, etc
my own 'groupings' like art, gardening, lifestyle
'ownership' status - 'your library' (books, ebooks, audio I physically own or have access to digitally), wishlist, read but unowned, etc
'read' status - fiction completed, To read
'Lists' - 1001 BYMRBYD list.

I try to anticipate what information I might want to pull out and create collections accordingly. I can't really see the difference between collections and tags except for how LT uses data it collects through tags maybe? Anyway, I know I'll be tweaking continuously... :)

I'm not very good at keeping track of my fiction but have lots of wonderful tags for the categories that my non-fiction fits into. I am more likely to use the non-fiction to dip into for references so want to be able to find it in a hurry.

I've generally just used the LT categories, but also made a new category for each year where I note my ROOTs/Category Challenge reads. Every book (except one, which is really bugging me, this is an oversight but I can't find which one it is!) goes into 'your library', each ROOT also goes into the ROOT category for that year, library books go into 'read but unowned', and currently reading books go into 'currently reading' (I take them out of there when I finish them). My tags then relate to the genre and topic. I guess while I have fewer than 300 it would be easier to redo categories if I wanted to, but it seems like a lot of work, I'm happy enough with the system as it is at the moment.

For a spreadsheet nerd like me, being able to download my catalog then parse the tags for stats is fun. Just sayin'..... *smile*

*grin* that is really tempting! Stats are cool :) Although I'm not the biggest spreadsheet nerd in the world.

I'm currently in new computer simultaneous heaven and hell - the heaven of having a shiny new toy, and the hell of having to download everything and set everything up again. This is primarily for my new business (freelance transcription and proofreading) which will be ready to go soon - exciting times, but a bit daunting too! This just feels like a good time to be setting up as a freelancer - in addition to wanting to substantially reduce my hours in my day job, in just over a year my daughter will start school, and working from home would mean that she doesn't have to have every day in an after school club waiting for me to finish work. It also means that should we move somewhere more rural (not in the plan for right now, but I'd love to at some point), the pressure to find work isn't so great if I'm already established online.

In reading news, I have 3 ROOTs on the go at the moment, plus a library book, and am thoroughly enjoying them all!

Looks like you're very busy at the moment!

>116 Tess_W: How exciting!

>114 Jackie_K: Oh good for you, that's exciting! I do a little freelance consultancy work from home and find it quite manageable because it's mainly writing and editing documents (mainly planning issues) and it fits in well with my husband's care needs. Best of luck with your venture!

My first ROOT for July (#28 for the year) is a short report, nearly 20 years old now, which I dipped into as background reading when I was writing up my PhD, but bought my own copy as I knew I'd want to read it subsequently. Public Scandals-- Criminal Law and Sexual Orientation in Romania by Human Rights Watch Staff details the changes in the law in Romania relating to homosexuality since the overthrow of the communist regime in 1989, up till the revision of the law in 1996. It also details the routine abuses of the law by law enforcement agencies and others, and how the ambiguities contained within the law (particularly the provision relating to causing 'public scandal') enable those abuses. This was a very detailed and thoroughly researched report, and was thoroughly depressing reading. With the advent of the last two decades of course this will now be out of date, but I suspect not as out of date as it should be. 4.5/5.

ROOT #29 for the year, and my 2nd for July, is Red Letter Christianity by Shane Claiborne & Tony Campolo. I have heard both speak, at churches and festivals, over the years, and have a soft spot for Tony Campolo, even though I don't always agree with him. They are American Christian leaders and activists, from different generations, and this book is about taking the words of Jesus in the Bible seriously to, as they put it, "critiq(ue) our socially generated concepts of God". The book takes the form of a dialogue between the two on issues of relevance to today's world - debt, empire, environment, politics, war, immigration, sexuality, the Middle East, amongst others. It is so refreshing, when Christianity seems to have been co-opted by the Religious Right and seen as synonymous with the unpleasanter side of right-wing politics, to see the issues discussed so thoughtfully and carefully. Like the religious books I read earlier in the year, this was one where by and large I'm sympathetic to where the authors are coming from (very much not a right-wing perspective), so of course I'm going to be more favourably disposed towards what they say. Not that I agreed with everything, but this is definitely a book which by and large gives me hope and inspires me to look at my life and faith again and what I'm actually doing with it. Definitely worth a read - 4.5/5.

Yesteday on facebook a friend posted a meme (from Goodreads, I think), which went along the lines of: "The book-lover's dilemma: I have twenty books on my TBR, but I absolutely have to buy this new shiny book right now". I looked at the comments below, which were all saying "haha, that's so me" or variations on that theme. And all I could think was, "Twenty?!! Are you having a laugh?" Amateurs.

>120 Jackie_K: lol! I have a couple of hundred TBR and I'm a lightweight on LT ;)

Hello! I'm stopping by but generally can't "catch up"...
but I can say >86 Jackie_K: that's awesome that your daughter loves the library & I totally know what you mean bout checking out a book and then buying it later..... ;p

And >120 Jackie_K: >121 floremolla: RIGHT?! When I see people who say "I have a whole stack!" or "I have over twenty!" ... I just..., do they not know that that's not a lot? ;D

Hi Jackie!

I can't imagine only having twenty books to read. It would make me nervous.

I can't imagine it either, Karen! I think it would make me happy though, because I wouldn't feel so guilty about buying some new ones :D

>123 karenmarie:
>124 Jackie_K:

Although I've been on a book diet so far this year (except for gift cards) I justify it by saying that in 1-2 years I will be retired and on a fixed budget. Therefore, stock up now while I can afford it!

I've been retired for a year and a half, Tess, and we've had a few financial hiccoughs when husband got laid off; now that he's back to work we're paying more for health insurance, including $500/month for just me. I still buy books though perhaps fewer new ones. A friend in the 75 Book Challenge Group calls it BAD - book acquisition disorder. I've got it BAD.

>126 karenmarie: My husband is already mostly retired, just does a few odd jobs here and there. I use that "buy now" because when I'm retired will be on a fixed income as a justification!;)

Hi Jackie, starting all over again with reading threads and keeping up this time, I hope.

Nice to see you back Connie!

I am starting to get jealous at all the retirement talk...

