MissWatson upROOTS more books from Mount TBR

I will be back in 2014 aiming for 36 books off my shelf.
Half of these will be really old ones, but they may include re-reads from long ago, because occasionally I feel an urge to re-visit and re-assess them.
For the other 18, everything qualifies that I owned before 2012.

Edit: I forgot to mention that there will be some overlap with my 2014 Category Challenge where I intend to make a dent in my non-fiction piles.

And here's the ticker.

Good luck! :)

Good to see you here!

Thank you, I'm already looking forward to watching your progress!

Happy to see you, MissWatson

Good luck! See you around, either here or at the 2014 Category Challenge group ;)

It looks like we're both using this challenge to primarily cull from our TBR stacks as well as overlapping with the 2014 Challenge :-)

Looking forward to seeing what you're reading :-)

Thanks, Tanya! I would love to pack more reading into my challenges, but I have to be realistic about what is actually achievable. See you around.

>8 Tanya-dogearedcopy: I think there are a number of us doing that. :)

LOL, Yes, I was just thinking that this was sort of like a giant TBR cat for the 2014 Challenge :-)

I think I was a little shocked when I came across someone's thread here who was including 2014 acquisitions! :-D

I include anything on my shelves. If it comes into the house, it is on my shelves to be read, which is what the challenge is. Everyone can work it however they want, I know some people only like to include anything on the shelves for over a year etc; to me that's silly, what difference does it make if a book came in on 31 Dec or 1 Jan? It's here to be read, that's what makes sense to me. :)

>12 .Monkey.:. You are right in a way, PolymathicMonkey.
But for me that would mean that all those books from 2008 en 1998 and 2011 and al the other bookbuying years never get read, because I would choose the new and shiny ones first.

I read between 60 and 90 books a year. My ROOT challenge is 25, that leaves room enough for the N&S ones.

I have to make a conscious effort to read from my TBR stacks, otherwise new releases will overwhelm me! So why do I have TBR stacks at all? From all the past years when they *were* the new releases! It's a Sisyphean project at our house ;-)

Ah that's not an issue for me, except for very rare occasion I have no inclination to read something just because it's newly brought in. I like to spread my reading around to all sorts of genres and styles and subjects, and what I acquire is quite random, it could never fill those needs. It's entirely possible I will buy something and just set it on a shelf for years to come, not due to any particular lack of desire for it, simply other things that pull my attention more. Which could be a book I bought a month ago or ten years ago, lol. But that's also a big part of why I love things like the Category Challenge and TBR Challenge, they "make" me seek out specific books from the shelves so they stop languishing there. ;)

Great to see you here

Hi everyone, thanks for dropping by.

I count certain new books in my challenge - ARCs and ER books that have to be read for reviews otherwise, they have to be in my possession (either physical or electronically) by 12/31/13. I seem to always manage to acquire more books each year than I can read. 2013 I bought 57 books (so far) and read 8 which means I have 49 new ROOTs. Actually, that's an improvement - usually I'm close to 100. I do have 10 ER/ARCs still to read!

Hi MissW. Good luck with your challenge.

Best of luck with your challenge.

And here's my first ROOT of 2014: Le roi de fer. I meant to finish it over the hols, but I forgot to pack it. Silly me. Anyway, it's a gripping story full of real historical persons and I will definitely continue with the series some time. Hopefully this year.

Another book to add to the TBR! Sounds like an interesting series.

Laid low with a bad cold, so I re-read The hobbit for comfort. Off to unknown things again as soon as my nose and eyes stop running.

O, I wish I could read when I have a bad cold. When I am so ill I have to stay home I sleep all day. But a re-read of the hobbit is always comforting. Hope you get better soon MissW.

LOL, when I have a cold, I always think that I'm the first person in history who will die of the common cold! To make matters worse, even though I can always figure out to take care others when they are sick, when I'm sick, I never remember what to do! It's truly pathetic! Anyway, I usually can't read either because, well, you know, the strain of trying to decipher words on a page will cause massive brain imploding headaches! :-D

Get well soon! :-)

I hope you feel better soon!

