Jackie ROOTs again

I'm in for another year! A more modest target this year, as I am using a Jar of Fate system and there is always the possibility that I pull out a succession of chunksters! I am aiming for at least 12 books this year - one per month. Any more over that total will be donated to the group total.

I am combining my ROOTing this year with the 2016 category challenge. I have 11+1 categories, ie 11 categories that all my TBRs fall into (ranging from old and new fiction, academic stuff, travel writing, biography, all sorts of stuff really) plus one blank one where I will read something that I just fancy at the time and can't wait till Fate draws it out of the Jar. Once I've got through all 12 I'll go back to the first category again. I have colour-coded all my bits of paper with book titles so I know I will pull out books in the right category. All of them are new TBRs, with the exception of a few series where I may have read the first in a series years and years ago but would want to reread before going onto the next one in the series.

I am counting all unread books on my shelves as ROOTs, including any I acquire in 2016. The chances are they won't get pulled out of the Jar this year in any case, so I may as well include them. I'm doing this as I was fed up feeling guilty for wanting to read a birthday present acquired this year in this year - I can't be doing with extra guilt, I feel bad enough as it is thinking about my c.300 book TBR pile! There might be the occasional reread (if I pull out one of the aforementioned series) which I will also count, as they will be books that I read so long ago I've forgotten them and they might as well be unread. I am again counting both paper and ebooks in my ROOT challenge.

I also intend to keep a track of books acquired again. I did this for the first time in 2015 and it was very eye-opening. My 2015 goal was to match ROOTs read with new books acquired, but that soon fell by the wayside and I ended up acquiring nearly 3 times as many new books as ROOTs read. So I've decided to not be too draconian, as that is unrealistic, but also not to be too profligate and try to be more careful about how many I acquire. So, instead of the 60 (maybe more, if Santa is good to me tomorrow!) I acquired in 2015 I'm going to aim for no more than 25 new acquisitions in 2016. Which is still more than twice my ROOT target, but is considerably less than this year!

Ticker 1: 2016 ROOTs




Ticker 2: new acquisitions




Ticker 3: Book Bullets from LT (no target, just interested!)

ROOTS read in 2016:

1. Seamus Heaney - North. Finished 3.1.16. 4/5.
2. Ruth Hay - Auld Acquaintance. Abandoned 3.1.16. 0.5/5.
3. ed Ellen E Berry - Post-communism and the Body Politic. Finished 30.1.16. 3/5.
4. Joanna Cannon - The Trouble with Goats and Sheep. Finished 13.2.16. 4/5.
5. Katherine Verdery - Secrets and Truths: Ethnography in the Archive of Romania's Secret Police. Finished 29.2.16. 4.5/5.
6. Edith Wharton - Madame de Treymes. Finished 5.3.16. 2.5/5.
7. John K.V. Eunson - Sheep for Beginners: a Dip into the World of Wool. Finished 5.3.16. 2.5/5.
8. Michael Palin - Himalaya. Finished 19.3.16. 4/5.
9. Jim Crumley - Among Islands. Finished 24.3.16. 4.5/5.
10. Maggi Dawn - Giving it up. Finished 27.3.16. 4/5.
11. Jane Austen - Persuasion. Finished 28.3.16. 4/5.
12. Mike Ormsby - Never Mind the Balkans, Here's Romania. Finished 16.4.16. 4.5/5.
13. Mike Ormsby - Grand Bazar Romania. Finished 16.4.16. 4.5/5.
14. Haya Leah Molnar - Under a Red Sky: Memoir of a Childhood in Communist Romania. Finished 25.4.16. 4/5.
15. Valeriu Nicolae - We are the Roma! One Thousand Years of Discrimination. Finished 28.4.16. 4/5.
16. Bill Lawson - Harris in History and Legend. Finished 12.5.16. 4/5.
17. Rebecca Schiller - All That Matters. Finished 3.6.16. 4/5.
18. ed. Krassimira Daskalova, Caroline Hornstein Tomic, Karl Kaser & Filip Radunovic - Gendering Post-Socialist Transition: Studies of Changing Gender Perspectives. Finished 20.6.16. 3/5.
19. William Goldman - The Princess Bride. Finished 24.6.16. 3/5.
20. Melissa Harrison - Rain: Four Walks in English Weather. Finished 28.6.16. 4/5.
21. Goscinny & Uderzo - Asterix and the Golden Sickle. Finished 30.6.16. 3/5.