>120 Jackie_K: Well, you got to start somewhere. Even though it is now clouded in the mists of distant memory, I guess we all had a 20 TBRs at some point in our lives!

>120 Jackie_K: That really is hilarious! But like >130 Henrik_Madsen: says, we all had to start with a small number of TBR. I even remember re-reading because of lack of any TBR. But that was far far back in my childhood.

ROOT #30 for the year (#3 for July) was a fascinating self-published memoir, Pauline Nevins' "Fudge": The Downs and Ups of a Biracial, Half-Irish, British War Baby. The reason I picked this up at all was because Pauline grew up in my home town, and a large part of the memoir is of her life there. The book has been recommended multiple times on one of the town's facebook pages. It was also interesting because she is the same age as my dad, and I suspect had very similar childhood experiences - there were certainly a lot of things in the book which rang very true from things that he has said over the years about his childhood. From the amazon blurb:

“Fudge” is the kindest nickname given to a half-black child born smack in the middle of a family of eight children who were not only white, they were Irish. This memoir shares experiences of one of more than a thousand mixed-race children, many of whom grew up conflicted about their racial identify and feeling abandoned by their black American military fathers stationed throughout Great Britain during World War II.

As well as the race aspect, this was also a memoir detailing the realities of living in a post-war, working class family in an era when violence and alcohol abuse within the family was so common.

I liked that a lot of the places she mentioned I could picture, or at least knew where they were - I went to the same primary school as her, and played in the same park. When she referred to the post-war prefabs I knew exactly where she meant - they're not there now, but I think it was the 1990s before they were finally demolished, certainly it was after I left in 1987. And in the final bit of the book, where she talks about the mixed-race babies like herself and their attempts to find out who their biological fathers were, she mentions a man who heads up a committee which was researching the GI history in the town after they'd found a load of abandoned US military gear when they were refurbishing a building that had been used by the American army during the war, who I'm pretty sure is my friend's dad! It's a very small world, sometimes.

Pauline does a great job here of detailing everyday life at the time, and also what it felt like to be both in the midst of this chaotic family and yet also, due to her race and parentage, on the outside of it, and the ongoing issues that various of her siblings had with her. After she emigrated to the USA she continued to have contact with her mum and some of her siblings, and made periodic visits back to the UK, and it was interesting to see how things had changed through her eyes. It was also interesting to see her observations of moving to the USA (she moved there in the mid-60s, when legislation was yet to be enacting allowing inter-racial marriage in most states), although it was the bits in the UK that interested me the most. Throughout it all, she acknowledges where she made mistakes but overall comes across as a remarkably grounded and well-adjusted person, particularly considering the emotional abuse and physical violence which was such a standard and regular part of her childhood.

4/5 stars, recommended.

Sounds like a great read, Jacky. Especially when you recognize so much of your home-town and maybe know some of the people in the book.

>132 Jackie_K: Sounds like a good fit for you, Jackie. I like books with a local flavor. I have one on my TBR list and you have inspired me to move it up.

>132 Jackie_K: I agree with Connie and Tess, there's an extra dimension of interest when you know the setting or people in a book. Obviously there are lots of books set in cities we know and recognise, but it's more special if it's local. Me and Ma Gal was written by Des Dillon whose family were neighbours of my gran. It was nice to recognise the setting and read about children playing in the same woods as I did when I stayed with her during school hols.

135 I have a book by a Dutch female writer Simone van der Vlugt - Op klaarlichte dag. I know Simone from a Dutch forum and she has a second home in a little village not far from were I live (Roermond). She asked me if I could help collecting things about Roermond and Eveline, my daughter helped also giving information about Teen live. So we are mentioned in the dedication and the word of thanks. And it's about our town, so that makes the book extra special. A pity this was not her best book, but who cares.

I didn't have massive expectations for this book, but was pleasantly surprised not just at how well it was written but also how well she evoked my town. So it made me more confident that what she was writing about other places was also authentic.

My 4th ROOT for July (#31 for the year) is Victor Malarek's The Natashas: Inside the New Global Sex Trade. This is quite an old book (published 2004) so is very possibly out of date, although (like Public Scandals reviewed above) probably not as out of date as any of us would like. Malarek is a Canadian investigative journalist, and for this book he extensively investigated the "fourth wave" of global sex trafficking, in this case of eastern European women. This is very hard-hitting and as depressing as you can imagine. As well as outlining the stories of the women themselves, he also looks at those involved in the trafficking, including depressingly those who are supposed to be policing it, at both local and international levels. Those who blow the whistle are sidelined, meaning that any attempt at stopping the trade in humans is basically a drop in the ocean.

4/5, but not an easy read.

I feel that I should add that the next book I'm likely to finish is much less depressing! :D I've had a bit of a run of very serious and/or depressing books lately. They've all been 4 or 4.5 star reads, but I do have some light books on the go as well!

I'm also temporarily abandoning the Jar of Fate, but just for the next few weeks. It turns out that my real-life book group (with whom I no longer meet, as they are in Glasgow and I'm not, but we stay in touch via facebook) has chosen a brilliant summer theme which not only touches a number of books on my TBR but is also the same theme as the August RandomCAT over in the Category Challenge. The theme is animals, I took a quick look and could pretty quickly find 13 or 14 books that could fit, so I've decided to aim for two in August and two in September (book group are meeting to discuss what books people chose the first week of October). Along with the CultureCAT and CATWoman reads that I've already put aside to read over the next couple of months, that should keep me going for a while. Normal Jar of Fate service will resume after then!

(I did use a random number generator to choose my 4 animal-themed reads - it was the closest I could get to the Jar experience in the circumstances!)

Now that's reading kismet! :)

>140 rabbitprincess: Yes, the universe is obviously telling me something! :D

Glad you're opting for some lighter reading over the summer - I wouldn't like to think of you reading about some of the abovementioned topics on your summer hols!

>142 floremolla: haha, no I'm not that much of a misery! I like my holidays to be chilled out, and although I don't really do beach or airport potboilers, I do intend most of my holiday reading to be a bit lighter!



I've managed to sneak another ROOT into July - this is my 5th for July, and #32 for the year. And what a lovely read it was - in fact I quite often would read a few pages of this after finishing a chapter of The Natashas, just to cheer myself up a bit!