Thanks for all the good wishes! I'm on the mend, thanks to a massive dose of lime blossom tea. Vile taste, but if taken early on and in copious amounts, it helps. And of course, the nice thing about The hobbit is that I know it so well, I can recognise the text even with impaired sight...

Hope that the lime blossom tea does the trick!

Thanks, I'm almost back to normal and even finished a book, but a library one, not a ROOT. Still, I am reading, more than I used to pre-LT.

I'm glad you are feeling better, MissW. And reading is good!

Any kind of reading is always a good thing! Glad you're nearly all better :)

Great news: The guns of August is finally off the shelf, after sitting there more than thirty years.
It was heavy going, since it is almost exclusively about the military campaigns, and hardly any explanation of things happening "elsewhere in the forest".
The sad thing is that the book literally fell apart in my hands during reading: it is a paperback and very brittle. I will keep it handy for reference for my other WWI reading this year, and then it will go to make room.

This is certainly a good year for it to have been read. :)

Wow. Good job Birgit! A book that long on the shelves should count twice! :-))

Thanks Connie. I may consider the double-counting if at the end of the year I find myself short of my target. I'm now reading something else entirely, and more lightweight Der beiden Quitzows letzte Fahrten, but it starts off rather abruptly which makes me think that it must be part of a series. Here I go again, checking things up...

....and buying the other books in the series!

I have a copy of Tuchman's A Distant Mirror that has also fallen apart after one reading, also purchased when it first came out in paperback. Either they didn't make books so well in the 80s, or Tuchman wrote such massive tomes that by the time they were finished they were trashed.

>37 ipsoivan: I think it's the bad quality of those mass market paperbacks. Cheap paper that yellows after a few years, and the glue goes dry and breaks. My Penguin paperbacks hold up better, and I've got some German Insel paperbacks which are pristine despite being thirty years old (and more).

ETC

Well done on finishing Guns of August! I've had it recommended to me, but I think I may hold off - I don't have much patience for military campaigns (especially not exclusively)!

>39 Caramellunacy: It requires a high tolerance for envelopments, rolled-up left and right flanks and tantrums on the General Staff. The infighting among the higher ups is unbelievable.

Finally! ROOT #4 is pulled, Der beiden Quitzows letzte Fahrten, though I'm still wondering what possessed me to tackle another doorstopper directly after The guns of August. 674 pages of small print, it feels like 9pt Garamond Antiqua. And the story was not quite as entertaining as I had hoped. Too many anachronisms and there's far too much application of Imperial ideas to an age where such things simply did not exist.
Anyway, my next ROOT will be something short and light.

Congrats on ROOT 4 and a doorstopper at that!

ROOT #5 is a short one: Le colonel Chabert. A rather sad story from Napoleonic times about a soldier who was pronounced dead and comes back years later trying to reclaim his life and his wife. There's rather a lot of legalese in it which makes me think Balzac picked it up during his own time in a lawyer's office.

MissWatson - Chabert does sound sad (I'm not sure you quite succeeded on the "light" part of your "short and light next ROOT" plan...). Other than the legalese, did you enjoy it?

Well, I managed short! It is my first Balzac and I liked it very much. He has a very sharp eye for human faults and weaknesses, such as the callous attitudes of the legal clerks in the lawyer's office, without the redeeming humour that Dickens gives them. That's my first impression, anyway. Maybe I should pick up some Wodehouse for a re-read next, that qualifies as both short and light.

Ohh, I read a Balzac for my readinglist when I was graduating highschool. We had to read some French books, I think 10 or 15.
I just remembered and was searching for the book /novel I've read. It must be Eugénie Grandet That's the title I remember. Bringing back my teen years!

Hi Connie, I've got some of his shorter works on my TBR and if they prove as readable as my first nibble, I will definitely tackle the big ones some day.

And for my 6th ROOT I cut myself some slack with Carry on, Jeeves. I know I read this before, ages ago, but I only remembered the first story. A very enjoyable rediscovery!