Books acquired in 2016.

1. David Welky - The Thousand-Year Flood: The Ohio-Mississippi Disaster of 1937. Free UoC Press ebook, obtained 4.1.16.
2. Rafael Jerusalmy - Saving Mozart. Used copy, bought from amazon 9.1.16. (BB)
3. Joanna Cannon - The Trouble with Goats and Sheep. Pre-ordered from kobo bookstore, 21.1.16 (available from 28.1.16).
4. The Unmumsy Mum - The Unmumsy Mums. Free ebook from kobo bookstore, obtained 24.1.16.
5. Samuel Hall Young - Alaska Days with John Muir. Free ebook from Project Gutenberg, obtained 30.1.16.
6. Peter B. Hales - Outside the Gates of Eden: the dream of America from Hiroshima to Now. Free UoC Press ebook, obtained 1.2.16.
7. Veronica Roth - Divergent. Free Kindle promotion, obtained 5.2.16.
8. Rachael Chadwick - 60 Postcards. Cheap ebook (99p!) from kobo. Obtained 6.2.16.
9. Margaret Truman - White House Pets. Cheap ebook (£1.99) from kobo, via bookbub. Obtained 26.2.16.
10. Ted Anton - The Longevity Seekers: Science, Business, and the Fountain of Youth. Free UoC Press ebook. Obtained 1.3.16.
11. Jennifer Eremeeva - Have Personality Disorder, Will Rule Russia: An Iconoclastic History by a Recovering Russophile. Free ebook from kobo, obtained 6.3.16. (BB)
12. Margaretta Eagar - Six Years at the Russian Court. Free ebook from kobo, obtained 6.3.16. (BB)
13. Goscinny & Uderzo - Asterix chez Rahazade. From Barter Books (£5.60), obtained 21.3.16.
14. Goscinny & Uderzo - Asterix Gladiateur. From Barter Books (£5.60), obtained 21.3.16.
15. Goscinny & Uderzo - Asterix le Gaulois. From Barter Books (£5.60), obtained 21.3.16.
16. Goscinny & Uderzo - Asterix chez les Belges. From Barter Books (£5.60), obtained 21.3.16.
17. Jennifer Worth - Shadows of the Workhouse. From Barter Books (£2.20), obtained 21.3.16.
18. Linda Herrera - Revolution in the Age of Social Media. Free ebook from Verso, obtained 31.3.16.
19. Gabriella Coleman - Hacker, Hoaxer, Whistleblower, Spy. Free ebook from Verso, obtained 31.3.16.
20. Nick Srnicek & Alex Williams - Inventing the Future. Free ebook from Verso, obtained 31.3.16.
21. Aaron Swartz - The Boy Who Could Change the World. Free ebook from Verso, obtained 31.3.16.
22. Helen Morales - Pilgrimage to Dollywood. Free UoC Press ebook, obtained 1.4.16.
23. Nicholas Shaxson - Treasure Islands: Tax Havens and the Men Who Stole the World. From kobo (via BookBub) (£1.99), obtained 10.4.1.6.
24. Neil Gaiman - Stardust. From kobo (£0.99), obtained 29.4.16.
25. Kate Evans - Red Rosa. 50% off from Verso (£5), obtained 1.5.16.
26. Lisa Lynch - The C-Word. From kobo (£1.99), via Bookbub. Obtained 11.5.16.
27. Ben Goldacre - Bad Pharma. From kobo (£1.99). Obtained 26.5.16.
28. Mark Monmonier - Coast Lines: How Mapmakers Frame the World and Chart Environmental Change. Free UoC Press ebook, obtained 1.6.16.
29. Jasper Fforde - The Eyre Affair. From kobo (£0.99). Obtained 2.6.16.
30. Jane Smith - Wild Island (no touchstone for either author or book as far as I can tell). Birthday present. Obtained 3.6.16.
31. Amy Liptrot - The Outrun. From kobo (£8.63). Birthday treat. Obtained 4.6.16.
32. Thomas Harding - The House by the Lake. From kobo (£5.49). Birthday treat. Obtained 4.6.16. (BB)
33. Yevgeny Zamyatin - We. From kobo (£0.99). Birthday treat. Obtained 4.6.16. (BB)
34. Mikhail Bulgakov - A Country Doctor's Notebook. From kobo (£3.99). Birthday treat. Obtained 4.6.16.
35. ed. Luke M. Herrington, Alasdair McKay, & Jeffrey Haines - Nations Under God: The Geopolitics of Faith in the Twenty-First Century (no touchstone). Free ebook from E-International Relations. Obtained 10.6.16.
36. Marta Dyczok - Ukraine's Euromaidan: Broadcasting Through Information Wars with Hromadske Radio (no touchstone). Free ebook from E-International Relations. Obtained 10.6.16.
37. ed. Agnieszka Pikulicka-Wilczewska & Richard Sakwa - Ukraine and Russia: People, Politics, Propaganda and Perspectives (no touchstone). Free ebook from E-International Relations. Obtained 10.6.16.
38. Melissa Harrison - Rain: Four Walks in English Weather. Book group purchase (£8.60).
39. Dominic Selwood - Spies, Sadists and Sorcerers. From kobo (£0.99), via Bookbub. Obtained 23.6.16 (BB).