I have to say that one of my guilty pleasures is glossy TV travel show tie-in books, and John McCarthy and Sandi Toksvig's Island Race: An Improbable Voyage Round the Coast of Britain did not disappoint. I didn't actually see the programme itself (it was a series in the mid-1990s) but wish I had. The two friends (I hadn't realised that they had known each other prior to John McCarthy's kidnapping and incarceration in Lebanon; he'd been best mates with Sandi's brother at university, and the three of them had shared a flat in London before he went to Lebanon), both sailing novices, crew a classic sailing ship, the Hirta, on a voyage round Britain, stopping in on communities on the way and documenting a snapshot of mid-90s life, including some very precarious communities. There were some interesting points where things are now very different, but they couldn't know at the time - for example they stopped off at the Isle of Eigg before the community buy-out, when life was very difficult for the islanders. They also were sailing while the Channel Tunnel was still being constructed, so there were various musings about what this might mean (and how pretty much everyone seemed to be against it). There were also personal musings - sailing was one of the dreams that John McCarthy and Brian Keenan shared during their years of incarceration, and dealing with the aftermath of this was still something that he was working through (living in such cramped quarters would have provided some unpleasant memories whilst simultaneously living the dream). Both of them had their challenges to deal with - by mid-point Sandi had severe RSI in both hands and was both limited in what she could do on board, and in a lot of pain. They both had their encounters with seasickness, and their triumphs too as they found themselves getting the hang of sailing and feeling less like clueless novices.

As if this wasn't lovely reading enough, the book is glossy with lovely photos throughout, so it was a visual as well as a reading feast. It is a book I got from Barter Books last year, and definitely a keeper! I want to see if I can get hold of the DVD of the series now, but I wouldn't be surprised if it is only to be found on ebay, as it's quite old.

4.5/5.

Hmmm. With the ROOT I finished this morning, I was back on the right side of my 1:1.5 books read:books acquired ratio, and feeling really pleased with myself. And then at lunchtime I got the email I've been waiting several months for - Verso Books are having one of their periodic flash 90% off all ebooks sales, today and tomorrow only (details are here for those interested: https://www.versobooks.com/blogs/3328-90-off-all-our-ebooks ). Every so often they come out with a book I really want, and sometimes they will have a sale where it's (say) 40% off, and I've been so tempted, but resisted as I knew that 90% off sale would turn up eventually. So they sat on my wishlist, waiting, waiting, waiting, and today's finally the day. I've bought 5 books in the sale, the most expensive of which was £1.70, so am feeling very chuffed with myself, although will have to get reading now to catch up with my acquisitions! (and try not to think about my potential Barter Books visit at the end of August!)

#sorrynotsorry

>144 Jackie_K: Back on track read versus acquired! Good.

>144 Jackie_K: thanks for sharing the link, I took a look that became a long browse. I didn't buy anything this time but I've liked them on FB and will look out for future deals. I've also picked up on BookBub from you and have seen a few books I'm interested in. I'm trying to restrain myself from buying generally but if I must, then it's as well to get a bargain!

>146 floremolla: My thoughts exactly! I signed up to Verso's email list, as I don't always see the facebook page. It's not too onerous as they don't email excessively, and it means I see the bargains as they arrive! Having been with them a couple of years I have learnt to wait - they are always months apart, but the 90% off ebooks sale *will* come round again (I think the last one was September last year, or around then). So although I'm often sorely tempted when they have a few books on at 40% off, it is worth waiting! Bookbub just email me once a day, usually I'm not interested but I've picked up a few bargains there too - just three or four this year, but I'm not complaining! I used to get more, but have learnt that the amazon negative review really works for me - if a book comes up on Bookbub that looks interesting, I check it out on amazon first and read the reviews. There have been a few where the negative reviews have really helped me decide either way - two books in particular I remember that I probably would have bought, but a couple of the reviews highlighted issues where I knew that that would be something I would hate too, so I didn't bother.

Thanks for the Verso head's up, Jackie! I just zoomed over there for a quick check, but don't have time right now to really search. I am going to visit MiL's sister for most of the day, but should be able to spend a bit more time cruising around when I get back home. I like the 'Fuck Trump' category - my kind of folks!

Non-ROOT finished:



Sea Change: The Summer Voyage from East to West Scotland of the Anassa by Mairi Hedderwick is a beautiful book (one of the two by her I got from the library and then instantly added to my wishlist, somewhat defeating the object of the library for me which is to cut down on the permanent acquisitions!). It's the account of a voyage she took with a friend identified only as The Captain on his sailing boat the Anassa, from Lossiemouth, through the Caledonian Canal to Loch Linnhe then up the sound of Mull, exploring the various western sea lochs up to Loch Nevis and back. Throughout the book are Mairi's sketches which just add to the beauty. I love her writing, which actually reminded me a bit of Jim Crumley (I read his The Great Wood earlier this year, and Among Islands last year). She is of course best known as the author of the Katie Morag children's books, written while she lived on Coll (and which I keep intending to get hold of to build up a collection for my daughter); this voyage took place as she left Coll and was getting ready to move back to the mainland. This book shows she's more than capable of writing beautifully for an adult audience too.

I didn't mean to read two sailing books more-or-less simultaneously, it was the Jar of Fate that gave me Island Race (reviewed a few posts ago), but they were very good reading companions, albeit totally different to each other. This one was lovely to look at, and her prose is very mellifluous, I thought. 4/5

I have another book of hers (a sketching tour of Shetland) also out from the library - I am looking forward to starting that too. The combination of her writing and sketches works so well.

A surprise extra ROOT which I didn't expect to be finishing till August, which means this has been my most productive month yet, with 7 books read in total (6 of them ROOTs). Happyslapped by a Jellyfish was the first of my animal-themed reads. To be honest, having got all excited about the theme I didn't think all that much of it. Karl Pilkington is a friend of Ricky Gervais and he pops up on his radio show and podcasts, and is lauded as this comedy genius. I just didn't think he was that funny. I probably would have found this much funnier if I knew him, and had a couple of beers in me - he reminded me of the friend we all have who we tell should be on the telly because they're so funny, but nobody outside of their friendship circle can see what's so hilarious. This book is mainly anecdotes, musings and diary entries about various holidays he's taken. It was OK, I suppose, for a couple of hours of diversion, but not one I'd particularly recommend. 2/5.