Jeeves is such fun! I still haven't managed to read any Wodehouse for the 2014 CC group read though. Hope to soon.

I've never actually read any Wodehouse, but they sound like a lot of fun - any recommendations of the best place to start?

I recently read Wodehouse's Something Fresh and, dash it all, I really enjoyed it.

Thanks for dropping by. I find that reading too many Wodehouse books in a row rubs off on one's conversation, so I try not to overdose. I think the stories are a good way to ease into his style. Some people like only the Jeeves-Wooster dynamic, others swear by the Blandings novels, my best friend's favourite is Hot Water which I only "got" on the second reading. There's probably one for every mood and season...

I can also add two small ROOTs: L'or de Maximilien and Le dernier round. Arte TV is currently showing a TV series based on a BD written by Van Hamme, the man is unbelievably prolific. If only they were not so expensive to buy from France!

And the last book from the XIII series: La version irlandaise. It sits oddly with the rest, the story is not really about XIII, it has a different artist, the colouring is different and the lettering. Good to know that Vance was able to bring it to a conclusion with Le dernier round.

I have been a little remiss in my ROOTing, too many new ones intruded. But here's #10 at last: Der Marques de Bolibar.

Yeah!!!!

I spent the weekend at my mum's, no reading there. She's trying to downsize her library and I picked some of the rejects, but I don't think I'll finish any of them before Friday before my weekend visitor arrives, so my tally will probably stay at 10.

My first ROOT of April and the 11th in total is Phantasien im Bremer Ratskeller. It is a brief tale in the style of E.T.A. Hoffmann: the author has a permit from the magistrate to taste some of the famous old wines stored in huge barrels in the cellars beneath the City Hall and at midnight he gets a visit from the ghosts of these wines. A hymn to Rhinewine and a surprisingly easy read. Other books from this time have not aged so well.

>57 MissWatson: Did you get your Mum to do some rooting? Pity they can't be counted here :)

>59 VivienneR: She's moving to a smaller apartment. I don't think there are any ROOTs in her library, but lots she won't be re-reading. Many of the books belonged to my Dad, and I don't really see her reading those, so we're trying to find good homes for them. In the case of non-fiction books I can't see many takers...

Libraries often save donations for their booksales, that might be an option for the non-fiction.

Okay, I found time for two French mysteries which have been languishing on my shelves since the eighties: Der Gangsterboss and Das Ende vor den Augen. Both have been filmed and the films were much better than the actual books, so I'm parting with them.

Wow, it's not often that the movie is better than the book. Good for you for not keeping them, then.

I finished Im Alleingang zum Mississippi, a relic from my past. My mom found this among her own books. I last read this when I was ten or eleven, and it's a rather weird sensation to revisit something from my early youth. It tells about the adventures of Pierre Radisson exploring Canada in the late 1600s. I did some checking in the German union catalogues and was surprised that there aren't many recent books available. An unsung hero, it would seem.

#64 There are the Radisson Hotels named after him, of course, but not not many knows the connection, I guess.

And my first ROOT of May is done. Die Grossmutter has been sitting there for years, patiently waiting for me. It is a classic of Czech literature and it has been a very enjoyable read. Nothing much really happens, but the descriptions of life in the village was lovely and somehow very peaceful and calming.

Back from the holidays, I've been completely offline, very refreshing. No ROOTs either, so I'm a little behind. I'm not sure if I can catch up this week, there's lots to catch up on at work, too.

Welcome back, MissW. How were those holidays? I hope you had a good time!

Hi Connie, and thanks, we had a wonderful time. There's so much to see in Munich! We don't have castles like these up north.

Glad to hear you had a good time and were able to unwind. Good luck with catching up at work -- the inbox on the first day back is always something to brace oneself for.

>70 rabbitprincess: Thanks, sorting emails on the first day is always a dreaded process. Even worse is how quickly life goes back to normal again.

