Jackie's 4th year of ROOTing part 3

(Starting another new thread as the last one was getting a bit unwieldy. And because I'm procrastinating from housework).

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 - reviewed on my first thread of the year.

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. 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.

ROOTS read - reviewed on my second thread.

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.

ROOTs read - reviewed on this thread.

41. ed. Mindy Klasky - Nevertheless, She Persisted. Finished 29.9.17. 3/5.
42. Kate Evans - Red Rosa: A Graphic Biography of Rosa Luxemburg. Finished 1.10.17. 4.5/5.
43. Jane Smith - Wild Island: A Year in the Hebrides. Finished 3.10.17. 4.5/5.
44. Lindsey German & John Rees - A People's History of London. Finished 3.10.17. 3.5/5.
45. Jennifer Worth - Call the Midwife. Finished 13.10.17. 4.5/5.
46. Nelson Mandela - Long Walk to Freedom. Finished 14.10.17. 5/5.
47. Patrick Leigh Fermor - A Time of Gifts. Finished 24.10.17. 4.5/5.
48. Val Gillies, Rosalind Edwards & Nicola Horsley - Challenging the politics of early intervention: Who's 'saving' children and why. Finished 7.11.17. 4.5/5.
49. Patrick Leigh Fermor - Between the Woods and the Water. Finished 11.11.17. 4/5.
50. Juliet Jacques - Trans: A Memoir. Finished 18.11.17. 4/5.
51. Mark Thomas - Extreme Rambling: Walking Israel's Separation Barrier. For Fun. Finished 20.11.17. 4.5/5.
52. Steven Galloway - The Cellist of Sarajevo. Finished 25.11.17. 4.5/5.
53. Rebecca Solnit - Men Explain Things To Me. Finished 1.12.17. 4.5/5.
54. Dav Pilkey - Kat Kong. Finished 5.12.17. 3.5/5.
55. Bill Watterson - Calvin & Hobbes: In the Shadow of the Night. Finished 5.12.17. 4/5.
56. Hester Vaizey - Born in the GDR: Living in the Shadow of the Wall. Finished 10.12.17. 4/5.
57. Patrick Leigh Fermor - The Broken Road. Finished 21.12.17. 4/5.
58. Emma Jane Kirby - The Optician of Lampedusa. Finished 29.12.17. 5/5.

Acquisitions 1-30

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. 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. 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.

Acquisitions 31-60

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. 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.
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 (£8.99). Acquired 28.8.17.
60. Jennifer Worth - Farewell to the East End. From Barter Books (free with BB credit). Acquired 29.8.17.

Acquisitions 60+ plus tally of books/amount spent.

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.
65. Elif Shafak - Three Daughters of Eve. From kobo (£0.99). Acquired 14.9.17.
66. Bandi - The Accusation: Forbidden Stories from Inside North Korea. From kobo sale (£2.63). Acquired 15.9.17.
67. Steve Goddard - Whatever Happened to Billy Shears? (no touchstone). From kobo sale (£0.99). Acquired 15.9.17.
68. Various - What in the World: Micro Views of Global Cultures (no touchstone). From NYTimes subscriber list (free). Acquired 15.9.17.
68. Tor Udall - A Thousand Paper Birds. From kobo offers (£0.99). Acquired 18.9.17.
69. Jennie Melamed - Gather the Daughters. From kobo (£0.99). Acquired 19.9.17.
70. Val Gillies, Rosalind Edwards & Nicola Horsley - Challenging the politics of early intervention. From Policy Press (free review copy). Acquired 22.9.17.
71. Frank Kusy - The Reckless Years: A Marriage Made in Chemical Heaven (?no touchstone). From kobo (free, via bookbub). Acquired 29.9.17.
72. Evelyne Bloch-Cano - Vegetables: A Biography. From UoC Press (free). Acquired 3.10.17.
73. Cezar Paul-Bădescu - Luminiţa, mon amour. From kobo (£4.81). Acquired 3.10.17.
74. Paul MacAlindin - Upbeat: The Story of the National Youth Orchestra of Iraq. (?no touchstone). From kobo non-fiction sale (£1.99). Acquired 7.10.17.
75. Helen Russell - The Year of Living Danishly: Uncovering the Secrets of the World's Happiest Country. From kobo non-fiction sale (£2.63). Acquired 7.10.17.
76. Sue Perkins - Spectacles. From kobo (via bookbub) (£1.99). Acquired 12.10.17.
77. Susan Calman - Cheer up love: Adventures in depression with the Crab of Hate. From kobo (£1.99). Acquired 12.10.17.
78. JD Vance - Hillbilly Elegy. From kobo (via bookbub) (£1.99). Acquired 17.10.17.
79. Mark Thomas - Extreme Rambling: Walking Israel's Separation Barrier. For Fun. From Waterstones online (£9.99). Received 18.10.17.
80. Vladimir Lorchenkov, translated by Ross Ufberg - The Good Life Elsewhere. From Waterstones online (£11.99). Received 18.10.17.
81. Sabeeha Rehman - Threading my Prayer Rug. From kobo (£1.99). Acquired 20.10.17.
82. Rory Stewart - The Marches: Border Walks with my Father (touchstone weirdness). From Waterstones (£5). Acquired 23.10.17.
83. Rebecca Solnit - Men Explain Things to Me. From Haymarket Books sale ($1). Acquired 1.11.17.
84. Naomi Klein - No is Not Enough. From Haymarket Books sale ($1). Acquired 1.11.17.
85. Miranda Hart - Peggy and Me. From kobo (£0.99). Acquired 5.11.17.
86. Joanne M. Harris - The Gospel of Loki. From kobo (£0.99). Acquired 5.11.17.
87. Various - The Right to the City: A Verso Report. From Verso (free). Acquired 9.11.17.
88. Cole Morton - The Boy who Gave his Heart Away. From kobo, via bookbub (free with kobo points). Acquired 10.11.17.
89. Carolyn Jourdain - Medicine Men: Extreme Appalachian Doctoring. From kobo, via bookbub (free). Acquired 18.11.17.
90. Katie Kirby - The Daily Struggles of Archie Adams. From amazon (£4). Received 25.11.17.
91. Frank Kusy - Rupee Millionnaires. From kobo (free, via bookbub). Acquired 25.11.17.
92. Martin Sixsmith - Philomena. From kobo (£0.99). Acquired 25.11.17.
93. Jessie Burton - The Miniaturist. From kobo (£2.63). Acquired 25.11.17.
94. Timothy Snyder - On Tyranny. From kobo, via bookbub (£0.99). Acquired 1.12.17. (***note to self- all books up to and including this one now in the Jar of Fate***)
95. Kate Evans - Threads (no touchstone yet?). From Verso (£11.50 inc postage). Ordered 6.12.17, received 12.12.17.
96. Kozo Yamamura - Too Much Stuff: Capitalism in Crisis (?no touchstone). From Amazon (£1.99 - Kindle app). Acquired 12.12.17.
97. Anne Bronte - Agnes Grey. Free from Project Gutenberg. Acquired 14.12.17.
98. Various - Goodbye Europe. From kobo (via bookbub) (£2.99). Acquired 15.12.17.
99. Trevor Noah - Born a Crime. From kobo (£1.99). Acquired 20.12.17.
100. Malala Yousafzai - I Am Malala. From kobo (Christmas gift/£2.14). Acquired 23.12.17.
101. Michel Faber - The Book of Strange New Things. From kobo (Christmas gift). Acquired 23.12.17.
102. Danny Baker - Going Off Alarming. From kobo (Christmas gift). Acquired 23.12.17.
103. Mary Doria Russell - Children of God. From kobo (Christmas gift). Acquired 23.12.17.
104. Kate Atkinson - Life After Life. From kobo (Christmas gift). Acquired 23.12.17.
105. Kate Atkinson - A God in Ruins. From kobo (Christmas gift). Acquired 23.12.17.
106. Anthony Marra - The Tsar of Love and Techno. From kobo (Christmas gift). Acquired 23.12.17.
107. John Lewis-Stempel - Meadowland. From kobo (Christmas gift). Acquired 23.12.17.
108. Mary Beard - SPQR. From kobo (Christmas gift). Acquired 23.12.17.
109. Kate Moore - The Radium Girls. From kobo (Christmas gift). Acquired 23.12.17.
110. Paul Murton - The Hebrides (?no touchstone). Christmas gift. Acquired 25.12.17.

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.
14.9.17 - 65 books (26 free, 39 paid-for), total spent £92.34. 43 ebooks, 22 paper books.
15.9.17 - 67 books (26 free, 41 paid-for), total spent £95.96. 45 ebooks, 22 paper books.
18.9.17 - 69 books (27 free, 42 paid-for), total spent £96.95. 46 ebooks, 22 paper books.
19.9.17 - 70 books (27 free, 43 paid-for), total spent £97.94. 47 ebooks, 22 paper books.
22.9.17 - 71 books (28 free, 43 paid-for), total spent £97.94. 47 ebooks, 23 paper books.
29.9.17 - 72 books (29 free, 43 paid-for), total spent £97.94. 48 ebooks, 23 paper books.
3.10.17- 73 books (30 free, 44 paid-for), total spent £102.75. 50 ebooks, 23 paper books.
7.10.17 - 75 books (30 free, 46 paid-for), total spent £107.37. 52 ebooks, 23 paper books.
12.10.17 - 77 books (30 free, 48 paid-for), total spent £111.35. 53 ebooks, 23 paper books.
17.10.17 - 78 books (30 free, 49 paid-for), total spent £113.34. 55 ebooks, 23 paper books.
18.10.17 - 80 books (30 free, 51 paid-for), total spent £135.32. 55 ebooks, 25 paper books.
20.10.17 - 81books (30 free, 52 paid-for), total spent £137.31. 56 ebooks, 25 paper books.
23.10.17 - 82 books (30 free, 53 paid-for), total spent £142.31. 56 ebooks, 26 paper books.
1.11.17 - 84 books (30 free, 55 paid-for), total spent £143.84. 58 ebooks, 26 paper books.
5.11.17 - 86 books (30 free, 57 paid-for), total spent £145.82. 60 ebooks, 26 paper books.
9.11.17 - 87 books (31 free, 57 paid-for), total spent £145.82. 61 ebooks, 26 paper books.
10.11.17 - 88 books (32 free, 57 paid-for), total spent £145.82. 62 ebooks, 26 paper books.
18.11.17 - 89 books (33 free, 57 paid-for), total spent £145.82. 63 ebooks, 26 paper books.
25.11.17 - 93 books (34 free, 60 paid-for), total spent £153.44. 66 ebooks, 27 paper books.
1.12.17 - 94 books (34 free, 61 paid-for), total spent £154.43. 67 ebooks, 27 paper books.
6.12.17 - 95 books (34 free, 62 paid-for), total spent £165.93. 67 ebooks, 28 paper books.
12.12.17 - 96 books (34 free, 63 paid-for), total spent £167.92. 68 ebooks, 28 paper books.
14.12.17 - 97 books (35 free, 63 paid-for), total spent £167.92. 69 ebooks, 28 paper books.
15.12.17 - 98 books (35 free, 64 paid-for), total spent £170.91. 70 ebooks, 28 paper books.
20.12.17 - 99 books (35 free, 67 paid-for), total spent £172.90. 71 ebooks, 28 paper books.
23.12.17 - 109 books (44 free, 68 paid-for), total spent £175.04. 81 ebooks, 28 paper books.
25.12.17 - 110 books (45 free, 69 paid-for), total spent £175.04. 81 ebooks, 29 paper books.

Non-ROOTs (all library books unless otherwise stated)

1. James Bowen - Street Cat Bob. Finished 3.4.17. 3/5.
2. Ben Rawlence - Radio Congo: Signals of Hope from Africa's Deadliest War. Finished 18.6.17. 4/5.
3. Mairi Hedderwick - Sea Change: The Summer Voyage from East to West Scotland of the Anassa. Finished 30.7.17. 4/5.
4. Mairi Hedderwick - Shetland Rambles: A Sketching Tour. Finished 13.8.17. 4.5/5.
5. Campbell McCutcheon - St Kilda: A Journey to the End of the World. Finished 9.12.17. 3.5/5.

Happy New Thread, Jackie!

>8 Jackie_K: Thank you Connie! I am just procrastinating from doing some housework, I normally let my threads get to 250 before starting a new one. But now I am including pictures in the thread it is making them load quite slowly, so here's a new shiny one :)

Happy new thread and a nice 4 books read to start off with!

>11 Tess_W: Thanks Tess, although I've not managed to finish any this month yet! (just because how I'm numbering things my most recent acquisitions post is currrently at 4, and my non-ROOTs post is also at 4, so I presume it's one of those you've spotted!) I've got 5 on the go though, and hoping to get at least 3 of them finished this month.

Hi Jackie and happy new thread! Procrastination is good, and I enjoyed your opening messages.

Do you ever get rid of books? I'm keeping track of what I call "Culls". 200 Acquisitions - 150 Culls = Net 50 acquisitions sounds so much better than 200 acquisitions. *smile*

Happy new thread, Jackie, and happy reading in part 3! I'm avoiding the housework today too - the rain's coming down in sheets so I've established a cocoon on the sofa with a blanket, tea, iPad and good books :)

It's chucking it down here too, I haven't seen rain like this for ages (I really noticed how much rain we got in the west when I didn't live in Glasgow any more!) so I have been on the laptop and am doing little else other than pottering about and trying not to think about cleaning and tidying up!