I do have another of his books (it was on offer in the kobo store), which I will read at some point but not hold my breath or have any expectations. I won't bother getting any more though.

Congrats on reading so many ROOTs, even if the last one didn't live up to expectations.

Thank you! I have quite a bit of holiday time this coming month and I'm not taking my laptop with me, so hopefully that will mean even more reading time in August!

Earlier today I found myself researching manga, as my niece is soon turning 14 and is apparently very into it so my sister suggested it would make a good birthday present. It's not a genre I know anything about at all, and I felt quite bamboozled, it's a whole different world! I have sent it with trepidation - I hope I didn't get a rubbish one! At least as my niece's first language isn't English, it will hopefully have educational value even if the story isn't great!

It's the last day of the month, so here's my monthly round-up. It ended up being an acquisitive month, thanks to Verso's sale last week, and August probably will be too. I read 6 ROOTs in all, which I'm really pleased with, particularly as 5 of them were 4 or 4.5 star reads. However, I acquired 11, so I'd better get reading!

This month's acquisitions:
1. Madeleine L'Engle - Two-Part Invention: The Story of a Marriage.
2. Ben Goldacre - Bad Science.
3. Diana Gabaldon - Voyager (No 3 in the Outlander series).
4. Lisa Genova - Still Alice.
5. Kathryn Burtinshaw & John RF Burt - Lunatics, Imbeciles and Idiots: A History of Insanity in Nineteenth-Century Britain and Ireland.
6. Owen Hatherley - The Ministry of Nostalgia.
7. L.A. Kauffman - Direct Action: Protest and the Reinvention of American Radicalism.
8. Ann Pettifor - The Production of Money: How to Break the Power of Bankers.
9. Stefan Collini - Speaking of Universities.
10. Andy Merrifield - The Amateur: The Pleasures of Doing What You Love.
11. Diana Wynne Jones - Howl's Moving Castle.

All of them were within my £2 aim (mostly offers from kobo, or from the Verso sale), and only one is a paper book (the Diana Gabaldon book, which was 20p from the library sale shelf. I have the first volume, and am not sure if it will be for me or not, but I bought this in case I did like it enough to want to get the rest, and if I didn't I wouldn't be upset at having spent 20p!). Books 6-10 are my Verso Books buys.

My 1:1.5 read:acquired ratio is looking like it is on a bit of a shoogly peg at the moment (there's a good Scottish expression for you!). At 33:53 I reckon I need to read another 3 and only acquire one more (haha) to get back on the right side of that ratio.

>153 Jackie_K: great progress and canny buys. Hopefully you'll get some serious reading done on holiday but I know with young children it's easier said than done. I remember the first time we were on a family holiday and all four of us were reading and I thought - yes, finally I can relax on holiday!

I do like the expression 'shoogly peg'!

>154 floremolla: Yes, shoogly peg always makes me smile too! The first bit of our holidays probably won't be very relaxing - we're doing our annual meet-up with my in-laws - my husband has a sister and brother, his sister lives near his parents down south, and his brother comes over from NI too. Both of them have 3 children each, so with our one too it will be pretty busy! (my sister-in-law's kids are older, one is already at uni and the next is just waiting for her exam results to find out if she's going too, so we do at least have reinforcements!) The 3 of us are actually going to be in a tent in my SIL's back garden - we're trying out our new (to us) tent, and it's the first time our daughter will have been camping, so we figured if it's a disaster at least we won't have far to go to a solid floor and roof! At the end of the month we are going camping at a festival, so I'm really hoping our daughter loves the camping!

I'm expecting our days to be pretty busy so not too much reading then, but whenever we're on holiday our daughter never goes to bed unless we do too (she's convinced she's missing out on something), so although she will still go later than usual for her, it will be relatively early for us, so I'm going to make sure the kobo is fully charged!

In other news, I saw this on facebook earlier this evening, and I couldn't think of a single person it could possibly refer to (ahem): https://litreactor.com/columns/10-things-only-hardcore-bookworms-do

>155 Jackie_K: Hi Jackie - I hope your backyard camping experiment goes well in addition to the whole visit going well.

The bookworm article is perfect. I am 10 for 10. My daughter has called me a bookworm ever since she heard the phrase and bought me my very own bookworm years ago:

>156 karenmarie: Yeah, I read it expecting to be about a 5-er, but 10/10 here too! (although I'm trying to reign a few of them in!)

>155 Jackie_K: oh, good luck with the camping - great fun if you get the weather! Cousins are great too - especially when the older ones help out with the little ones and give parents a break!

>155 Jackie_K: >156 karenmarie: hehe - another 10/10 here, though I have friends I love dearly *despite* their bookshelves ;)

>155 Jackie_K: I think that's the first one of those sort of articles that I've seen where the accompanying picture is a guy.

>153 Jackie_K: >154 floremolla: YES finally people other than my family who use the word "shoogly"! Not much call for it in my part of Canada, but it does at least seem understandable in context :)

>160 rabbitprincess: Have you come across the Scottish folk group Shooglenifty? They've been going for donkey's years, and sadly their fiddle player (and mesmerising performer and personality) Angus R Grant died last year (at the ridiculously young age of 49), so I think they're picking up the pieces at the moment, but their music is really fun, and they were amazing live. They described their music as "acid croft" which I thought was a great description, but everything about them including their name was just brilliant.

One of the many reasons I love living in Scotland is the excellent (and often extremely creative) vocabulary!

10/10 here too!

I got back yesterday evening from our long weekend away (Thurs-Tues) and luckily thought in advance to book today off work to recover. So I am going through LT threads whilst waiting for the first load of washing to finish. I finished 2 ROOTs myself (more of them later), and I am reading a really fantastic one at the moment so I think August will be another good reading month.

The camping went well except that my SIL's garden is on quite a slope so we had a few disturbed nights when my daughter woke up and realised she had slid right down! The neighbours on both sides also had competing roosters who woke up VERY early each morning, so I didn't sleep as much as I could have, but it was so nice to be away and in the fresh air, and we had a lovely time with all the family - 7 cousins in total, so my daughter (the youngest) was in her element! Herefordshire is really pretty too.