I managed to finish another ROOT last night: Kundschafter am St. Lorenz-Strom, another one of those that turned up at my mum's. It's about the life and times of Samuel Champlain, good on the facts, the attitudes of the early 1950ies must be overlooked.

We had a long weekend (Pentecost) and time for reading. Two books count as ROOTs: Calypso and Ghosts. I like the 87th Precinct books a lot, but at some time I bought them quicker than I could read them and somehow they piled up. These were first published in 1980 and it is really weird to read about all the smoking and drinking going on. Not to mention typewriters...

And I surprised myself by finishing another ROOT: Der Favorit der Königin, about the Struensee affair. (Queen Mathilde of Denmark had an affair with the doctor). There's an intriguing remark when the author sums up the fates of other characters: he says that the Captain of the Royal Navy ship that picked up the queen to take her into exile returned to Denmark in 1807 as the admiral commanding the fleet that bombarded Copenhagen. Off I go to re-read Sharpe's prey, which will also count as a ROOT. Hah!

>73 MissWatson: I thought I recognized the titles ! Yes, Ed McBain! I've read those in the 80's too and loved them.

Hi Connie. I came across McBain in the late 70s, and I actually learned contemporary English from them. All those slang expressions that I couldn't find in the dictionaries!

I know, I discovered his books in the same period. I tried to keep my English to a certain level because I wanted to go and study English, Never got around to that, because I took over house keeping after my mom died and I finished high school. Live does that, it gets in the way of wishes and dreams.

Yay Sharpe! I've literally just finished Sharpe's Eagle which is my first foray into written Sharpe (I've seen a few of the Sean Bean series, which are wonderful!). I don't have any of the others to hand, but I'm going home next week and will hope to stock up at the huge half-price books!

>78 Caramellunacy: That's one of my favourite series, hope you enjoy them!

And I'm done with Sharpe's prey which counts as a ROOT because it's a re-read. Admiral Gambier (from Der Favorit der Königin) doesn't show up, but it was worth the time, dear old Richard is always good for a ripping yarn.

ETC

I finished Die Varusschlacht just in time to count it for June. How did this slip so far down the TBR pile? Amazing read with lots of stuff I didn't know about Arminius, Augustus and especially Tiberius.

Yesterday was the monthly flea market, and I came away with 5 books. I'll never run out of ROOTs if I keep this up. But a history hardback at 2 Euro was too good to resist. And I've started reading another ROOT: Armadale which I last read ten years ago. 500-odd pages in tiny (7pt) print. This is going to take some time...

And I still haven't finished it. The festival season is coming up, so less time for reading. I'm not sure I'll finish it in time to count as a July ROOT.

>83 MissWatson: I hope you enjoy it anyway. I can get fatigued with books that takes more than a couple of weeks reading.

Which, of course, is part of the reason I have a lot of thick, threatening volumes waiting to be ROOTed...

Anyway, festival season also sounds nice.

Congrats on tackling that large book with small print! And what festival are we talking about?

>84 Henrik_Madsen: Thanks, Henrik, I am enjoying it, but I find that my eyes get tired more easily than they used to. I should probably finish it on my e-reader, but I love the illustrations in my print copy...

>85 Tess_W: Hi, Tess. It is the Schleswig-Holstein Musik Festival, http://www.shmf.de/en/Home . It's mostly classical music. This week we're going to hear Simone Kermes and Vivica Genaux, on Thursday it's Händel's Israel in Egypt, and the next weekend the King's Singers and Albrecht Mayer.

Concert sound absolutely wonderful!

Finally! I can report success with Armadale. I did enjoy this re-read, but I think my next selection will be much shorter.

>88 MissWatson: Understandable. Reading long, all-consuming works is great, but there is a certain need for shorter books afterwards.

New month, new ROOT: Red Shift.
This was a short one and also a very old one, it's been on my shelves for decades. I thought I could part with it after reading, but it is intriguing enough for a re-read sometime. It's set in Cheshire and the action shifts between the then-present day to the English Civil War to the Roman occupation. Lots of cryptic dialogue and the link between the three timelines is a young man suffering from something that sounds like epilepsy. I still need to decrypt the coded letter at the back. It was published as a book for young adults, which surprised me a little. It's quite grown-up.