>13 karenmarie: So sorry Karen, I think I got messages crossed and missed yours at the time.

I am absolutely *rubbish* at getting rid of books, but now that I've had a positive experience of taking books to Barter Books, I am feeling more positive about getting rid of books I am not fond of and know I'll never pick up again. Up till now I've kept *everything*, partly because I just love the look of books all over the place, but also because I think that even if it's something I'm not going to read again, maybe someone else around the place will pick it up sometime and I don't want to take away that opportunity. However, I have been married long enough to know that, whilst we are very compatible personality-wise and in loads of other ways, our book tastes diverge to such a degree that my husband is likely to pick up almost none of my books (particularly the fiction - it works the other way round too, we are into completely different things)! And who knows what my daughter will be into when she's older? So I have decided that although I will probably still keep most books (I only have a small handful of duplicates, which will probably be the next ones out the door), if I think a book is a turkey I won't keep it to inflict on others! One thing that was really satisfying about my recent Barter Books trip was that of the few books they did take, four of them were books that I really hadn't enjoyed and where I'll never get that time back again, but at least I got a small payback in book credit! (for the interested, they were Madame de Treymes, Mister God, This is Anna, The Alchemist, and The Pilgrimage).

And actually, now you've got me working it out, if I include the 4 above I got rid of recently, then that takes my ROOTs:acquisition ratio back down to exactly 1:1.5 which is my aim for the year (as net acquisitions are now 60 rather than 64, and I've read 40 so far).

If I'm honest, there are probably not hundreds of books that will find their way out of the door, as I am actively working on acquiring more ebooks than paper books, and also trying to be much more discerning about those I acquire these days. But even if I can get rid of a few, it will be good. Not least because with a 3 year old, the house is permanently full of Stuff.

Marking the thread

>16 Jackie_K: I have the same feeling about getting rid of books, Jackie. I like the look of them around the house. It's all so colourful. And I like to share them with friends and family. I have several people that use my books like I have a library in the house.
My son Jeroen
His girl friend Rianne
Her dad Hans
My daughter Eveline
My BFF Vera
My colleagues Manon and Isabelle

I even have tags going for them here on LT so I can keep track of what they lend from me.

Happy new thread, Jackie! I've been skimming the threads to get the hang of what has happened during the last two weeks. That must have been a scary incident with the lorry, but dealing with the insurance people will probably be the bigger nightmare?

Hi Jackie!

>16 Jackie_K: I'm glad you were able to get back to your ratio by including your culls, Jackie! I need to go through another round of culling, probably early next year. I'm 64 and know what I'll never read again and also know what my 24-year-old daughter may or may not like. Plus, she gets first dibs on what I take out of my library, so if it's a mistake removing it because she wants it, she can keep it at her place!

>18 connie53: I rarely loan out books any more since I have gotten several back in awful condition and if people don't offer to replace them, I don't ask, just get all passive-aggressive and never loan to them again. The only people I loan to now are my daughter and my neighbor Louise. I use tags to track who's got what, too!

>19 MissWatson: Hi Birgit, welcome back! Yes, the insurance stuff is a right pain, although it is starting to move along now. Our car was picked up this morning by the garage, and at some point this afternoon we will have a courtesy car delivered. The garage will phone us tomorrow to tell us how long they think the repairs will take. I will just be glad when it's all over.

>18 connie53: >20 karenmarie: Interesting about book lending - I think because my tastes are quite nerdy and non-fiction-heavy, not that many people are interested in my books really, so I don't lend very often (although if I read a book I love I will quite often buy it as a gift for people I think will like it). I do remember years ago when I lived in London a friend borrowed one of my books, and somehow managed to drop it into a puddle. She was mortified, profusely apologetic, and offered to replace it, but I've never been one who's needed immaculate books, and as it had dried out fine on her radiator and the pages weren't stuck together I was happy to just have it back as it's still readable (if the pages had become permanently stuck together then I would have taken her up on her offer).

I also try not to borrow books too much. To my shame, I have a couple of books that I borrowed from London friends a million years ago, and every time I see them I feel guilty, but I'm not in touch with them any more and have no way of getting them back to their rightful owners.

Hi Jackie!

When I spilled coffee on my mother-in-law's copy of Snow Falling on Cedars I simply went out and bought her a new copy. She never even realized it. I've still got the coffee-stained copy.

Had it been a sentimental or otherwise personalized book I'd have had to admit my carelessness and asked what she wanted, but dropping a book in a puddle seems to indicate a new copy to me.

When I loaned The Sparrow to a fellow book club member and she returned it in awful shape, she asked right in front of everybody in book club if I wanted a new copy. I wish she had just replaced it and explained what had happened to me privately. I told her no because I felt pressured, but as you can tell, still regret not making her replace it. She's never asked to borrow another book, thank goodness.

I expect to get books back in almost-the-same-condition that I lend them out in.

I like to get loaned books back in good nick too. My daughter has a habit of folding pages to keep her place - I hate that happening to my books! if I mention it she laughs condescendingly and says 'mum, you're so anal'. I bet *no-one* on this thread would be cool with that sort of behaviour. Harrumph!

>23 floremolla: Oh NO. Folding pages is a NO GO.

Everybody I loan my books to are really careful with them, accidents may happen of course, but overall I get them back in good shape. I don't mind if the backs are cracked a little, my brother is really pissed when that happens. Just like Jackie, they don't have to be immaculate.

>23 floremolla: I agree absolutely, folding pages means I never lend another book to the offender. I'm lucky in that respect, the people I share books with take the same care with them that I do.

>23 floremolla: Eeep. Being upset at folded pages is NOT anal. How about giving her a bookmark? Is she trainable?

I keep very few books and those I would not lend.

thanks for confirming I'm quite normal! Perhaps my daughter is trainable >26 karenmarie: but it would need to be short-sharp-shock rather than nagging - perhaps I could handle her vinyl record collection with greasy fingers and see how she reacts....

>28 floremolla: LOL!

>28 floremolla: shock therapy, I love it!

>28 floremolla: What's sauce for the goose is sauce for the gander, eh?

In a (probably pointless) attempt at accountability, I am here to confess that so far this month I have acquired 6 books, and finished reading 0. I also have a review copy of a book in the post which will hopefully be with me early next week. I am hopeful that I will get at least 3 finished this month, maybe 4, but I'm just *enjoying* the acquiring so much at the moment! (they've been mainly freebies, or in the kobo sale - I couldn't resist the temptation!).

Pretty sure it's the same reason I'm so rubbish at diets. Resistance is futile.

>32 Jackie_K: I've bought 4 books this month, Jackie. And at least one more will enter the house before the end of the month. But I read 5 and will finish one more today.

>32 Jackie_K: I bought 26 books this month, if that makes you feel better ;)

I don't actually count my purchases/acquisitions. I use the stats at the beginning of the year and end of the year on LT and come to a conclusion of how I've done and hopefully it's significantly lower. I've set a goal of 200 TBR before I can have a "spree"!

I finally got my TBR down to below 500! 499!

>36 connie53: Yeah, Connie! I had mine below 500 last year and what with Kindle freebies and my RL bookclub, I'm at 506 right now. By the end of the year mine will be below 500.

I acquired 13 books this month so far. Next month will definitely be worse because it's the Friends of the Library Sale AND my 10th Thingaversary, so I will not hold back. If I see something I want, I'll get it.

And I don't know whether to be ashamed or proud of the fact that I have 1772 books labeled TBR. And that doesn't count the stuff on my Kindle, probably another 50 more. I never have the excuse that I don't have anything to read, for sure.

Resistance is futile. I have a serious case of Book Acquisition Disorder, otherwise known as BAD. (courtesy of alcottacre).

Sheesh.

>32 Jackie_K: I'm afraid I'm a stranger to 'resistance'.

I started the year with 93 TBR, now I have 165 despite having read 72 books in total this year (52 ROOTs/20 new). I've removed 0 from my shelves and acquired 96.

I'm okay with this just now because I have a high chance of enjoying the books I'm acquiring - and I have space - but it's not sustainable. Next year will have to be more.....restrained. Hmm, yes, 'restraint' rather than all out 'resistance' - that might work....

Thank you everyone, you have made me feel much better! (perversely!) Still no ROOTs completed, and I'm going to downgrade my forecast for ROOTs completed in September to 1 or possibly 2 (but probably 1, if I'm realistic). But October should be a bumper month, with any luck - lots of part-read books due to be finished, and some good ones lined up to start too.

I've carried on acquiring - now up to 9 for the month so far. This is fun! :D

Also, apologies for radio silence, we're just back after a weekend away camping on the island of Arran, on Scotland's west coast. We were taking part in a weekend of 'experimental archaeology', which was fun (we've done a few archaeological things over the years, although we have no background in it at all). It was muddy, windy and (at times) very wet, but it was great being out in the open air in such a beautiful setting. I was very grateful for my own bathroom and bed last night though! I don't mind roughing it, but after a while using a portaloo and smelling dubious loses its appeal somewhat. Now I'm back I'm doing half a ton of washing, and trying not to scratch my midge bites (I can't believe how bitten I got - you'd think with the cold, rain and wind they'd be put off, but not a bit of it!).

Good for you camping in September! I love Arran. Bumper year for the midges though - as if having a wet summer wasn't bad enough in itself. At least it's been a good day for the washing! I've done five loads. :)

>41 floremolla: I wasn't brave enough to put the washing out, so only did 2.5 loads (that's all I've got space for indoors). But tomorrow is meant to be the best day of the week (according to Windy Wilson - have you come across him? Scotland's best known (and sweariest) amateur weatherman) so I'll probably finish it off tomorrow.

No, I'll have to check out Windy Wilson! I usually rely on my husband watching several forecasts and giving me the most likely scenario. If left to my own devices I flick about the tv channels till I find the most optimistic forecast and decide that's what it'll be ;)

Windy's on facebook and twitter. I like that he cuts through the scary headlines and just tells it like it is! I do also regularly check the Met Office website for hour on hour decision making about putting the washing out or not.

I do try to catch the forecast on the radio, but nearly always get to the end and realise my mind has wandered and I didn't actually listen to the relevant bit!

So September has been a bit of a shocker in terms of books read - here we are on the 30th and I've just got my first finished ROOT of the month to report. This is the first month of the year where I've not managed at least 4 finished books. I do have lots of others on the go, and should finish a few in early October, on top of the books I'd be reading for October in any case. And (maybe, possibly, perhaps) I'll finish one more today (but don't hold your breath for that!). Anyway, this one, Nevertheless, She Persisted, an anthology of short stories edited by Mindy Klasky, is the one book for September so far. I won it in last month's Early Reviewer programme, the first book for months that I've wanted to request.

I have to confess to not being a huge fan of short stories usually, and the main reason for requesting this was that I know one of the authors at another site we both frequent. However, these stories were generally pretty even in quality and none stood out for me as either outstanding or complete turkeys. I think having now read them all that some of the early stories (in the 'history' section) were probably the ones I enjoyed most.

The bringing together of these stories was inspired by events in early 2017 when Senator Mitch McConnell silenced Senator Elizabeth Warren when she was trying to read Coretta Scott King's letter about Jeff Sessions (now US Attorney General). The phrase "Nevertheless, she persisted" became a bit of a rallying call, and this anthology is meant to be a literary response, with stories about women who persisted against the odds in whatever context they were. The book is separated into four sections, History, Present, Future, and Other Worlds.

Some of the stories had been published before, and some (I think) were written more recently in response to the call for stories for the anthology. I must say that I was expecting stories that more obviously drew on (and commented on in some way) Senator Warren's silencing by Mitch McConnell, and the fact that they didn't was a little disappointing.

Overall an enjoyable enough read, but probably not a book I'd rush to read again or buy for someone. 3/5.

Interesting story behind the book, Jackie, but from your review I think I'll give this one a miss.

Enjoy your weekend and don't be a slave to the ROOTing!

>45 Jackie_K: Great review, but no short stories for me, especially if they have anything to do with Elizabeth Warren!

>47 Tess_W: In all honesty, Tess, they had nothing to do with Elizabeth Warren! Which is why I was disappointed, in the end. I know she's not everyone's cup of tea, but I like her a lot.

It looks like I'm not getting any more books today, so here's my haul of acquisitions for the month (the first one is the ER ROOT I just finished up last night). Only one was over my £2 target (and that was less than £3), and four were freebies, so I've not broken the bank, but I have broken my 1:1.5 ROOTs:acquisitions ratio somewhat, having read 1 and acquired 10 (oops). I now have to read a further 7 (thus reaching my target) and not acquire any more to get back to that again. Thankfully the kobo sale is over, so less temptation (I hope!).

1. ed. Mindy Klasky - Nevertheless, She Persisted.
2. Diane Ackerman - The Zookeeper's Wife.
3. Elif Shafak - Three Daughters of Eve.
4. Bandi - The Accusation: Forbidden Stories from Inside North Korea.
5. Steve Goddard - Whatever Happened to Billy Shears? (no touchstone).
6. Various - What in the World: Micro Views of Global Cultures (no touchstone).
7. Tor Udall - A Thousand Paper Birds.
8. Jennie Melamed - Gather the Daughters.
9. Val Gillies, Rosalind Edwards & Nicola Horsley - Challenging the politics of early intervention.
10. Frank Kusy - The Reckless Years: A Marriage Made in Chemical Heaven (no touchstone).