ROOT #34 for the year was David Welky's The Thousand-Year Flood: The Ohio-Mississippi Disaster of 1937, and was a free University of Chicago Press book from a year or two ago. It was a very detailed look at a horrific flood, which inundated many towns and cities in the Ohio and Mississippi valleys, and looked at the various actors involved - residents, politicians, government agencies, Red Cross, the army Corps of Engineers, and others - and how they did (or, often, didn't, thanks to various individual and institutional entrenched interests) work together to try to improve the infrastructure and ensure that such devastating effect could never happen again. It was an absolutely fascinating read, really thoroughly researched, and I'd absolutely recommend it. 4.5/5.

ROOT #35 was Jacky Donovan's Simon Ships Out. How one brave, stray cat became a worldwide war hero. It's based on the true story of the "Yangtze Incident" of 1949, where British warship HMS Amethyst was trapped for 3 months on the Yangtze River during the Chinese Civil War. As well as the sailors, on board was a stray cat the crew named Simon, and this book is the fictional retelling of the story from Simon's point of view, and in his voice. I'd actually bought it thinking it was something else (Street Cat Bob, which a friend had recommended), and probably wouldn't have bought it if I'd realised, but as a couple of hours of reading fluff it was OK. I did find myself getting a bit irritated with some of the idioms the author gave Simon (saying 'more big' instead of 'bigger', and referring to fellow cats as 'mes', for example), but I did get used to it, and to be honest if you're reading a fictional memoir of a talking cat I think expecting classic high literature is probably a bit unrealistic! There were plenty of glimpses of the privations suffered by the sailors, and the end of the story is quite sad (though predictable). 3/5.

Glad you enjoyed your time away! A talking cat, lol....but then again......the story doesn't sound all that bad!

Good to hear you had a nice weekend with your family, Jackie.

Hi Jackie! I'm glad you had you had a nice weekend, even if the roosters had different ideas than you about sleeping in.

Glad you had a good break! And despite the talking cat you probably learned a bit about the Yangtze Incident you wouldn't otherwise have known ;)

Thank you ladies! It is good to be back - I went back to work today and now I want another holiday. Luckily I've only a week to go till the next one! (and then that's it, before you think we're being too extravagant!)

>169 floremolla: Yes, I must admit that I did do a quick Google about the Yangtze Incident, so I did learn something despite the slightly sappy book :)

In other news, it turns out that today is my Thingaversary (5th, so I got a 'helper badge' from the Powers that Be at LT. I don't know if they're meant to be encouraging, it just makes me think of the current kids TV programme Hey Duggee which consists of 2D animals working together to get a badge each episode. Today I got my Library Badge :) ) (I'm really tired, and just know that although that has amused me no end, I am probably the only person on this forum who will get the reference!). I haven't bought any books (yet), but as I'm hoping to start off the next holiday with a visit to Barter Books, there may be some in my relatively imminent future.

>170 Jackie_K: Happy Thingaversary! I expect a full report on your visit to Barter Books :D

>170 Jackie_K: Happy Thingaversary, Jackie. Looking forward to see what you bought to celebrate.

>170 Jackie_K: Happy Thingaversary! :)

Happy 5th Thingaversary!

Happy thingaversary and good luck choosing your books.

Wow, a five star book!

>179 Jackie_K: Connie, it was really my kind of book, and such a good one, I couldn't possibly give it any less! I thought it was great.

Non-ROOT finished:



Shetland Rambles: A Sketching Tour by Mairi Hedderwick was the second of the library books I got out some time ago and then placed straight on my wishlist. This time she retraces the footsteps of Victorian artist John T Reid, by exploring and sketching large amounts of beautiful Shetland. As with Sea Change (reviewed in post >149 Jackie_K: above) the prose is beautiful, and interspersed throughout are her sketches (both rough initial sketches and the final watercolour), and interestingly here she also features copies of Reid's engravings for comparison. She is a sympathetic and interesting travelling companion, and I really enjoyed this. In fact, I think I enjoyed it even more than Sea Change, probably because I've been to Shetland and could imagine myself doing a similar trip (although the sketches would be considerably less accomplished in my case!). 4.5/5, and hooray for the library!

In other news, I have made the rare decision to abandon (for now) a current read - partly for practical purposes (I'm going on holiday at the weekend and really don't want to carry a door-stopper), but mainly because with current world events the subject matter of the story was just too much for me to handle (the book, in case anyone's interested, is The Poisonwood Bible. I just feel like I don't need any more culturally imperialistic and unpleasant Christian leaders taking up my time and headspace right now). I'm not putting it back in the Jar of Fate though - it won't be too long before my contemporary fiction category comes round again, so I'll save it for that and hope I'm more in the mood for it by then! I do also have a shorter fiction book on the go (another one for the animals theme) which I'm hoping to finish before I go away, so at least my reading isn't entirely worthy non-fiction!!

I like the idea of the Mairi Hedderwick books and will check if our library has them. I'm looking for inspiration for a birthday gift for a friend next month and I think it might be right up her street - hooray for books as birthday gifts!

The Shepherd's Life sounds interesting too. My brother in law is a sheep farmer - not the usual sort though, he only has one rented field, but buys and sells sheep for other people and until recently worked with the English Wildlife Trust, farming rare/heritage breeds. He's always got great stories as he moves equally among the farmers and the landed gentry, but he's a rabid - er, sorry, passionate, Tory and Brexiteer so we have some 'spirited discussions' too! Love him to bits, he's the kindest man, but oh boy, his politics...

Have another great break, making the most of it while you're not constrained by school holidays. :)

>180 karenmarie: I would certainly be delighted to get the Hedderwick books as a gift! (there are several, I discovered). I also found myself, while reading The Shepherd's Life, thinking several times "ooh I should buy this for so-and-so, they'd love it!" If I followed through on it I'd be buying about 10 copies for various people! I think books make such a brilliant present, and think I'll be buying more as the years go on (it will make a change from posh chocolate!).