Yes, I really liked that one too.

Hi MissW!

Hi Connie, nice to see you here again!

ETC

And a second ROOT for August is Pushkin's Erzählungen https://www.librarything.com/work/638057, a little detour inspired by a book discussion on Jackie's thread. It's been ages since I last read these stories and I'm glad I did. I had quite forgotten how beautifully clear his prose is, how uncluttered, how precisely he can paint a scene with a single sentence. One of these days I'll read him in Russian.

Edited to add a link

Pushkin sound lovely.

Yeah, I wish he had had the time to write more prose. I'm not much of a poetry reader so I haven't tackled Onegin yet...

I have an anthology of Best Russian Writers and both Pushkin and Onegin are contained. I'm going to list that as a root next year, and read a selection or two each week.

Wow, you're planning far ahead!

Well, since I teach, the fall is not a good time for my personal reading.....with the beginning of school and all. Then in November we have our real life book club meeting. Then there's Thanksgiving and Christmas...by then the New Year!

I'm basically not a short story reader. So I have to pace myself...a couple then move to a novel then back to a short story, etc. I have 4-5 anthologies and the only way I'm going to get through them is to make them a ROOT!

I just finished Perfectly pure and good and found it less than gripping. It's not going back on the shelf.

It's a good thing the tickers are working again. My 26th ROOT was A question of guilt which I liked a lot better than the previous by Frances Fyfield. Still, not going to be a favourite author.

Glad to have inspired some more reading! :) I'm wondering with the longer books (I'm fine with short stories, but longer books just make my heart sink, and those Russians wrote LOOOOOOOOOONG books) if I would be better to just do a chapter at a time then intersperse them with something else. After all, Dickens' novels were originally serialised so the reader would only have a short bit at any one time. Might be worth a try!

>102 Jackie_K: That looks like a plan that could work, as long as you can keep track of the characters. I remember I had to write family trees for War and Peace...

And I finally finished Die Verwirrungen des Zöglings Törleß.
It's a pretty short book but a tough read. There's the language, with its stark reminder of how much it changes within the course of a century (think different grammar), and the content: lots of metaphysical meanderings and navel gazing. But the confusions of puberty and the self-centeredness are well captured.
I also know that I own a print copy of this book, I can distinctly see the cover with the still from Schlöndorff's movie, but it's gone AWOL.

Hi, MissW. I'm still hanging around here and trying to keep up with Threads!

Nice to see you! Keeping up is difficult sometimes, I know. Running just to stand still...

I'm back from an extended weekend, with no internet and only a little reading on the train. I'm in the middle of Le bossu which is great fun, but not a ROOT, sadly.

And I can add another ROOT at last: Das Britische Empire, a history of the British Empire from beginning to end. Very good.

Sounds like a great read! You are moving along!

>109 Tess_W: Yes it was!

Hi, MissW. I was away from LT for a time. So just stopping in and waving!

Hi Connie, nice to see you.

Trying to get around to threads more often. And the important word in this sentence is 'Trying'.

And I am back in the game with Der Knochenmann.
A mystery from Austria, weird (in a good way), and dare I say it, very Austrian. It is a first person narrative, and I could actually hear the Austrian pronunciation in my head.

Hi, Miss! Hope things are going well!

I've never heard of Wolf Haas. Are you reading the series?

>115 Tess_W: Hi Tess, just too many new books!
>116 majkia: No, this was my first foray into the series, and I just picked it up because I recognized the name from the TV movie based on it. I found another one in the remainders bin a few months ago and hope to squeeze it in some time this year. Der Knochenmann is intriguing because it is told in a first person narrative with no indication of who the narrator is, and it is like a transcript of an oral telling: lots of ungrammatical sentences and directly addressing the reader. And very Austrian in its idiom, I'm not sure how that translates into English.