I'm possibly going to cheat and take #6 off the list - it is a free publication for NYT subscribers, kind of the NYT printed equivalent of BBC Radio 4's "From Our Own Correspondent" from what I can tell. It's only 64 pages (pdf) so I think I can justify (maybe) saying it's not a book really...

The book which I didn't quite manage to finish yesterday, but did finish this morning, and so is my first ROOT for October, was brilliant. Kate Evans' Red Rosa is a graphic biography of Rosa Luxemburg, a towering figure in late 19th/early 20th century socialism until her arrest and murder in 1919 at the age of 47, during the fledgling (and ultimately short-lived) socialist revolution in Germany. Graphic books aren't usually what I go for (unless they're something like Asterix), so this was a bit of a departure for me, but it was well worth it, this is accessible, easy to read, yet with considerable depth, and was a really good overview of a woman I'd heard of but, to my regret, about whom I know very little. This has left me wanting to know much more about her, and Evans provides a useful bibliography at the end too. She's done a great job bringing the woman behind the writings to life, showing her vitality and humour as well as her impressive intellect. Highly recommended. 4.5/5.

(Note to self - not added to group ticker until the October thread goes up, will need adding then).

ROOT no. 2 for October (43rd for the year) was a short read but I absolutely loved it. Jane Smith's Wild Island: A Year in the Hebrides is very similar to the two Mairi Hedderwick books I read this summer, in that they feature text and the author's paintings and prints, this time of a year spent (on and off) in Oronsay, a tidal island just off the larger Hebridean island of Colonsay. Oronsay is farmed and managed by the RSPB, and Smith went there every month for a year to sketch the birds and other wildlife around the island, to document the conservation work being done. Despite being very remote (it is reached either by boat, or by landrover driven over a strand of sand at low tide) and exposed (there is nothing between it and Newfoundland apart from 3000 miles of the Atlantic) she beautifully evokes the warmth and diversity of the habitat and landscape. Unlike Mairi Hedderwick's books, which are linear accounts of journeys, this book is based on vignettes (often very short) - she orders the book by month, but then will write a half page, or a few lines, or a page and a bit, on either a particular bird, a farm animal, or a bit of her journey to (or on) the island. The paintings and prints are very distinctive, and I really liked her style, both artistic and written. Colonsay has been on my 'must visit' list for quite a while, but if I ever make it there I definitely want to include Oronsay too having read this. 4.5/5.

Continuing my run of finally finishing all my September books in early October, I also today finished Lindsey German & John Rees' A People's History of London. I really liked the idea of this book, a kind of social geography/history, from when London was first established up to the time of publishing (2012, so they just managed to get the Olympics in too). This was often really interesting, as it didn't just focus on royalty and bigwigs, but on popular social movements and the impact they had on the developing city - as can be expected by something published by Verso, the focus was very much on left-wing/radical movements. There were a few points where I found it a bit frustrating, like it couldn't quite focus on what it was doing - they wrote about significant social movements but they didn't necessarily have their most significant stories in London, so they would brush off the most important part of the movement to focus on what did happen in London, and so it felt like there were still a lot of gaps. They also assumed quite a bit of previous knowledge, and whilst I had a lot of the knowledge I didn't have it all, so sometimes got a bit bogged down trying to figure out what was going on and who was who. Having said that, though, other parts were very good - chapter 10, which focused on immigration and race in the city, was really excellent, and really helped me get a sense of how different communities grew in the ways and places they did; and I also liked the bits from WW1 onwards. I'm giving it a final rating of 3.5/5 as LT only does half star gradations, although it's probably closer to 3.75.

Good work, Jackie! All of your last three reads look interesting - btw I bought Mairi Hedderwick's Highland Journey for my friend who's moved to the Highlands and building a house there - she loved it!

>53 floremolla: Brilliant! It's on my wishlist too (there are four books I think in that same style, I've now read two from the library and just put all four on the list).

Hi Jackie!

Impressive reads.

>49 Jackie_K: I still count free books as adds, because I don't keep track of how much I pay for them. If I did, I think I'd be very upset with myself! Ignorance is bliss, in this case. I will end up with 3 free books from volunteering for and at the Friends of the Library Book Sale this week.

>55 karenmarie: Thanks Karen! Yes, I count the freebies as adds too, but it's more that it's such a short publication (60-something pages), shorter than lots of other pdf reports I just save on my computer and don't count as books. I'm keeping it in the list of acquisitions for now, as it's very much in book *format*, if not in size!

I've found keeping track of how much I pay interesting. I set myself a goal this year of £150 or less on books, and I've only just gone over £100 this week, so I think I should be well within my limit. Also averaging out what I spend on all my books over all the acquisitions means that the freebies justify me spending a bit more on a book every so often! So far this year my average has been just under £1.39 per book (the range has been between free-£15, with an initial goal of not spending more than £2 per book).

ROOT #45 for the year (#4 for October) was Jennifer Worth's Call the Midwife, the first in a set of memoirs of being a nurse and midwife in the East End of London in the 1950s that were adapted for the very successful TV series of the same name. I hadn't seen any of the series other than last year's Christmas special which my mother-in-law was watching, but reading this it was immediately obvious how easy it would be to adapt this book for TV, it was so easy to picture the people and the places from the wonderful writing (it was also really obvious to see why Miranda Hart was the perfect person to play Chummy!). I was surprised that this was a memoir from the 1950s - I had assumed from the occasional clip of the TV show that I had caught that it was set between the two world wars, and so the impact of the poverty and deprivation described was so much greater, as it was closer to my own history than I'd previously realised. Jennifer joined a convent as a lay nurse/midwife, initially sceptical about the religious aspect but growing to love and respect the nuns with whom she was training and working. There is no shortage of memorable characters - both patients and the nuns - and they are all brought powerfully and movingly to life here. A wonderful read, and I hope the Jar of Fate pulls out the next two volumes for me soon! 4.5/5.

ROOT #46 for the year (#5 for October, although I started reading it in June!) was the stunning Long Walk to Freedom, the memoir of Nelson Mandela from his childhood through to his inauguration as the first black president of South Africa in 1994. This is a book that I've owned a long time (I think bought in the late '90s) and I'm so glad I got to it eventually - thank you Jar of Fate! It was a significant chunkster so I read it mainly a chapter at a time most days, which is why it took me so long, but reading it over that amount of time meant that I could really savour it. He started writing this memoir while he was imprisoned on Robben Island, and although his manuscript was discovered by prison warders and confiscated, he had managed to smuggle out much of the text already and that formed the basis of the final version of the book. I found him to be endlessly generous about everyone, always striving to see the humanity in everyone he came across, even whilst acknowledging their (and often his) faults. The way he dealt with the constant harassment, and eventual imprisonment for 27 years, demonstrated how he was able to become the great statesman that he emerged as when freed from prison in 1990. He doesn't shy away from the devastating impact that his choices to be involved in the freedom struggle had on his family - I thought it was very telling when he talked about not being able to be a father to his children due to imprisonment, and then when he was released still not being able to 'just' be their father as he was suddenly a father of the nation. The last two chapters of the book (about election day and his inauguration) made me cry. I fear we will not see his like again for a long time. 5/5.

With this book, this means that I have equalled last year's total of ROOTs read, which I am delighted about! (in fact I've already exceeded last year, as I also have read four non-ROOTs, but didn't read any of those last year). I am so pleased that this year will be even more successful than last, given that last year was my most successful reading year ever. Thank you everyone in this group, you are a huge reason why I have savoured reading so much over the last few years, and rediscovered my love of books! (I guess I never really lost the love of books, in that I kept on buying them, hence my giant Mt TBR - but you're very much key to me actually getting round to reading them!).

Congratulations on your milestones, Jackie! You're right, too, about the group being an inspiration.

Being on LT has brought up the diversity and quality of what I read, and being in this group has allowed me to meet a wonderful group of people in addition to those I've met on the 75 Challenge threads.

>58 Jackie_K: The second half of this book definitely sounds different than the biography I read of Mandela where he spoke at a Cuban rally lauding Fidel Castro, et. al.
>57 Jackie_K: I also saw one episode of the Midwives and always wanted to watch the entire series; I didn't know there was a book! Now I'm off to Amazon to see which is cheaper...the series or the book!

I, too, have found LT to be a pleasure. I like the debate, the reviews, and the fact that I know some of your names, where you live, how many children you have, etc....the "important" stuff! I really do value the online friendships that I have made in ROOTS and also through my Reading Through Time group.

Congrats on your milestones; sure feels good, eh?

>57 Jackie_K: Oh my, it's part of a trilogy and the TV seasons are up to 6 now! This will definitely have to go on my long-term wish list!

>58 Jackie_K: The group really helps with whittling down the mountain, doesn't it? It's such a pleasure to discuss the books and share the reading.

>57 Jackie_K: Call the Midwife is my RL bookclub's next book but one, provisionally scheduled for the first week in December. My mum really loves the TV series, so I've seen all the Christmas specials.

>58 Jackie_K: The internet is a wonderful thing, enabling us to have book-ish friends all over the world, isn't it? Of course it does have its downsides, like enabling the evil alliance of credit cards and ebooks which means my TBR shelves are totally out of control.

>61 Tess_W: I have the first three books (the second two volumes are both Barter Books buys for me), and kobo is plugging another one in my recommendations too, so I think she continued to write after leaving this particular job. It didn't actually take very long to read, I could easily read 3 or 4 chapters in one go.

>63 Robertgreaves: Ain't that the truth, Robert! LOL at evil alliance - of course it's the fault of the internet that we're all out of control with our TBRs. Not our fault at all, oh no.

And thank you too to karenmarie and MissWatson for your comments. This is one of my favourite corners of the internet, thanks to you and all the friends I have made here. For all the faults of the internet (and they are legion), I have made so many friends that I otherwise would never have met - some I have been lucky to meet in real life too, others remain online, but the friendship is no less meaningful or important.

Belatedly adding my tuppence worth, I can only echo your sentiments, Jackie - there's a really nice community going on here in the ROOTs department and finally I've learned what I want to read and where to get inspiration - the 'evil alliance' is a small price to pay! :)

I'm singing with the choir---nice place here. And a plus from RL friends, I can "chat" or "meet" you in my jammies and never have to leave the house!

Jackie you're doing so well with ROOTs and acquisitions :) ! Thinking of you with the wind and rain that Ophelia might bring.

>67 detailmuse: Thank you! Ophelia has apparently arrived at the south-west of Ireland and is headed our way, we are apparently going to get the worst of the wind and rain this evening and overnight. As this is one of my husband's office days (he works from home 3 days a week, the other 2 days he has to be at the office in Glasgow) I will be a little anxious till he arrives home, but we should be fine here in Stirling. It's raining a bit, and I noticed the wind had picked up noticeably yesterday, although the trees and shrubs I can see from my window are still at the moment. My friend in Guernsey has posted about the sun being a weird red colour (apparently due to dust particles), all I could think was "what is this sun you speak of?", although I must admit our grey clouds do have a bit of an orangey tint about them.

I ordered a couple more books yesterday (it was the Category Challenge's fault for one of them, and then the site told me if I only spent £10.01 more I'd get free postage, so I bought another book for £11.99 to save the less than £3 postage. I suspect this is why I am not rich), and have a good one on the go, so plenty of literary comfort if we can't get out!

That's the spirit, Jackie, all we can do is damage limitation - stay home and stay safe. I was given some strong painkillers for my sciatica so might just take a couple before bed and hope to wake up when it's all over - otherwise I'll be awake, terrified one of our ancient chimneys will finally succumb to crash through the roof and crush me in my sleep :(

It's so bizarre to see hurricane discussions by my friends in England and Scotland. I hope you both stay safe and there's no damage to your houses and/or chimneys!

Our biggest prep for hurricanes (besides having enough water and non-perishable food in the event we lost power) is always to take things in that can fly around - lawn furniture, small planters, anything hanging.

Thank you Karen! It's kind of embarrassing, especially at the moment when other than a weird coloured sky (due to dust from the Sahara and smoke from the Portuguese forest fires, apparently) there's absolutely no difference to our normal weather this time of year! Certainly compared to the hurricanes the Caribbean and US have experienced recently this is nothing. I suspect it has been over-hyped, at least for my bit of Scotland (different story for Ireland, which is dealing with it right now, and I wouldn't want to be on the west coast of Scotland later this evening). As mentioned above though, I'll be happier once my husband is home from work, as he will be driving home from Glasgow closer to the time when Ophelia is due to reach the west of Scotland. It had been downgraded before it hit land, so is now known as ex-Hurricane or Storm Ophelia, so hopefully it will continue to weaken.

We've only been officially naming our storms for the last couple of years, and I kind of miss the time when Scottish twitter would take over with the creative storm-naming (Hurricane Bawbag being the most famous).