Sadly this is our last non-school holidays year, as the wee one starts in P1 next year. In fact she has a place 2 afternoons a week from the end of this month in our local school nursery (she attends a private nursery which she will continue to do on the days I work, but I wanted a couple of sessions at the school nursery too so that she would get to know the school and also some of the children who will be in P1 with her), and we're having to miss the first session because of this holiday. They were very relaxed about it though, she'll just start when we get back.

Hi Jackie!

I abandon books with glee, so hearing that you've put down The Poisonwood Bible is understandable to me. I read it and remember loving it and being disturbed by it. culturally imperialistic and unpleasant Christian leaders are sometimes hard to read about. And here in the US, more and more of them seem to be in power again, after decades of diversity and moderation. And then, of course, there is the bloviating orange gasbag causing havoc domestically and internationally....

Ah, school for the wee one. Big changes, for sure. Our September/October beach trips ended too because of school. We wouldn't go during season because of the expense and crowds, and then when she was 6 husband insisted she go to Camp Seafarer, the girls version of Camp Seagull that he went to as a child. She went there for 10 years, so we never got summer vacations.

>182 connie53: I hate abandoning books, particularly ones like this that I can see are very good quality writing, as it feels like an admission of defeat. But I feel so heartsick at the state of the world at the moment, and don't need more of the same in my fiction. So I'll come back to it, but I'm just not in the mood for it right now. I've only read one other book by her, Pigs in Heaven, which I remember really enjoying years ago, although I can't remember a thing about it other than that!

At least here in Scotland, because our schools finish for summer about 3 weeks before they do in the rest of the UK, we can have holidays at the start of the summer holiday before the prices are fully inflated. The downside is that they go back earlier too. One of the things we are doing on our break is going to a festival which is always over the final weekend in August. Lots of our friends go to it every year, so it's a great place to catch up with people we know from all over the country who we wouldn't see very often otherwise. But this is the last year we will be able to go because of our school dates. This is why I'm so grateful for all my online social spaces - with friends and family so spread out, it's the only way we can realistically keep in touch with as many people as we do.

De gifhouten bijbel is on my TBR too, Jackie. It has been there for ages.

Internet is great for keeping in touch with family and friends (including you all)

The Poisonwood Bible....I've started twice but not finished. Haven't tried in 3-4 years. I'll give it one more go and see what happens!

>185 Jackie_K: It's funny, isn't it, how some books will either grab us or leave us cold? I definitely want to try it again (especially because, as I mentioned, I really enjoyed the other book of hers I'd read), but I am just not in the mood for it right now. And the other thing is, I can cope with depressing non-fiction much better than fiction! (I know most people are probably the other way round)

ROOT #37 for the year and #4 for August is Margaretta Eagar's Six Years at the Russian Court. The author was for this time (at the turn of the 20th century) the nanny to the Imperial family in Russia, for the four older daughters (Olga, Tatiana, Marie and Anastasia), staying until just after the birth of the Czarevitch (and heir to the throne) Alexis. This was quite interesting, and knowing what happened to the family at the Russian Revolution it was quite moving to see these children in all their innocence, as well as their privilege. However, it was also quite a frustrating read - I was really much more interested in the goings-on in society of everyday folk, but apart from a few mentions (such as a brief mention of the anarchist student uprising) this really isn't covered at all. It was also frustrating because my version (an ebook version) was so terribly formatted, with quite a lot of typos, and what should have been page headings appearing all over the page. I probably would have given it 2.5 stars for vague historical interest, but I'm dropping it down to 2 for the niggly formatting. 2/5.

I'm off on holiday tomorrow, so will be offline till the end of August. Happy ROOTing folks, and I'll catch up when I get back. Hoping to get two more ROOTs finished by the end of the month, and we won't mention the acquisitions (whispers: Barter Books tomorrow! Wheeeee!)

>187 floremolla: Have a great holiday, Jackie! Oh I love that book, even the cover. But only 2/5 hm....well it is only 99 cents on Amazon......hmmmm!

>187 floremolla: have a great time on holiday - hope you get some sunny days! And don't hold back at Barter Books - they need your support...or something...

Have lots of fun and some good weather too!

Have a wonderful time, Jackie!

Enjoy your holiday, Jackie, and happy hunting at Barter Books!

I just want to stop by to say hi... I couldn't possibly catch up, though I wish I could (explanation in my thread...)! I hear that you feel like you have a little more time again at some point after having a kid... here's to hoping ;)
And enjoy your holiday & Barter Books!!

>188 connie53: >189 karenmarie: >190 MissWatson: >191 avanders: >192 Jackie_K: >193 karenmarie: thank you all! We got back late yesterday evening so I am spending today washing and catching up! Later on need to do a big food shop, as the cupboard is pretty bare.

I had a lovely time away, staying with friends, seeing my parents for a couple of days, catching up with more friends, and then attending a festival where we caught up with still more friends. The weather (particularly for the festival, where we were camping) was great, and I'm feeling fairly relaxed despite the large amount of travelling involved. Less good was a minor accident on the way down (we got side-swiped by a lorry on the motorway, luckily none of us were going too fast and we've been left with scratched and dented passenger doors but otherwise reasonably unscathed), and a road closure on the way home which meant we had to do an absolutely epic detour around middle-of-nowhere Scotland which added ages onto our home journey right when we'd already been driving for hours and just wanted to get home. Both my husband and I are now building up to phoning the insurance company to get the doors repaired - I really can't be doing with the hassle, but it does need fixing. Le sigh.

I also had my first experience of bartering books at Barter Books, which was fun, and has given me much more insight into what they're looking for. I had two bags of books, which included several hardback cookbooks (and a couple of smaller paperback ones), a coffee table type book on places to go in the UK, a couple of fitness books, couple of text books, a Haynes manual for a car we don't own any more, a couple of Paulo Coelho books, a very battered copy of Mister God This is Anna and a small novella. I thought if I could get £10 for the lot I'd be happy, but didn't want to get my hopes up. Turns out they only took a few of them, and not at all the ones I expected. So I got most of them back again (they just took a couple of the cookbooks, the fitness books, the Paulo Coelhos, MGTIA and the novella, but left the rest), but gave me £21 of store credit just for those, so I was happy enough with that. A friend we were staying with had a dig through and took a couple of the books that were left, and I gave the rest to a charity shop, so am feeling pleased that we've got some books out of the house. I was surprised that they didn't take most of the cookbooks (as they have a pretty big section of cookbooks, and these were hardbacks in good condition), but they told me that as they were by well known names (Rosemary Conley, Gordon Ramsay, etc) they get given them all the time and have a warehouse full of them so just don't want any more. My husband has several books he's wanting rid of, so I expect we'll take them next time as they're more the things they're looking for (mostly hardback fiction in very good condition).