And I finished another ROOT this weekend: Die Juwelenpagode, a classical novel of ancient China. It has been on my shelves for at least thirty years, and I'm not sure how classical it can be if there's no other copy on LT, at least none that I can identify. It tells the story of Fang Tsu Wen whose family has fallen on hard times, he appeals to an uncle for support so he can take the grand exam and gain imperial office. He does, and also acquires three wives in the process. It is comparatively short at a mere 350 pages, with a manageable cast of characters and a straightforward narrative. Also a fascinating glimpse into a very different world.

I love classical novels of ancient China! That sounds so good. Will try to find it in English!

Let me know if you find it. I looked, but without success. The German National Library says the original title is Zhen-zhu-ta (in modern transcription) but even that didn't help. It's a good read.

Ooh you're getting really close to your goal now!

Yes, and I started another ROOT last night that shouldn't take me too long!

And it is finished: Mittelerde in which the author looks for the bits and pieces of Germanic mythology and literature that inspired Tolkien. He covers a lot of ground and quotes extensively from the main works, so there's not much room for detail. However, he only considers works that were actually available in English editions at the time of Tolkien's time as a student and points out that a lot of modern sources and translations shouldn't be regarded as inspirations for Tolkien because they actually used words that Tolkien himself introduced.

I read Das Erdbeben in Chili on a whim between books. One of those texts that used to be among the set books for German lessons. I'm glad our teacher didn't use it. I wouldn't have liked it as a teenager. It's still very strange. I definitely need to know more about Kleist before tackling the next.

Finally! Another ROOT finished, Die schwarze Reiterin. A Chinese novel published in 1878, it takes place in the 18th century and often felt like one of those martial arts movies that Chen Kaige does so well. It also reminded me a lot of Pearl S. Buck. I really need to read up on the clothes and the houses!

Only three more, MissW. Keep up the reading.

Thanks Connie, I'm on the final pages of my current ROOT!

And it is done: Die Geburt der modernen Wissenschaft in Europa. This was a real slog, what with all the unexplained -isms, Latin titles and phrases without translations, numerous grammatical slip-ups and typos in the German translation, and a near-impenetrable introductory chapter. Highly unsatisfactory.

A Christmas carol because it is that time of the year and I haven't read it for ages. Lovely.

>129 MissWatson:, going to sit down this evening and read that myself, Miss

The outlaw Josey Wales. And with this book I have reached my goal of 36. Huzzah! It was admittedy a short book, but it has also sat on my shelves for nearly thirty years. I also think I'll part with it, I do not see myself reading this again.

>130 Tess_W: It's always worth revisiting, Tess.

Yay, congratulations!

>133 rabbitprincess: Thanks.
I finished one more ROOT last night: Der König der purpurnen Stadt, historical fiction set in London in the times of Edward III. Quite interesting on the facts.

And here's another ancient relic from my shelves: The emperor's pearl which I have owned for thirty years. Or more. Blissfully brief, a quick read and very enjoyable, so it will stay for the time being. I may actually go looking for more of Judge Dee.

Congrats on reaching your goal and breezing past!

One more to add: August 410. This looks at Alarich and his Goths taking Rome and how this event was received and assessed by contemporaries and later historians.
I am amazed how much reading I'm squeezing into the last days before the holidays.

ETC

And there are two re-reads to add: Wassilissa die Wunderschöne and Das Märchen vom herrlichen Falken are slim volumes of Russian fairy tales with illustrations by Ivan Bilibin. The pictures are gorgeous, and I'm getting a Russian version of them for Christmas (a present from myself) which hopefully contains a full set of pictures.

And these will be the last ROOTs for 2014, because I won't finish my current read in time. It's a chunkster and I'm not taking it along when I leave for my mum's tonight. There will be new shiny ones from Santa!

I wish you all a Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year and I look forward to your company in 2015!

Merry Christmas! Looking forward to hearing about the shiny new books ;)

Yeah, you have done it!

A very Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year, Birgit!