>69 floremolla: Donna, I hope you manage to sleep through it pain-free and wake up with roof and chimneys intact. We have a slate roof too, but it is steep and sturdy enough that I am not worried about it. I think I'm going to put my headphones in when I go to bed and hope that drowns out any noise (I am used to sleeping with headphones, I listen to podcasts and drift pleasantly in and out of sleep. It distracts me from worrying about work).

Hopefully we will all wake up tomorrow and wonder what all the fuss was about. The sky colour today is eerie though, and I've noticed that people are on edge because of wondering what will happen.

Jackie, Donna -- hoping you find good distractions and a calm tomorrow! It's hard for me to read when I'm "on edge" but I've found great distraction playing solitaire etc on the phone or tablet. I'm smiling because I too listen to the radio or podcasts at night. If my husband is snoring softly, I tune the radio to gentle static, it's like white noise.

>70 karenmarie: good advice Karen, all furniture is away for the winter anyway (except for a large table which is wedged up against the garage). I've put my lighter weight plant pots into the shed, though it's not unknown for the shed itself to lose its roofing!

>72 Jackie_K: Thanks Jackie - the Met Office shows our area as being yellow warning (downrated from amber I think) today and tomorrow - your area has a yellow warning just for tomorrow. I'm surprised how slowly it's progressing, I thought it moved at the rate of the wind speed, but obviously not! 🙄

>73 detailmuse: thank you! I've got some noise cancelling headphones but they're not the sort you could fall asleep wearing. Still, it's a good distraction as I definitely won't be able to read.

Hi Jackie, I hope the world still stands? For us here in Schleswig-Holstein, Ophelia meant unusually warm weather and sunshine, which was very welcome.

Thank you Birgit, all well in Stirling! Not a plant pot out of place, as far as I can see, and I slept like a log. It's windy today (will apparently die down by later this afternoon), but otherwise no different to normal. I think south-west Scotland wasn't so lucky, and my brother-in-law who lives in Northern Ireland is off work for the second day (he is a teacher, and schools across both NI and the Republic were shut yesterday and today). He said the winds last night were something else.

That's good news, Jackie - though not so good for your BIL. The Met Office map showing the amber and yellow warning areas were pretty accurate and I'll trust them in future rather than tv news hype!

Good to know you're both safe!

Thanks, Birgit!

I'm glad to hear that you're safe and sound!

Glad you are safe!

Good news! Have to admit, the Irish and UK humor about #Ophelia was fun to follow on Twitter :)

Thank you everybody! detailmuse, Scottish twitter is the best! (well, when it's not spouting sectarian nonsense, but one of the things I really love about being here is the creative humour and wordplay, especially in this sort of situation)

And in book news, October appears to be turning out to be nearly as acquisitive as September was. Whoops. It's like when it gets colder and despite every best intention I just have to eat All The Carbs. At least I've managed to finish a few more this month than last month.

Hi Jackie!

>85 Jackie_K: I've learned to let go of the guilt about buying books. It sometimes rears its ugly head, but for the most part I've vanquished it.

>85 Jackie_K: Yes, no more guilt here, but then haven't bought any for 2 years except for Christmas gift card buys. Why I'm on the book diet is that my husband and myself have worked solid for 2 years to downsize everything and I'm determined to get rid of a 3rd bookshelf. My current buying habit is that if it isn't an ebook I probably won't get it.

>86 karenmarie: I must admit the pleasure of book-buying outweighs the guilt, which is presumably why I still do it!

>87 Tess_W: That is very impressive! I am consciously trying to buy more ebooks too, as well as starting to think about rehoming some of the paper books I know I'll not read again. So far this year, of my 81 new books (eep), 56 are ebooks and 25 are paper books. And I've let 4 reading books (plus several others, more reference-type books that I wouldn't count in my general total) go and find a new home.

ROOT #47 for the year (so just one short of my goal!), and #6 for October, was one of my rare ROOT re-reads. I last read Patrick Leigh Fermor's A Time of Gifts the best part of 20 years ago, and didn't remember much about it other than that I'd found it a bit hard going. This book is the first of what was meant to be a trilogy detailing the author's year-long hike from the Hook of Holland to Constantinople in 1933-4, when he was 19. This particular volume covers the first part of the journey, from leaving London, then Holland, Germany, Austria, Czechoslovakia, finishing with his crossing the border from Czechoslovakia into Hungary. Sometimes he sleeps in barns, other times in baronial piles as the guest of various contacts he makes along the way, other times in the open air. The next volume, Between the Woods and the Water, picks up where this book finishes and is the account of his journey through Hungary and Romania. Leigh Fermor actually never wrote the final book in the trilogy, and died before he could, but a few years ago a couple of established travel writers in their own right had access to his diaries of the trip, and finished the trilogy with The Broken Road.

When I last read the book, I remember feeling really bogged down with the classical and artistic references and the flowery language, and although it was interesting I think it was the wrong book for me at the time, and so I never did get round to starting Between the Woods and the Water, although I'd bought them both together. I subsequently bought The Broken Road so that I had all three, and also bought another book after hearing an interview with a guy, Nick Horn, who retraced Leigh Fermor's journey a few years ago (that book is Walking the Woods and the Water). I also recently discovered that I had bought another copy of Between the Woods and the Water, which I suspect I bought thinking it was the third in the trilogy, before I realised that he hadn't actually written that! I'm usually pretty good with duplicates, and have very very few, but now I have the dilemma of which one to keep, the one that's the same size and design as the first one (which I presumably bought at the same time), or the second one which is bigger and arguably better quality paper. The second one I suspect would get me more at Barter Books if I were to take it there, and I'd always have the niggle of having two different editions if I kept it, but it is better quality and looks lovely on the shelf. Dilemmas, dilemmas!

Anyway, I started this again with some trepidation, as I remembered finding it all a bit heavy going, but for some reason I think I was just more in the right place for this book, as I absolutely loved it this time. The language is beautiful, and I found it simply didn't bother me if there were classical/artistic/religious/historical references that I didn't catch, as his use of language was just perfect, there isn't a word out of place. There were long passages which probably could sit quite comfortably in Private Eye's Pseud's Corner column, but even that didn't matter, because it was all just so beautiful. I think I felt much more of a sense of the time this time round too - as he prepares to leave Holland to enter Germany at the end of 1933 (10 months after Hitler's rise to power), and then throughout his time in Germany, the sense of impending doom is never that far from the surface, although he doesn't lay it on at all thickly.

Last time I gave this 3.5 stars, but I'm increasing that on this re-read to 4.5 stars. A lovely read.

I've actually decided, after reading this book, to set aside the Jar of Fate temporarily, and read all the other books in the series so I get more of a sense of the whole journey (with a little break as I have a review copy of a book which I need to get done in the next few weeks). I think if I'm not sick of vicariously hiking round Europe by then that I'll also tackle the modern retracing his footsteps book, as the contrast will be fascinating. I'll then pick up the Jar again after that for my next reads.

Sounds like a rewarding read and maybe one for my husband - he'd need the kindle version as he can't hold a book, otherwise I'd offer to do a deal on your duplicate!

I've only really appreciated during this year of reading that books can be read on different levels and I don't have to look up every foreign phrase and every Classical reference - I just keep powering through unless I lose the gist of the story altogether - or really, really want to get to the nub of the book, in which case I'll even seek out academic research papers. That's the nice thing about setting yourself a challenge - you can change the parameters as you go!

>90 floremolla: Yes, it was much less stressful when I decided to just not worry about every single reference. There were even plenty of English words in it that I didn't really understand, but it honestly didn't matter - it didn't affect the meaning, and the overall flow of it was all just so beautiful (did I say that already? :D ).

>90 floremolla:
>91 Jackie_K:

Glad you had a wonderful read, Jackie. I, too, often get bogged down in the details. I guess that comes natural from being a historian. However, lately I'm finding that I am able to let those go. For example, I am currently reading A Gentleman in Moscow and I find that I don't have to look up every party official and or labor organization...I can just go with the flow!

>92 Tess_W: Are you enjoying A Gentleman in Moscow, Tess? I'm hearing lots and lots of good things about it.

>93 Jackie_K:, Yes I am! I'm about 50% of the way through. I'm taking my time and enjoying it! (As I do most of my books)

>93 Jackie_K: and >94 Tess_W: This is a book to savor. I had to deliberately slow down. I also did a lot of internet look-ups as I was going along. It enhanced the book for me.

It's the last day of October, and oh dear hooray* it has been a very acquisitive month again, even more so than my acquisitive September. My 1:1.5 ratio (ROOTs:acquisitions) is well and truly shot. Let's see how it is by the end of the year. I may struggle to ever get lower than this, I fear. I've also spent quite a lot, nearly a third of the amount I've spent all year on books. Yikes. Must do better. I have read 6 in October though, and have another 3 well on the way which should be finished in November, and another 2 I hope to finish next month too.

* taking a leaf out of familyhistorian's book and trying to view the acquisitions more positively :)

This month's haul of eleven is:

1. Evelyne Bloch-Dano - Vegetables: A Biography.
2. Cezar Paul-Bădescu - Luminiţa, mon amour.
3. Paul MacAlindin - Upbeat: The Story of the National Youth Orchestra of Iraq. (no touchstone).
4. Helen Russell - The Year of Living Danishly: Uncovering the Secrets of the World's Happiest Country.
5. Sue Perkins - Spectacles.
6. Susan Calman - Cheer up love: Adventures in depression with the Crab of Hate.
7. JD Vance - Hillbilly Elegy.
8. Mark Thomas - Extreme Rambling: Walking Israel's Separation Barrier. For Fun.
9. Vladimir Lorchenkov, translated by Ross Ufberg - The Good Life Elsewhere.
10. Sabeeha Rehman - Threading my Prayer Rug.
11. Rory Stewart - The Marches: Border Walks with my Father (touchstone weirdness, has a slightly different title).

I really like Susan Calman, from what little I've seen of her (mostly on the Very British Problems show on Netflix). Anything she writes would be interesting!

I really like her too. She's in everything at the moment! (including this year's Strictly Come Dancing)

In other news, I just got an email from Haymarket Books, I assume because I'm on the Verso mailing list. They're having a 90% off ebooks sale too. There are two in my basket at present, just $1 each. I'm so doomed.

it's legitimate now to 'buy for Christmas' so you could a) get someone else to buy them for you and put away till then, or, b) if you must buy them yourself to get the deal then give them to someone else to wrap and give you. There are always ways to justify an acquisition ;)

>99 floremolla: Thanks Donna - they're actually ebooks, so no wrapping dilemmas! And at only $1 each I'm not too upset, to be honest! I will try and be good for this month and next. I've asked my parents for a kobo gift voucher for Christmas, so I know I will still have more to buy before the year's out!

oh, yes, I see that you mentioned they were ebooks - and they're cheap, really cheap...so... :)

>98 Jackie_K: Hillibilly Elegy is probably my next read; if not it will be completed in 2017. I'm very much interested in it because the locale is my State. We'll have to compare notes!

>102 Tess_W: I'm looking forward to it, and hoping that the Jar of Fate lets me read it sooner rather than later!

I'm starting this week hopeful that this is the week I meet my ROOT goal - I've only one book to go, and three that will (if I get my act together) be finished this week. I have the week off work, as I'm part time that's only actually 2 days not in the office, but it's still such a good feeling!

This weekend I was at 4th birthday parties on both Saturday *and* Sunday, with my daughter (taking her to parties has ended up being my job, as I can very confidently say that my super-introverted husband would find them his worst nightmare! Plus I generally at least know the parent(s) of the birthday child, whereas he doesn't). I have to say my head is spinning from all the screeching and jumping about (the kids, not me!), but it was great to see the kids having such a good time. At the first party, there was another mum there who (like me) clearly didn't know anyone else there other than the birthday boy's mum, but (unlike me) rather than making polite small talk with whoever she was sitting near, she just sat on her own with her head in a book for pretty much the whole 2 hours! I must admit part of me thought that's a bit rude, and the other part of me thought "Ah, I should have brought my book too and sat with her!"

(Fanfare) ROOT no.1 for November, and no.48 for the year, means I have reached my 2017 goal! And this was a very good one to finish it with.

I received a copy of Challenging the politics of early intervention: who's 'saving' children and why (by Val Gillies, Rosalind Edwards and Nicola Horsley) from the publisher (Policy Press) in return for a fair and considered review. Below is the text of my review (which I have put up here on LT, and on amazon and Goodreads as requested by the publisher, as well as on my somewhat neglected blog).

I approach this book from the perspective of a current practitioner (in health services), but with an academic/research background.

This is an excellent review of the underlying politics and interests underlying the prevailing social investment model of early intervention for children in the UK, and it is particularly excellent and thorough in dismantling the ‘Emperor’s New Clothes’ fetishisation of poorly interpreted neuroscience which forms the basis of much policy and current practice in early intervention. The historical roots of this approach provided fascinating background to what has become a largely cross-party consensus (though for differing reasons, depending on one’s political hue) that individual work with children and their primary caregiver (primarily the mother) is prioritised over the improvement of the social and material conditions in which children and their families live. The outlining of the various interest groups involved (political, business, philanthrocapitalist, and certain practitioner groups), as well as their problematic co-opting of poorly- (or over-) interpreted brain science, laid bare the underlying (not always entirely philanthropic) motivations for the development of this consensus, and paved the way for a blistering – and very timely – exposure of the overal social investment consensus as effacing gender, race and class factors impacting on children’s development. Further insights from practitioners highlighted indeed how, as the authors state on p.119, “Practitioners work in contexts where there is little internal questioning about the general endeavour of early intervention”, but instead accept the over-simplistic and poorly interpreted brain studies as a foundational evidence base and theoretical justification for their practice – a situation which arguably also applies to the policy makers and managers charged with developing and implementing these practices.