Unsurprisingly we managed to completely use up our credit! 3 books for me, 2 for my daughter and 1 for my husband, which would have come to just over £27, so we did pretty well to only have to shell out £6!

I also managed to finish 3 more ROOTs - more of them in a bit...

Welcome back, Jackie! Glad to hear that your holiday was fun, even if you had that sideswipe on the way down and a detour on the way home.

I had the same type experience of trying to give books to a used bookstore for store credit - she only took a few and I was left with taking the rest to the thrift store. I don't bother any more, partly because I know she won't take too many and partly because her used book prices are always half the cover price and I can find them cheaper at the thrift store (when I am lucky and find them) or Amazon.

Congratulations on reading 3 ROOTs.

>195 Jackie_K: Yes, Barter Books aren't always that cheap (and some of the children's classics that I'd quite like are really quite expensive there). But it's such an amazing place, that I think I'm buying into the experience of it as much as I am buying the actual books! I'll put some photos up later, as I managed to take a few in the shop itself.

ROOT #5 for August, #38 for the year, is Andre Alexis' prize-winning Fifteen Dogs. This is a book I received for my birthday earlier this year, and I'll be honest, if it hadn't been a gift then it's not the kind of book I'd particularly have gone for at all. However, I'm so glad I did beause I thoroughly enjoyed it once I got into it (it did take me a chapter or so before being sure I liked it!). The blurb on the back describes it so much better than I can (and means I won't inadvertently reveal any spoilers!):

A pack of dogs are granted the power of human thought - but what will it do to them?

It begins in a bar, like so many strange stories. The gods Hermes and Apollo argue about what would happen if animals had human intelligence, so they make a bet and grant consciousness to a group of dogs staying overnight at a vetinary clinic.

Suddenly capable of complex thought, the dogs escape and become a pack. They are torn between those who resist the new ways of thinking, preferring the old 'dog' ways, and those who embrace the change. The gods watch as the dogs venture into unfamiliar territory, as they become divided among themselves, as each struggles with new thoughts and feelings. Wily Benjy moves from home to home, Prince becomes a poet, and Majnoun forges a relationship with a kind couple that stops even the Fates in their tracks.

Engaging and full of unexpected insights into human and canine minds, this contemporary fable is an extraordinary look at the beauty and perils of consciousness.

The story is set in Toronto, and I probably would have enjoyed it even more if I knew Toronto and the places being described. It's a fairly short novel (my copy is 159 pages) but he managed to pack in an awful lot, and it is really beautifully written. Not at all sentimental (far from it, in fact), but even though it is quite hard-hitting, brutal even, in places, this literary wimp (no gore for me, thank you very much!) could cope with it! 4/5.

The next ROOT I finished was Marta Dyczok's Ukraine's Euromaidan: Broadcasting through Information Wars with Hromadske Radio. This is a book I got the other year from the E-IR Open Access site (along with a couple of others). The author is a Canadian academic and journalist of Ukrainian heritage, and the book consists of an explanatory introduction and conclusion, sandwiching the individual texts of podcasts she produced for Hromadske Radio (Ukrainian public radio) after the Euromaidan uprising of late 2013/early 2014. They consist of short reports on Canadian responses to the situation in Ukraine, the author's experiences when she travels to Ukraine, how the conflict is covered in the western media, Ukrainian events in Toronto (where there appears to be a large Ukrainian diaspora community), etc. They were short (I personally would have preferred a bit more detail), but I did particularly like the introduction and conclusion which provided more context about the Ukrainian conflict and wider media space. 4/5.

ROOT #40 for the year is a wonderful, but oh so harrowing read. On the Front Line: The Collected Journalism of Marie Colvin is a collection of every piece that war/foreign correspondent Marie Colvin produced, either solo or collaborating with other journalists, up until her death in Syria in 2012. She had been foreign correspondent for The Sunday Times since 1986, and by all accounts was an extraordinary woman. This book is of her reports from conflict zones around the world in that time - Iraq, Afghanistan, Gaza, Iran, Sierra Leone, Kosovo, Chechnya, Sri Lanka (where she lost the sight in one eye in a grenade attack in 2006), East Timor (where her reporting, after all but 3 journalists had evacuated, changed UN policy and helped many people to avoid a massacre), and Syria (where she paid the ultimate price for her determination to make sure the truth was told as widely as possible), as well as a couple of other pieces, one her acceptance speech when she won the 'Woman of the Year' award, and another her reflection as she recovered from the operation to try and save her eye (5.5 hours with local anaesthetic! This woman was hardcore). It was clear that her philosophy (as outlined in the Woman of the Year speech) was to tell the stories of the people caught up in conflict - she said she wasn't interested in whether the bullet was 150mm or 180mm (or whatever), or what type of plane dropped the bomb, it was the human cost that needed to be shown - and every single report is fizzing with humanity, whilst not shying away from just what humans are capable of. This was not an easy read, but it was extraordinary, and I felt bereaved when I finished it. What an incredible woman. 5/5.

Congrats on 3 roots-- and they were all 4's and 5's!

I have had the same experience as Karen in taking books into the Used Book Store. They give me 50 cents-$1.00 for about 1/5 books and don't want the rest. They also sell the books for 50% of the cover price so I can get them cheaper at Salvation Army or Amazon.

Welcome back, Jackie, and well done with the reading as it's not easy to get time to yourself on holiday with a three year old!

I'll look out for the Marie Colvin book - such a brave woman.