Whilst the book is specific to the UK context, in fact it is primarily England-focused, with just a couple of mentions of other policy initiatives (primarily the Named Person, currently contested and undergoing revision in the light of significant opposition and legal challenge) in Scotland. I would have liked to have seen a little more from parts of the UK other than England, whilst recognising that the underlying points and background apply to early intervention policy across the UK nations. Another concern echoes a previous Amazon reviewer*, which is that whilst this is an excellently argued and thorough academic critique of the current situation in policy, and in fact it does indeed end with a call for a collective rather than individualised response to social harm, moving away from an all-encompassing prioritisation of “risk” (a call with which I entirely agree), nevertheless as a practitioner I found I was looking for some practical suggestions of what to do in cases where individual responses and involvement with individual families is entirely justified, and required quickly. There may well be scope for further work in this area, if the authors are able to link with practitioners, academics, policy makers and service managers who share their concerns and misgivings. I would also have liked to have seen more input from professional bodies, as the bulk of those participating in the case study and interview part of the book were from the voluntary or non-statutory sector (it was unclear whether the FNP nurses interviewed were working within or outwith the NHS, although earlier the book had identified the decoupling of the FNP service from other statutory services in England). Perspectives from groups such as the Institute of Health Visiting, or other social work bodies, for example, would have been interesting and may have added a further layer of nuance to the authors’ arguments.

Overall though this has provided me with an immense amount upon which to reflect as a practitioner, and I recommend it wholeheartedly. It would be ideal not only for students of social policy and health/social work management, but also would offer valuable insights to practitioner training courses (social work, teaching, health visiting, etc).

Thank you very much to Policy Press for this opportunity!

* Simon Haworth on 29 September 2017 included in his amazon review the following, with which I absolutely agree: “One potential criticism is that, perceptive and value-based as the book is, it does at times seem to move too far way from the dilemma-laden nature of frontline practice, where difficult and emotive decisions do need to be made to protect children, even when it is evident that the system has failed the family.”

4.5/5.

>105 Jackie_K: yes fanfare!! Congratulations on meeting your goal -- and with an important book!

>106 detailmuse: Thank you very much! I was very lucky to get it as a review freebie, considering it's so relevant to my day job (about which I'm having a bit of an existential crisis, but that's not new).

Great review with which to complete your ROOTs goal - congrats!

Congrats !

Congratulations, Jackie!

>107 Jackie_K: You may have mentioned your day job in previous threads, but what exactly is it and why are you having a bit of an existential crisis?

>110 karenmarie: Karen, I'm a health visitor (I think the nearest US equivalent to that is public health nurse), working specifically with families with children under 5 (so till they start school). I qualified in the early 2000s and have had a couple of career breaks to do other things (my PhD, and then my postdoc), but fall back on it when those finish. It is a very different job from when I trained - the focus as far as I'm concerned was on health education and health promotion, also family support, so I'd do anything from supporting someone with breastfeeding difficulties to signposting mums with depression to appropriate services, and all sorts of things in between, eg immunisations, advice re fussy eating, referral to specialist services if there is a developmental delay, that sort of thing. I love that side of the job, but over the years it has become more and more child protection focused, to the detriment of the health side of things, so some days I go home and have a hard time thinking of anything that I've done that is remotely nursing-related, as I feel I spend my day as a glorified untrained social worker. In addition to that there are all sorts of interesting politics around health visiting - in England, the budget has been passed from the health service to local authorities, who are all slashing their budgets so the health visiting service is now pretty much a skeleton service in a lot of places and HVs are getting downgraded or made redundant, whilst in Scotland we have a sort of enviable position in the government thinks we're great, but are showing us that by giving us 20 more million things to do within our role. And then as I mentioned in my book review, I think there is quite a poor level of reflection on the quality of evidence provided for us to do these things (whether they be parenting programmes, or whatever), and money thrown at the wrong things. It started a long time ago - when I first qualified, during the New Labour govt, they were obsessed with targets, and demonstrating how you've met them, but in the case of prevention services like ours, it's really hard to quantify what we do (eg, I provide a listening ear to a depressed mum, or encouragement to someone to breastfeed. The good outcomes from that might not be known at all, or even if they are it might be years down the line, and even then it's probably correlation not causation. At least in other branches of nursing you can say I dressed X number of wounds, and Y of them are healed, or whatever).

Also, as it's my fallback position (and I'm grateful for it, I could be flipping burgers), I always feel like it's a reminder I didn't fully make it working in the university sector. This is why I'm starting my freelance business - transcription and proofreading mainly - it gives me a chance to support other people's research, even while I'm not in a position to do my own. And if it works out, the hours will be so much better for when my daughter starts school. I'm looking to cut my HVing hours right back after Christmas so I can make more of a go at the freelancing. Onwards and upwards!

(sorry for the essay!!)

And in other news, having joked (I think on floremolla's thread) that I would need to lie down in a dark room after the weekend's 4th birthday parties, today the joke has been on me as I've had to do exactly that due to a D&V bug (thankfully mainly D, as V is a bodily function I find very distressing!). I had hoped to get a lot of reading in today, but I have just dozed and got up occasionally to go to the bathroom. It started last night and I'm starting to feel better and cope with the screen light, so I'm hopeful it's just a 24 hour thing.

I will just have to catch up with the reading later :) (still hoping I'll get at least one more ROOT finished this week).

>112 Jackie_K: oh no, childrens' parties - all those latent viruses waiting for an unsuspecting host - hope you bounce back quickly!

Interesting perspective on your field of work, btw - not very heartening. :(

>111 Jackie_K: Thank you, Jackie! Additional duties, slashed funding, etc. all preventing you from doing the things that make you feel good at the end of a work day. I hope your new business takes off!

In a different sector, that's what happened with my work - I was a Programmer/Systems Analyst and supported users of computerized manufacturing and financial systems. My company changed away from the system I was good at, that worked well, BUT didn't sync with corporate systems (we were an acquisition at some point) and after we had to standardize to SAP, all the joy went out. It was even more frustrating because SAP is probably a good suite of solutions, but our parent company did a piss-poor job of implementing it IMO, and we had to live with the Italy-centric and convoluted results in the US, where business is conducted differently and IRS requirements demand types of data "Italy" couldn't provide given the way the software was implemented. I'm glad to be retired.

>112 Jackie_K: Yuck. Distressing Bodily Functions. Feel better quickly.

ROOT #2 for November, #49 for the year, is the second of Patrick Leigh Fermor's trilogy of memoirs of his epic 'gap year' in 1933-34, walking from the Hook of Holland to Constantinople (I reviewed the first in post >89 Jackie_K: above). The first book ended with him just about to cross over the border from Czechoslovakia into Hungary, and this second, Between the Woods and the Water, continues the journey through Hungary and Romania (or Rumania as he refers to it, which I must admit got me a bit twitchy!), and ends with him waiting for a boat to cross the Danube from Romania into Serbia. As with the first book, the language is beautiful, the places are evoked very powerfully, and the mood of impending doom as the build up to war continues occasionally penetrates, although is not lingered on for long. Also similarly to the first volume, he continues to experience the generosity of strangers throughout, sometimes staying with people known to people he'd stayed with previously, other times chancing on the kindness of shepherds in their hut in the middle of nowhere.

I was particularly interested in reading this volume as someone who has lived in Romania, including some of the area he was travelling here (Transylvania, mainly). The complicated history of the region (originally part of Hungary, but always with a large Romanian population, and then granted to Romania after WW1) was something I was aware of, having lived a few months with some Hungarian doctors when I lived in Transylvania in 1994, but as with the first volume, here too the travelogue is liberally interspersed with history, so a lot of the gaps in my knowledge were filled out somewhat. Unfortunately though, what was a bit disappointing to me was that there were so many contacts he stayed with who were friends or relatives of the minor aristocracy he'd stayed with in Germany, Austria and Czechoslovakia, that a large part of the book lost the sense of travelling through the essence of the place - in fact there were a couple of chapters entirely devoted to a diverting stay with one friend. He even himself admits that he was aware he was straying from his original plan of tramping through the landscape, and I don't blame him for lingering with someone who clearly became a close friend (and the married friend of this friend, with whom Leigh Fermor enjoys a brief intoxicating romance). Once that part of the journey was over though, and he got back to walking through the Carpathians on his way back towards the Danube, I enjoyed this every bit as much as the first book.

And even though I could have done without much of the interchangeable castles and stately piles and minor aristocracy, that section is a very well-written account of a way of life that is largely now over. Nobody at the time could have foreseen the battle over the region, firstly by the fascists and then by the communists, and I couldn't help wondering (as also did the author, in retrospect) what happened to them over the intervening years. Several of his encounters (both some of the aristocrats, and also unexpectedly at a logging mill in the Carpathians) were with Jewish people, and I felt very sad knowing their likely fate.

The last part of the book is set at a part of the Danube known as the Iron Gates (a part of Romania I've never visited), and I really liked his account of that area, particularly of a fascinating island in the middle of the Danube about a mile long which had a population of 400-500 Turkic speakers. I found myself thinking how have I never heard of that, I must check the map when I finish this chapter, only to then read the epilogue which detailed how the whole of that area - the island and the river banks - are now underwater, the result of the enormous hydro-electric dam constructed jointly by Romania and Yugoslavia at the Iron Gates. So throughout, I think that one of the most important things about this book is its sympathetic portrayal not only of a way of life, but in parts literally places, that no longer exist.

I'm going to have a little break (to catch up with the CAT reads I'm committed to in November and December) but then come back to the third, posthumously published, volume, The Broken Road - I'm really keen to see how this journey ends, even while I feel a bit nervous about how his first draft and diaries have been handled by other authors.

4/5.

(ooh that's a really long review, for me! I think this is definitely the time for me to be reading these books, I'm getting so much more out of them than when I first tried A Time of Gifts).

How satisfying to be able to relate this autobiographical account to your own experience and learn some historic background along the way. A great example of how different readers get different things from the same book - yours will have been truly unique.

Hi Jackie! Wow 72 new posts to read. A bit overwhelming so I decide to start all over again.

Waving!!

>117 connie53: Haha Connie, I don't blame you! What you missed: I read a few books, and we had a non-storm in Scotland which didn't do any damage. I think that's about it :)

*waves back*

>96 Jackie_K: Does it really seem that I am looking at my acquisitions more positively? I think it is more that I am in a state of shock when I total the numbers of acquisitions in one month! LOL

Congrats on meeting your ROOT goal and going beyond, Jackie.

>119 Familyhistorian: Meg, I was remembering a conversation over on your current thread (posts 39 and 44, I just looked). You'd detailed your acquisitions and said something along the lines of "this is really bad (or good, depending on your point of view)", and I'd liked that and wondered if it would make me feel better about my acquisitions if I looked on them in a more positive light. In all honesty it hasn't made me feel any less guilty than before, but I'm still really enjoying the acquiring! I think I'm just a lost cause, but that's OK. As others have said, if this is the worst thing we're addicted to we can't be doing that badly in life.

>120 Jackie_K: Ha, I was tending towards it being bad at that point because I am seriously running out of room. I have decided to bow to the inevitable and get some more bookcases.

>118 Jackie_K: I missed something here! You have reached your goal!~



A Dutch version of congratulations!

Thank you very much Connie!

Just wanted to park this here so I don't forget it: BBC are seeking nominations for the UK's favourite nature book: http://www.bbc.co.uk/blogs/natureuk/entries/bebe2f29-e027-461c-ad88-1a7d80d7f5fa I've read several over the past few years - authors including Robert Macfarlane, Melissa Harrison, Jim Crumley, James Rebanks, arguably also Amy Liptrot. I can't narrow it down to just one yet!

My 3rd ROOT for November (and #50 for the year) is Trans: A Memoir by Juliet Jacques. Juliet is a trans activist and writer, and wrote the "A Transgender Diary" blog for The Guardian a few years ago detailing the months leading up to her gender reassignment surgery in 2012. The book starts with the piece she wrote for the paper immediately after the operation, and then goes back to look at her life, and her growing understanding of her identity. I found parts of this very moving, especially how she told her parents and their growing acceptance. I also liked how this wasn't just a straightforward memoir, but she sited her story in the wider culture and debates around trans identity. 4/5.

ROOT #4 for November, #51 for the year, is the wonderful Mark Thomas' wonderful Extreme Rambling: Walking Israel's Separation Barrier. For Fun. He is a British left-wing comedian and activist, and I was lucky enough to see his show the year he did the "Walking the Wall" tour. This is the book of the walk, which fleshes out the show. Along with a cameraman called Phil he set out to walk the entire length of the currently constructed separation barrier built by Israel between it and the West Bank, crossing checkpoints and walking in both Palestine and Israel. Whilst his sympathies (and mine) are largely with the Palestinian side of the issue, this really isn't a hatchet job, and he tries hard to see things from both sides. As well as being funny and sweary and insightful, this is also a very reflective account, both of what he sees and his own (not always comfortable) reactions to them.