How on earth is it September tomorrow?! (more to the point, how am I going back to work tomorrow already? I feel like I've only been off 5 minutes. Sigh)

Here's my August round-up: a pretty successful month of ROOTing (7 ROOTs in all, many of them 4-5 star reads), and only slightly more acquisitions than ROOTs read, as I bought 9 this month. It was a bit more expensive than other months, as I bought a couple of full-price books at the festival we attended, but I could have spent much more, and at least my 3 Barter Books purchases were bought on credit, so it could have been worse! Here's this month's haul:

1. Alan Johnson - Please, Mister Postman.
2. Dan Fagin - Toms River.
3. Adam Nicolson - Atlantic Britain.
4. Madeleine L'Engle - A Circle of Quiet.
5. Andrew Rumsey - Parish: An Anglican Theology of Place.
6. Keith Hebden - Re-enchanting the Activist.
7. Jennifer Worth - Farewell to the East End. (3rd book of the Call the Midwife series, meaning I have all three now)
8. Donald Woods - Biko.
9. Jasper Fforde - Lost in a Good Book.

Hi Jackie! Congrats on such a good reading month, sorry that your holiday is over. :(

Thanks Karen! Within 5 minutes of being back at work it was like I'd never been away. This is why I am dreaming of retiring...

I remember those days of walking into work relaxed, happy, motivated, and within 10 minutes being just as stressed, uptight, and irritated as when I left for vacation. I'm sorry about that.

I hope your weekend has been relaxing, although with a 3-year old, that's probably not really possible.

Thanks Karen, we are having a pretty chilled weekend - yesterday the weather was good so I'm afraid I did lots and lots of washing, rather than take advantage of it to go anywhere nice! But I'm glad I did, as it's all away and dry now. Today the weather is quite dull so other than a quick trip across the road to the shop for milk we've stayed put. My husband is making clockwork dinosaurs with my daughter "helping" (most definitely in scare quotes there), and I am trying to build up to doing some housework. A bit of cleaning, lots of ironing, and the hoovering all need doing. We also need to phone a garage to arrange work on our car, but as we haven't had a courtesy car finally confirmed yet (something to do with needing to contact the other party's insurance, but as they are in Poland who knows if/when that will happen) I am reluctant to get the car taken in if we don't have an alternative, particularly as I use my car in my job. Sigh. I am obviously really thankful that none of us were hurt and the damage wasn't worse, but even so it is still just a colossal pain.

In more cheerful news, I finally uploaded a couple of my Barter Books photos onto my profile, so here they are. As I mentioned upthread, I think shopping there is as much about the experience of the place as it is about the books. It's not the cheapest place to buy books, but the whole place is just a treasure trove, and they've worked really hard on making it such an interesting place to shop. The building was a railway station until the station was closed in the 1960s (along with many others in the UK at the same time, as part of the Beeching cuts), and they have tried as far as possible to keep the station vibe. The cafe and toilets are in the old waiting rooms, and the biggest room of books are on what was the platforms and the line (first photo). In the room where you pay (and barter), on top of the bookshelves (below the authors mural in the second photo) they've laid out a model railway with trains chugging along. And in the entrance room, they've got an open fire and comfy chairs, which is perfect in winter when you come in from the cold. They also have lines from poetry lining the bookshelves at the top - you might be able to see a bit of that in the second photo.





I was also thinking about the conversation upthread about getting very little for books, them not wanting many books, and selling them for a lot. I think my experience was a bit more positive - they did indeed not want the majority of my books and returned them, and it's not the cheapest place for books. But I did get quite a lot more than I expected for the books they did take - I'd have been happy with £10 for the whole lot, but they gave me £21 for about 20-25% of them, so I was very pleased with that.

And their cake is fantastic :)

Sounds like a lovely experience! We have an independent bookstore in Columbus that is in a very old house, The Book Loft in German Village. They do not buy back books and their books are on the expensive side, almost all hardbacks; however there are some unique selections. They have kept the house like it was, all small rooms and choppy and it has worked well for them. For example, there is a WWII nook, that I think must have been a closet and it has nothing but WWII books. There are many such nooks and crannies in the loft. I take most of my first time visitors to the area to the Book Loft and I almost never leave without purchasing one book.

>207 avanders: That sounds perfect! I'd love to see it!

>194 Jackie_K: Sounds like a wonderful vacation!
Scary about the accident though.. I'm glad it wasn't anything more major!
And that's a fun experience w/ Barter Books .. I have a couple bags I'm going to be bringing to one of our local book stores... I'll probably learn some interesting things about the used book trade that day too ;)
I'm surprised they were looking for more hardback fiction... those don't tend to sell as well in our used bookstores... except for YA of course :)

>197 Jackie_K: huh, I normally don't read fiction books about animals.. just not really my jam. But that one does sound interesting :)

>202 Jackie_K: looks like a great month! :)

>206 Jackie_K: Oooh looks fun!

Glad you had a good holiday, Jackie. With lots of friends and family. Did you get the insurance thing fixed? I would be so scared if such a thing would happen to us. Lorries are big!

>209 Jackie_K: >210 connie53: Thank you ladies. Insurance woes are ongoing, but there seems to be some (slow) progress. We have a provisional date of this coming Tuesday to have the car picked up by the garage for repair, and around the same time we get a courtesy car while it is repaired. They've been a bit vague about the date for the courtesy car though, so I've had to cancel a number of home visits for work (I visit people in their homes, so need the car for that) in case I can't actually go to them! The dents on the car doors aren't too bad and I would think should be easily fixed, and then it should just be a respray, so I'm hoping it won't be out of action for very long.

Connie, it was surprisingly unscary - I think because it happened so quickly, and was in a stretch of motorway that was actually not very fast (because of roadworks). As soon as the lorry clipped us the driver realised and pulled back - it would have been a lot worse if he'd not realised and carried on pulling out into our lane, or if we'd all been going faster. I think I just went into 'coping' mode and we got on with getting the driver's details etc and then just got on with it - I'm more fed up about dealing with the insurance company than I am about the actual accident, as that is just dragging on and on!

>211 Jackie_K: Understandable. I cope with such things in a calm way the moment they happen, but then afterwards I go into panic mode with trembling knees and tears. I hope the insurance trouble will be solved soon.

I've now started my 3rd thread of the year - primarily because I am procrastinating from doing some housework, but also because this is starting to get a bit long, especially now I'm adding photos to the thread. Look forward to seeing you over there!