I laughed until I cried when I saw the live show, and I think reading it with his voice in my head definitely helped, although it is really very readable even if you don't know him or his work. I loved the account of "our man in Jerusalem", but it's his encounters with everyday folk trying to live with the reality of the wall and its impact on their lives that will stay with me. 4.5/5.

Hi Jackie!

>125 Jackie_K: Definitely a book bullet, I've just added it to my list. I've never heard of Mark Thomas. My sympathies are largely with the Palestinians too.

ROOT #52 for the year (#5 for November) is Steven Galloway's The Cellist of Sarajevo. Regular readers know I'm more of a non-fiction buff, but this fiction-phobe actually thought this was excellent, and I'm so glad I read it (it was initially recommended by a friend in my old RL book group several years ago). The book is set in Sarajevo during the siege in the early/mid-90s, and takes as its starting premise the shelling of a bread queue by snipers which left 22 people dead. The apartment block behind where the shell landed included the apartment belonging to an unnamed cellist in Sarajevo's orchestra, and he decides that for 22 consecutive days, one for each of the people that died, he will leave his apartment in full concert gear, sit where the shell landed and play the same piece each day. The rest of the book follows three Sarajevans, Dragan (mid 60s, retired, wife and son left the city so he is left living with his sister and brother in law), Kenan (mid 40s, married with 3 children), and Arrow (a young woman who prior to the war was in the university rifle shooting team, and who is now used by the defenders of the city to try to take out the snipers who are targetting the civilians still in the city). Each chapter follows each of them in turn, their experiences during the siege of (in Dragan and Kenan's case) trying to cross the city to get food and water whilst avoiding the unseen snipers, and (in Arrow's case) an assignment to kill the sniper the defenders have heard are planning on killing the cellist to further lower morale.

Already really well-written and evocative, the book was thrown into even sharper relief for me last week by the conviction mid-way through reading it of Ratko Mladic at the International Criminal Court in the Hague for, amongst other things, planning and ordering the Sarajevo siege. Even though this is a work of fiction, the author does a great job of detailing the everyday privations, dangers and decisions that desperate people under siege have to make. 4.5/5.

>127 Jackie_K: A BB for me!

>128 Tess_W: Tess, it really was very good, and I found I really cared about all of the characters. It's also a pretty quick read - my kobo tells me it took me less than 3 hours in total!

>127 Jackie_K: wishlisted here too!

>127 Jackie_K: I like your self-moniker fiction phobe! I don't read a lot of non-fiction for enjoyment, since as a historian/history teacher, that's all I read for work. But I really don't like fiction for fiction's sake; I prefer heavy historical fiction where there are at least events or people that I "know" to which I can relate, hence no sci-fic or fantasy.

>131 Tess_W: I used to be an avid fiction reader well into my 20s. I think once I went back to studying (nurse training in late 20s, then HV training, Masters degree and PhD which took me to my early 40s) I simply didn't have time to read anything much other than work/study-related books (although I carried on buying, hello current Mt TBR - some of the titles in my Jar of Fate I have owned for easily 20+ years and never yet read). And I think that, particularly during my PhD, there were a number of academic books which really grabbed me so I sought out other similar books, and then discovered non-academic non-fiction (IYSWIM), and it all just floated my boat so much I neglected fiction. Around the same sort of time I started finding watching films really quite stressful, other than documentaries, so I guess that's the visual equivalent. What I *think* it is, is that for some reason I find that whatever I read (and watch) I tend to get very immersed in it, and for some reason I find it very stressful to be immersed in a world that isn't real (even when it's realistic). So it has to be a really good piece of fiction for me to be able to suspend disbelief and enter into that world. In the case of the Sarajevo book above, it was absolutely good enough to do that. Normally I think my inclination would be to prefer to read something like an ethnography or a study which interviewed real people who were there during the siege about their experiences. So it was good for me to branch out and do something a bit different for a change!

The odd thing is, I still buy (and did throughout this fiction drought) a fair bit of fiction, so there's obviously something appealing about it somewhere! It's just getting round to reading it that's so much harder, for some reason. I can't make it out at all! But isn't it interesting how our tastes develop and solidify?

we've noted before we're different sides of the same coin - I'm a non-fiction-phobe stressed by real-life tales of woe. Same with film and tv - I'd much rather a drama than a documentary. I think mine is the easy/romantic option and yours is the brave/realistic one!

I've belatedly decided, as per post >49 Jackie_K: , that I am going to not count the NYT freebie as an acquisition after all. I started reading it yesterday, and am enjoying it, but it is basically just one page articles from foreign correspondents that had already appeared in the NYT (at the end of 2016 mostly), so in effect I feel like I'm reading the newspaper, rather than a book. I've altered my total of acquisitions (bit of a drop in the ocean, but a reduction's a reduction), and won't be counting it as a ROOT when I finish it (which is probably going to be today, it's a very quick read).

I don't think I'm going to buy any more books today, so here's my November haul. Another bumper month (argh/woo hoo* *delete as appropriate).

1. Rebecca Solnit - Men Explain Things to Me.
2. Naomi Klein - No is Not Enough.
3. Miranda Hart - Peggy and Me.
4. Joanne M. Harris - The Gospel of Loki.
5. Various - The Right to the City: A Verso Report (no touchstone as yet).
6. Cole Morton - The Boy who Gave his Heart Away.
7. Carolyn Jourdain - Medicine Men: Extreme Appalachian Doctoring.
8. Katie Kirby - The Daily Struggles of Archie Adams.
9. Frank Kusy - Rupee Millionnaires (no touchstone).
10. Martin Sixsmith - Philomena.
11. Jessie Burton - The Miniaturist.

Four were freebies, and a further five were under a pound (thank you bookbub and kobo deals), so at least the bank balance isn't looking too unhealthy! There's also just one paper book this month, all the others are ebooks, so it's been a good month for not cluttering up the shelves.

I managed to read 5 ROOTs in November (all of them 4 or more star reads, so that was great!), and I've got some good books on the go or about to start for December.

Nice mix of acquisitions, Jackie - happy reading!

I had spotted The Right To The City recently too and thought it looked interesting so you've reminded me to wishlist it.

Interesting mix, indeed. I've got The Miniaturist on the shelf, too, because I couldn't resist the bargain...

Hi Jackie!

Too bad/congrats on your acquisitions. *smile*
\
I added 12 to my catalog but one was a book I brought back in June from Mom's house so I didn't spend anything on it.

>136 floremolla: It was free for a while, might still be (I'd check on the Verso website). If not, hang on for the 90% off sale (it might be months away, but will come eventually!).

>137 MissWatson: I've had my eye on it for ages, but I just *had* to look at the kobo Black Friday deals, and there it was!

>138 karenmarie: Twelve is pretty restrained for you, right? ;)

Rebecca Solnit's Men Explain Things To Me was one of the ROOTs I just bought in November, so very shallow roots, but definitely not shallow in content! This short book is a series of 9 essays published in various places over the past decade, some also featuring a postscript to update it (the first essay, the Men Explain Things to Me which gives the book its title, was originally published in 2008, and the postscript is from when the book was published in 2014. As I read it with Trump, Weinstein, and all the others in my head from this year I couldn't help but think she could easily publish an absolutely blistering post-postscript this year as well). I found this a very readable book, clearly outlining the misogyny in society without resorting to "all men are..." (in fact she is very careful to frequently state that it's not all men). It still saddens me though that what she writes about is so obvious from the everyday experience of so many women, and yet so many people still need it pointing out (and then still don't get it).

There was one essay which didn't quite work for me, but I was reading it at bedtime and think I might have just been too tired for it (the one on Virginia Woolf). Otherwise I agreed with pretty much everything in this book and wholeheartedly recommend it. 4.5/5.

>140 Jackie_K: I was approached today at a pedestrian crossing by an elderly man who roared in my ear "if you press the button, you'll get the green man!!" I said "pardon?" as I was literally just about to cross between cars because the traffic was only intermittent. Then the lights changed and waiting traffic moved off - delaying us by, oh, as much as 10 seconds, and he yelled "you missed it!" and went marching off shaking his head. What a pillock, totally unaware of his unwanted 'advice'....so I would have to calm down sufficiently to read this book, but it sounds like a good'un. ;)

>141 floremolla: haha, unsolicited advice, just what we love. Though it reminds me of a really embarrassing moment I had years and years ago, I was parked in a residential road near a corner, and I was trying to get out of my parking space. This random guy in the street started directing me with really exaggerated hand gestures, and of course I thought "F*** off, ridiculous man who thinks women can't drive", and then promptly backed my car into a bollard. I think I'm still apologising to the sisterhood for that, all these years later.

>142 Jackie_K: lol! We're our own worst enemies sometimes ;)

>142 Jackie_K: Laughing and awwing at the same time! :)

Hi Jackie!

>139 Jackie_K: Twelve is pretty restrained for you, right? ;) Well, of course I had to just had to analyze my acquisitions for the year, and it's quite interesting. 92 of 281 are from only 2 book sales, 48 were gifts or free for volunteering at book sales. It was eye-opening and actually made me feel better. (281-48)/11 = 21 per month, which isn't terrible. But yes, to answer your question, twelve is rather restrained, even by the average of 21 per month for books I spent money on.

>140 Jackie_K: Added to my wishlist, although there's one I won't read automatically because I don't care for Virginia Woolf's fiction writing AT ALL. I have A Room of One's Own on my shelves, still unread many, many years after I acquired it and I really liked the biography of her by Quentin Bell, but I got rid of all the fiction I had of hers because I just couldn't stand any of it.

>142 Jackie_K: LOL. That actually reminds of a guy I was dating in the late '80s who was trying to show off to me and backed into a short cement column, wrecking his back bumper and trunk. This is also the same guy who thought he'd be cute and jump on the hood of my car and wiggle around (in a supposed-to-be-cute, not supposed-to-be-salacious way) and dented my Volvo 740GLE's hood. I made him pay for the estimated repair cost and the f***er gave me the $200 in $2 bills.

>145 karenmarie: I don't think the essay was actually about Virginia Woolf per se, it used something she'd written as a starting point. It was (I think) about art, but as I said I was really tired and it did whatever the literary equivalent of going in one ear and out the other is.

Also good for you for making the dude pay for the damage to your car (even if it was in small change). What a berk!

>137 MissWatson: I've read that book last year and gave it ***1/2.

Love the stories about the not-asked for advice!

Well, having said for ages that I was going to do this, today I finally bit the bullet and counted all the TBRs in the Jar of Fate. I managed to get rid of a handful of duplicates that way, and I'm assuming (because I hadn't written it down properly and we have too much stuff in front of my fiction bookshelf for me to easily check right now) that I have five of the No 1 Ladies Detective Agency books. Assuming that is right (it's either 4 or 5, I think), then including the nine books that I have out either currently reading or soon to start reading, the grand total is 382 books (I suspected I was somewhere between 300 and 400, and am relieved it's not more!). These are both paper and ebooks.

Two of my categories (general non-fiction, and contemporary fiction) are much bigger than others, with auto/biography/memoirs not that far behind. So thinking about my Category Challenge, when I normally take one from each category in turn, I might do two from those three categories before moving on, to try and even it out and make the smaller categories last a bit longer. I might also start a total TBR ticker so I can keep a better watch on the totals.

I think my next big challenge is to try not to go over 400. I'd better start reading!

Good idea to spend more time with the bigger categories! I am still very impressed by your discipline in rotating through the categories :)

>148 Jackie_K: love the Jar of Fate update. I keep thinking that some kind of prompt like that would make picking the next book more interesting and more fun.

>140 Jackie_K: nice timing on Men Explain Things to Me. Time Magazine just named "the silence breakers" as 2017 Person of the Year:
http://time.com/time-person-of-the-year-2017-silence-breakers/

Thanks to this month's RandomCAT over at the Category Challenge being a book you can read in a day, I have two very short books to add to my total - I feel like I'm cheating (especially with the first one, but hey a ROOT's a ROOT), but here they are! These are my Nos. 2 and 3 for December, and Nos. 54 and 55 for the year.



I bought this a while ago because I'm already a fan of the author's Captain Underpants series. This was equally silly, and took about 2 minutes to read. I'll read it to my daughter at some point too. The animals in the photos were all the author's pets. 3.5/5.



What can I say? I love Calvin & Hobbes, and lots of these put a big smile on my face. 4/5.

That leaves me with 380 TBRs to go (though I'm really tempted by a book in a sale - argh).

(edited: I succumbed. 381 TBRs to go).

>149 rabbitprincess: I decided to do that mainly so that I didn't end up reading several chunksters in one go! But actually it's meant that it's kept things interesting and varied, and also meant that I occasionally go out of my comfort zone!

>150 detailmuse: The majority of my reads this year have come from a couple of the Category Challenge monthly group challenges, with the rest coming from the Jar. I'm doing another couple of the challenges next year, so will probably follow a similar pattern. Having the Jar though has definitely mixed up my reading really well, and kept it interesting. I've always loved that moment when I pick out something new and unexpected!

I saw that Person of the Year announcement earlier. Very apt.

Non-ROOT completed: Campbell McCutcheon St Kilda: A Journey to the End of the World

This was a library book which I picked up as I have always been fascinated by St Kilda, formerly the most remote of the inhabited British isles (around 50 miles west of the Outer Hebrides), until the evacuation of the remainder of the population to the mainland in 1930. I've read a few books about it, and as this book points out, most books are about the population and daily life and history of the islands. This one takes as its basis a book of photos discovered in a flea market, detailing a tour on the steamer the Hebrides around 1911, starting in Glasgow, taking in several of the Western Isles and then spending a day in St Kilda. As well as the photos it includes adverts and brochures from the tour company as well as postcards from locations throughout the journey, and basically details St Kilda through the lens of the tour (highlighting how important these tours were for the islanders to enable them to receive and sell/barter goods).

The photos were fascinating, as were the brochures, although the brochures and adverts in particular did tend to smack of a "see the primitive natives and their fascinating life" type narrative which I wasn't entirely comfortable with (not least because I am fascinated by it myself, and probably as guilty of 'othering' the St Kildans as anyone else). I did wonder what they thought of the tourists, beyond their reliance on them buying their goods.

An interesting addition to the books I've read already about St Kilda. 3.5/5.

>153 Jackie_K: I've heard of St. Kilda before, but under what circumstances or in what context, I can't remember!

>154 Tess_W: I did read another book about it a couple of years ago which I would have reviewed on my ROOT thread (the book was Island on the Edge of the World), but I can't imagine my review was *that* memorable! St Kilda usually features in articles about remote/obscure/fascinating islands around the world, and the evacuation in 1930 provides a more personal, human story - the last surviving St Kildan died only a year or so ago.

>155 Jackie_K: Your reviews are very good! But I think I might have read an article on St. Kilda in a National Geographic Magazine or saw a documentary on TV...I remember that they were attacked by submarines in WWI and that was really the beginning of the end coupled with the Spanish Influenza? Am I on the right track? That's about all I can remember.

>156 Tess_W: Yes Tess, in 1918 a German submarine attacked a signal station which had been erected there - according to wikipedia there was no loss of life other than one lamb. Only four locals died from the Spanish flu in 1926 (most of the men had left the island after WW1 to seek work), but in 1930 a young woman died of appendicitis and it appears that was the thing which was the last straw, along with crop failures in the late 1920s, and the last 36 inhabitants requested evacuation to the mainland.

A visit to St Kilda is right near the top of my bucket list. I'd absolutely love to see it.

>157 Jackie_K: If it was closer, I'd love to go to.

I'd love to visit St Kilda too. A woman I know from my Pilates class was booked to visit - you have to book months in advance - but her journey was postponed owing to severe weather conditions, which meant she was back at the end of the queue! I haven't seen her since the class folded before the summer, so I don't know if she ever got there yet.

ROOT #4 for December and #56 for the year (will I hit 60 for the first time ever? Will I, will I?) is Hester Vaizey's Born in the GDR: Living in the Shadow of the Wall. The author interviewed around 30 people who were born in East Germany since the Berlin Wall had been built, and who experienced life both before and after the fall of the wall and the reunification of East and West Germany. She then took eight of those interviews (although also drawing on the others where relevant) to look at in more detail to show how there wasn't a uniform experience of East German life either before or after reunification, sandwiching those eight chapters between an introduction and conclusion drawing together all the themes and threads. She points out how in the West we tend to have just a couple of narratives of East Germany - either a dictatorship where the Stasi (secret police) permeated every nook and cranny of everybody's life (cf the film "The Lives of Others"), or a population that are hopelessly nostalgic for the certainties of the past (cf the film "Goodbye Lenin"). This book shows how - of course - it is so much more nuanced than that. A couple of the interviewees had very awful experiences of the Stasi, or faced restrictions and ridicule because of their faith, whilst others got by fine and whilst being aware of the Stasi did not experience their intrusions into their lives. What I found most interesting was how they talked about reunification with West Germany, and how difficult it was when everyone assumed that they would all be delighted to welcome western consumerism as well as democratic freedoms, and would all be thrilled to drop the shackles of socialism, but the reality was that many West Germans took advantage of their naivety to make money, and they found themselves in a culture that dismissed their personal life histories but didn't show them how to navigate the new reality. A very interesting read. 4/5.

Edited again (and again, and again): 383 TBRs to go.

>160 Jackie_K: I'm sure you can hit 60! Just keep on reading, Jackie!

You can do it, Jackie!

(I am shamelessly picking short books to hit my 100-book and 40-ROOT goal for the year. Books is books.)

I have two long-ish (for me - over 300 pages) books on the go currently, and a shorter one I'm about to start for the December CultureCAT. I'm not entirely confident I'll get them all finished, but want to take different books on holiday with me (we go on 30th Dec), so I think I'd better get my finger out with them before committing to more new reads! If I manage to get them read or nearly read by Christmas then maybe I'll read a Christmas book to bring me up to the total :)

>160 Jackie_K: Adding this to the to-read list! With all the Cold War novels I read, it would be interesting to read about the reality of life after the Wall fell.

>164 rabbitprincess: I hope you like it. Because so much of it is based on the individual stories of the people she interviewed, it is much much less dense than many academic tomes.

>160 Jackie_K: 'The Lives of Others' is one of my all time favourite movies - I haven't seen 'Goodbye Lenin' but will search it out. My husband took an interest in reading about post-GDR Berlin for a while, including a couple of crime novels on Kindle which I will try before venturing into the non-fictional world!

>160 Jackie_K: sounds very interesting and am glad to get the film mentions, too.

>166 floremolla: >167 detailmuse: "Goodbye Lenin" is a great film, I really enjoyed it. I find East Germany fascinating - I guess because of its post-socialist trajectory being quite different from the other Eastern European countries, and because it only existed as a country at all for 40 years - all the others had been nations (with varying borders, but still national entities) for hundreds of years.

Hello... sorry for such a long absence! I kept seeing that "unread" number get higher and higher and was completely intimidated... Finally, I figured it's better to just stop by and say HI. :)
I wish I had time to go through these threads and read all about what you've all been doing and reading! But, alas, I very much do not. But I think of you often!! And my "hello" is heartfelt and repeated often in my own head ;)

I'm not sure how I will remain involved next year, but I will be around in some fashion!
xo

>151 Jackie_K: I love Calvin and Hobbs. Hmm, maybe I should reread one of those books soon but better not because I have about 10 books on the go right now trying to finish up challenges for this year and other books that have been dragging for one reason or another.

You have been very restrained in the acquisitions department, Jackie. I can't imagine having a goal of 400 TBRs.

>169 avanders: Welcome, it's always good to see you! :)

>170 Familyhistorian: I think you should just go for it. It only took me half an hour so it won't make a huge dent in your ROOT-reading time!

I don't feel very restrained in the acquisitions department, in all honesty Meg! I really don't want to go over 400 TBRs total, but since September my acquiring has got worse. We are only half-way through December and I've already acquired more than I've read this month, and we haven't reached Christmas presents yet!

As all my current reads are paper books, I have started one of my January planned reads (one of the monthly CAT challenges) on my kobo, as I like to have at least one ebook on the go in case of insomnia, it means I can stay in bed to read without having to put the light on and disturb my husband. I had no idea when I got it, but this is one heck of a chunkster! (of course I would have realised if I'd had a paper copy!). I feel like I've been reading for ages, the stats have *finally* gone up from 1% to 2% read, and it's telling me I have 41 hours still to go! (although at this stage in the book the hours to go figure isn't always that accurate, I find). At this rate I'll be lucky to finish at the end of January, it's a good job I started it now! My wrists are very glad though that I'm reading it on the kobo, the paper book must be huge.

We are having a quiet day today. On Thursday night we had an awful night as my daughter caught the sickness bug that is going round, and spent the whole night puking - I think we only managed a total of 2 or 3 hours sleep the whole night, so my husband and I were both wandering round like zombies yesterday! We have every spare surface now covered in drying bedding (hers and ours!). She's on the mend now, only a tiny puke this morning after (thankfully) sleeping all night, and is currently languishing on the sofa. So we are having a PJ day, and I will try and get all our Christmas presents wrapped and parcelled up ready to send. And will try to make a bit more of a dent in the aforementioned chunkster!

>172 Jackie_K: I like my ereader for the very same reasons, Jackie! What chunkster are you reading?

>173 Tess_W: It is a book which unexpectedly is really suiting and complementing my current travels through 1930s central/eastern Europe with Patrick Leigh Fermor (having finished recently A Time of Gifts and Between the Woods and the Water and now making good progress through The Broken Road). It is Rebecca West's account of her travels in late 1930s Yugoslavia, Black Lamb and Grey Falcon. I've only just finished the prologue and she's already referred to several events (deaths of Serbian royals, mainly) that Patrick Leigh Fermor has already recently enlightened me about. It means I don't feel quite so thick reading it! I had it earmarked to read now because one of the CAT challenges in 2018 is ColourCAT, where we choose books with colours in the title or author's name, or where the cover is primarily one colour. I had originally lined this up for later in the year, as I had several titles that would fit black (January's colour) and only this one for grey, but I downloaded Agnes Grey from Project Gutenberg a couple of days ago so am going to read that one then instead.

>174 Jackie_K: Sounds lovely! I took several graduate classes on Hapsburg History and History of the Balkan Peninsula and I do love reading about that topic/era, also. As to Agnes Grey, that's also on my TBR pile. I just finished Bronte's The Tenant of Wildfell Hall and while it was 3 1/2 stars, I didn't feel Anne was quite the writer that her sisters were. I think this is mainly due to the fact that she sermonized and moralized so much in the book that it was distracting. I know that she was the daughter of a minister, so she was just writing about life as she probably knew it; but it didn't have the entertaining aspect as did Wuthering Heights or Jane Eyre. That being said, I wouldn't be surprised if Agnes Grey shows up on my read list for 2018.

Hope your daughter and zombie parents recover! I remember!

>172 Jackie_K: I'm sorry to hear that your daughter was so sick, Jackie. 'Zombie parents' is a well-known phenomenon. I hope the PJ day helped everybody get rested and feeling well.

>172 Jackie_K: oh dear, poor wee girl. I hope she bounces back quickly and you all enjoy a cosy day at home.

And like Tess, I'm wondering...what is this mysterious chunkster of which you speak?

>175 Tess_W: >176 karenmarie: >177 floremolla: Thank you so much, I think she is on the mend - just one little puke this morning and then she went back to sleep, now she's woken up she's full of beans and the colour's back in her cheeks, so I'm hopeful we've turned the corner. I am now out of PJs but that's about as energetic as I'm going to get today! We are really lucky, she has always been the world's least sicky child, which I guess is why we're so thrown when she is actually ill, it happens so rarely.

>177 floremolla: It's Black Lamb and Grey Falcon by Rebecca West, Donna. I appear to be binge-reading accounts of epic journeys across central Europe in the 1930s.

>175 Tess_W: I have never read any Anne before, only Charlotte and Emily, and I could never see the attraction of their leading men. Over on the Category Challenge group, somebody posted this cartoon this week and it just made me want to read some Anne, because I agreed totally with cartoon Anne here:



The cartoon is by Kate Beaton, of Hark, A Vagrant. I had heard that Anne was a bit moralising compared to her sisters, but I think I'd prefer that to the glorification of abusive men like Rochester and Heathcliffe. Also, every so often since seeing this cartoon I have found myself thinking "If you like alcoholic dickbags" to myself and having a little chuckle - for some reason that really tickled me. (I know real Anne would be horrified at that language, and I'm not expecting that from Agnes Grey, but I am pretty sure I will have this cartoon in my mind the whole time I'm reading it)

>179 Jackie_K: Oh, Heathcliff is one of my favorite literary characters. He is so tortured that I empathize with him. (Not that I condone abuse) And yes, I have found Anne to be very moralizing to the point of nausea! However, I still rated her book 3 1/2 (Better than average) and will also read Agnes Grey at some time. Love the cartoon!

Oh boy. I just checked Black Lamb and Grey Falcon on amazon, and some versions are over 1200 pages! Maybe 41 hours to go isn't as inaccurate as I first thought.

>179 Jackie_K: I like Anne's style!

>181 Jackie_K: wow, that's like two chunksters in one! It's useful to get an idea of the reading time involved in that many pages. I found a website once where you read a passage and it calculates your reading speed for different types of books, then you can check to see how long a particular book is likely to take (probably mainly popular titles). It's not usually an issue for me unless I'm not enjoying a book, then I want to know how much longer I'm going to have to endure!

>182 floremolla: My Kindle app does that....it starts out with a time, but after the first chapter it continually adjusts it for your reading speed.

>183 Tess_W: yes mine does that too - but it's useful to get reading times for paper books too, especially if they're a bit daunting in their size. I think it's all a bit subjective for me anyway - sometimes I can read quite quickly but a lot of the time my brain doesn't seem to be in top gear!

>182 floremolla: It was originally published (in 1941 I believe) in two volumes, so yes absolutely two chunksters in one! (as I would definitely count 600 pages as a chunkster, never mind 1200! But then I am a lightweight).

I very rarely abandon a book, but the last one I did (at the very beginning of last year) I read 2 chapters and hated it, thought I'd read another to see if it really was the book or if it was just me, still felt it was the book, then looked at the reading time and it said I still had just over 3 hours to go, and that was it, decision made. I know when it's telling me 41 hours that's a lot, but the thought of 3 hours more of this particular book made me want to throw myself out of a window, so I gladly ditched it, and read the (very many) bitchy amazon reviews about it, which cheered me up no end (the book was Auld Acquaintance and was truly, truly awful). So the 'hours left to read' feature is very handy.

For the current book it's now telling me 35 hours to go, and I've not read for 6 hours, so yes the adjustment is still going on. I find once I get to about 4 hours to go or less the kobo is very accurate by that point.

My 5th December ROOT (#57 for the year, 9 over my target of 48) is the third in Patrick Leigh Fermor's trilogy detailing his year spent walking from the Hook of Holland to Constantinople in 1934, The Broken Road (I reviewed A Time of Gifts and Between the Woods and the Water earlier in this thread). This volume did not come out in Leigh Fermor's lifetime, but was produced posthumously a few years ago from his first draft and diaries by his literary executors, travel writer Colin Thubron and his biographer Artemis Cooper. The book covers his leaving Romania and entering Bulgaria, his travels through Bulgaria, back through Romania for a bit, then back down the Bulgarian Black Sea Coast. The text of the first draft stops mid-sentence a few days before he arrives in Constantinople, and the only text available to Thubron and Cooper were brief diary entries, which are reproduced - sadly very scant, after the beautiful prose of the rest of the book up to that point, which even in not-final-draft form was well up to the standard of the previous two volumes. I, and I suspect many others, would have loved to have read his fully formed thoughts on Constantinople, where he spent a good two or three weeks.

There is a gap in the diary of a week and a half, and when he picks it up he has left Constantinople and is on his way to Greece, specifically to tour the monasteries of Mount Athos. The rest of the book reproduces his (much more expansive) diary entries of that journey, which takes the best part of a month, and whilst not the expansive and mature prose of the later writer, definitely shows more than just glimpses of his attention to detail and interest in place and history.

As with the earlier volumes, he experiences hospitality and adventures and makes great friends as well as passing fleeting acquaintances, and has extraordinary adventures that are unimaginable now. Although it's a shame that he died without being able to finish the final draft himself, and the absence of any detail much about Constantinople is a particular loss, Thubron and Cooper have done a fine job, and this is a fitting tribute to an extraordinary traveller and writer, as well as an account of a time and of ways of life long lost. 4/5

Total ROOTs left: 383 (I think - have been a bit rubbish at keeping up).

Hi Jackie and congratulations on exceeding your goal by so many books!

>187 karenmarie: Thank you! How are your Christmas preparations coming on, Karen?

I think we're more or less ready here - we bought the last of the vegetables today, and one last present for our daughter, so now all we need to do is wrap up our presents for each other and we're pretty much there. Tomorrow morning we will go to the church at the end of our road which is doing a morning Nativity service - I used to love going to the midnight church services on Christmas Eve night, but with a young child we can't now go to those. I think because it's a Nativity service that our daughter will be able to cope with it and it will hold her attention. On Christmas morning it is just the three of us, so we'll get up when we're ready, open our gifts and then get lunch ready. Our Christmas lunch will be vegetarian haggis, roast vegetables and some others (sprouts, peas etc), and then Christmas pudding and Christmas cake afterwards, plus wine and port. After that I suspect we will just be feeling full, playing games and reading books. We'll also call family later in the afternoon/evening, and hopefully get to Skype with some of them too.

In other news, my 2018 thread is now up, here: https://www.librarything.com/topic/278769

I will update the TBR total in the opening post there soon - my parents have given me £50 for Christmas to spend in the kobo store, so tonight or tomorrow I will probably do that. There are quite a few books I've had my eye on for ages, and having some money to specifically spend on books means that I feel less guilty about going above my £2 limit. Hooray for more books :D (it does mean that I will go over 100 acquisitions for the year. Gulp).

(Edited later: I've bought my books with the £50. I only went over by just over £2, and got 10 books!! Wheeee! So that brings my current TBR total to 393).

Hi Jackie! Wishing you and yours a very Happy Christmas and congrats on the book buying!

Hi Jackie!

>188 Jackie_K: Your Christmas plans sound lovely, just the three of you. It's the same here - just the three of us now 'til Tuesday afternoon, when daughter will return to Wilmington NC, work 3 more days, then finally be done with her job. She's going back to school January 4th to work on a 2-year business administration degree. I'm very proud of her. She did it all herself, all the paperwork, all the computer-registration and placement testing, all the paying with her own money. We are giving her $300 for books a one of her Christmas presents, so that should be a happy surprise for her.

All Christmas prep is done here except for tonight filling Christmas stockings for husband and daughter while husband fills mine, setting out Santa Claus (yes, she's 24, but Santa still comes!), and then a lovely meal tomorrow while we hang out with each other.



Wishing you and your family all good things this holiday season.

Thank you everybody for your good wishes for the holidays. I have just finished the last bits of food shopping, and wrapped up the last of the presents. My husband gave the living room a really good clean so that it looks good for Christmas Day (before it's covered in all my daughter's stuff!), and I've done all the washing, so that's one less thing to think about. Now I just have a mountain of ironing to get through (the one bit of housework I really enjoy, I find it very relaxing!) and then can finally relax!

So, I will take this opportunity to wish all my lovely LT friends a really happy and blessed Christmas, I am sure Santa will be good to you and I hope you get good hauls of lovely lovely books!

Hi Jackie, Here it was the same thing today. Last cleaning, last washing. The ironing will have to wait till Wednesday. Tonight I plan to watch a show on TV called "All you need is love" where people are reunited with loved ones from all over the world to celebrate Christmas together. I will have my box of tissues at hand, because I tend to cry a lot during this show (It on every Christmas-eve). Normally Peet doesn't like this kind of shows but he agreed to watch it with me.

BTW: I love ironing too, one can let one's mind wander while doing it.

>192 connie53: The ironing still hasn't happened! Later this evening I'll just do a couple of things I need for the next couple of days, and probably do the rest on Tuesday (I have to go to work on Wednesday). I tend to do it in front of the TV, I'll find a good documentary or comedy and the time goes really quickly. Most recently I have been ironing to Blue Planet 2 (nature documentary series with our legendary David Attenborough presenting it), that has been great, but I need to find something else to watch it to this time as I've seen every episode now.

We used to have a similar programme on here too, I seem to remember it from my teens/20s. I couldn't watch it now - like you I was in floods of tears every year.

Merry Christmas - I hope everybody has had a lovely day. I am feeling tired and content. It is lovely having a young child to really get excited about Christmas. She was a very lucky girl today :)

Speaking of lucky, my final Christmas book haul (including the 10 ebooks I bought with my money from my parents, mentioned a few posts above) is 13, although I won't count two of them - one is really a reference book, Dougie Cunningham's "Photographing Scotland" (no touchstone it appears) which I'd forgotten I'd asked for but which I'm very happy to receive, and one is a coffee table mega-chunkster, Obama: An Intimate Portrait by Pete Souza, who was the official White House photographer during the Obama years, which I will dip into rather than read cover-to-cover (have to say, I can't imagine ever wanting to buy a similar book of any other of our current lot of politicians, on either side of the Atlantic). The book which I will count as a ROOT is Paul Murton's "The Hebrides" (again no obvious touchstone). The author presents a BBC series called Paul Murton's Grand Tour which visits three of Scotland's islands per episode, and this is a book which visits the Hebridean islands in more detail than is possible in a 10 minute TV slot. I might actually take this away with me at the end of the week - we are going to Harris (Outer Hebrides) for the New Year week. Before then though, we have the post-Christmas clearing up to do, and I also need to go into work one day (I miscalculated my holidays and didn't have as much as I thought I did left!). And of course get on with some reading. There are two books I hope I can finish by the end of the week, although I may have to take one away with me on holiday to get finished there.

Current TBR total: 394 (gulp - getting a bit too close to 400 for comfort!).

>194 Jackie_K: That Hebrides series sounds amazing! I may have to look into it (or the book) for my mum for next year!

Merry Christmas!

>195 rabbitprincess: RP, it's lovely, and is a great present - I keep looking at it and stroking the pages (not in a weird way! lol - it's just so beautiful!). The book details are here, seeing as I can't get a touchstone for it yet: https://www.birlinn.co.uk/Hebrides-The-Paul-Murton.html

The TV series is good but you only get a very brief snapshot of each island. I'm looking forward to savouring the book.

>196 Jackie_K: Filing this away for future reference! :D

>197 rabbitprincess: Actually it is worth looking at the whole of the Birlinn catalogue - I've read three of their books this year and they were all really good.

I've decided I will take the Hebrides book on holiday with me, so look out for a review sometime in January :)

Belated season's greetings, Jackie! Just catching up on your thread.

My husband loves the Paul Murton island series - I find his accent fascinating and can't help myself imitating his pronunciation, much to hubby's annoyance. :)

Your holiday sounds lovely!

Jackie and Connie, I too love ironing -- relaxing and the results are so satisfying! I do so little now though that the setup of the board and iron/water takes up most of the time :(

Regarding TV, we were with a brother's family for Christmas and his wife introduced us to the Netflix series, The Crown, about Elizabeth II. We watched several episodes and I can't wait to start over from the beginning! I saw a tweet about the series that is so true about how to watch it: Play, Pause, Google, Repeat. Knowing more background and context really enhances the enjoyment!

I heard lots of good things about that series, MJ.

>201 connie53: It may finally be the tipping point for me to subscribe to Netflix! (Tho season 1 is available on DVD also; season 2 was just released this month, Netflix only.) It's a dramatization so is incredibly engaging. There are sites (I need to bookmark some) that note where it's accurate vs embellished.

Hello Jackie! I hope you had a wonderful Christmas & Happy New Year!

>203 avanders: Thank you, we had a great Christmas, and New Year is all set to be great as we will be away on holiday! I hope yours was/will be fantastic too!

Holiday sounds wonderful! Enjoy!

Although we've still got a couple of days to go, I don't think I'm going to be acquiring any more books, and as we have a long journey tomorrow and I'll not be online much before the end of the 31st, I'm going to post up my December acquisitions now. (I've still got one more ROOT which I hope to finish later today which I'll post up then) Obviously thanks to Christmas December has ended up being my most acquisitive month yet, but hopefully the quality is there as well as the quantity! Only a couple of the books, of the ones I acquired that weren't Christmas gifts, were over my £2 limit, so all in all I'm really pleased. Numbers 7-16 are the books I bought with the money that my parents gave me for Christmas, and No. 17 was my present from my daughter (she's got good taste! ;) ).

1. Timothy Snyder - On Tyranny.
2. Kate Evans - Threads from the Refugee Crisis.
3. Kozo Yamamura - Too Much Stuff: Capitalism in Crisis (no touchstone).
4. Anne Bronte - Agnes Grey.
5. Various - Goodbye Europe.
6. Trevor Noah - Born a Crime.
7. Malala Yousafzai - I Am Malala.
8. Michel Faber - The Book of Strange New Things.
9. Danny Baker - Going Off Alarming.
10. Mary Doria Russell - Children of God.
11. Kate Atkinson - Life After Life.
12. Kate Atkinson - A God in Ruins.
13. Anthony Marra - The Tsar of Love and Techno.
14. John Lewis-Stempel - Meadowland: The Private Life of an English Field.
15. Mary Beard - SPQR: A History of Ancient Rome.
16. Kate Moore - The Radium Girls.
17. Paul Murton - The Hebrides.

ROOT # 58 for the year (# 6 for December, and realistically the last of the year) was a quick but quite harrowing read, Emma Jane Kirby's The Optician of Lampedusa. The author is a BBC foreign correspondent, and what ended up as this book started out as a report for the Radio 4 flagship news programme, PM. A boat carrying 500+ African migrants sank just off the little Italian island of Lampedusa, which sits in the Mediterranean off the coast of Tunisia. The optician of the title, along with his wife and 6 of their friends, were spending a day or two on their friend's boat, sailing, when they came across the aftermath of the sinking, and ended up rescuing 47 of the migrants, who by that point had already been in the water a good 4 hours. This book is an extended look at what happened, the lead-up to their sailing break, the rescue, and what happened afterwards. I found it really moving, and it asks really important questions about helping or looking the other way, whilst never being preachy. Highly recommended, although not an easy read. 5/5.

(Edited to add: current TBR total is 393)

Jackie, did you see Katie Kirby has a new book? The Daily Struggles of Archie Adams.

Have a good trip and a happy new year!

>208 rabbitprincess: I already have it :D Hopefully the Jar of Fate will gift it to me sooner rather than later, although I might just pick it up anyway at some point if I'm needing a lighter read.

Thanks very much though - and happy new year to you and yours too!

>209 Jackie_K: Good! Had to make sure you knew ;) *sends Jar of Fate telepathic instructions*

WOW, Jackie!!

A few books I liked a lot.
Both Kate Atkinsons and the Michael Faber.

All scored 4 or 5 stars in my LT-stats.

Have a very very nice and festive holiday. Come back safe!

Nice haul, Jackie! I fancy the Michel Faber and the latest Kate Atkinson, as well as SPQR.

Do have a lovely relaxing holiday and see you in 2018!

Hi Jackie!



Peace, Health, and Happiness in 2018