Edited to add: I've decided to also monitor how much I spend on books this year. So far (mid-Feb) I have acquired 8 books, 5 of which were free. The other three were £1.03, £5.99 and £0.99 respectively so current total is £8.01. I don't think that's bad so far!

Tally 26.2.16 - 9 books (5 free, 4 paid-for), total spent £10.00. 1 BB bought.
Tally 6.3.16 - 12 books (8 free, 4 paid-for), total spent £10.00. 3 BBs bought.
Tally 25.3.16 - 17 books (8 free, 9 paid-for), total spent £36.60. 3 BBs bought.
Tally 10.4.16 - 23 books (13 free, 10 paid-for), total spent £38.59. 3 BBs bought.
Tally 29.4.16 - 24 books (13 free, 11 paid-for), total spent £39.58. 3 BBs bought.
Tally 1.5.16 - 25 books (13 free, 12 paid-for), total spent £44.58. 3 BBs bought.
Tally 11.5.16 - 26 books (13 free, 13 paid-for), total spent £46.57. 3 BBs bought.
Tally 26.5.16 - 27 books (13 free, 14 paid-for), total spent £48.56. 3 BBs bought.
Tally 1.6.16 - 28 books (14 free, 14 paid-for), total spent £48.56. 3 BBs bought. 21 ebooks, 7 paper books.
Tally 3.6.16. - 30 books (15 free, 15 paid-for), total spent £49.55. 3 BBs bought. 22 ebooks, 8 paper books.
Tally 10.6.16 - 37 books (18 free, 19 paid-for), total spent £68.65. 5 BBs bought. 29 ebooks, 8 paper books.
Tally 25.6.16 - 39 books (18 free, 21 paid-for), total spent £78.24. 6 BBs bought. 30 ebooks, 9 paper books.

Hi Jackie! Glad to see you again. I can't wait for your lists to be filled!
Good luck and happy reading!

Thank you Connie. I do feel that being in this group for the last couple of years has energised my reading habits, so long may that continue! I'm hoping that being in the 2016 Category Challenge as well will also give me some fresh impetus to tackle more ROOTs!

Welcome back, Jackie! Enjoy your reading year!

Sounds like a good plan, Jackie!

Sounds like a good plan, Jackie!

Happy 2016 ROOTing! :)

Good luck, Jackie!

Jackie, I know it's really hard to not buy those new books, but I've found by keeping track of the books that I acquire each year, I think about it a little more than I used to.
I tried to ask myself,

1) Am I really going to read this book? If yes,
2) Is it on sale? If No, can I wait to buy it? ,
3) If yes, I buy it.
4) If I can wait, then I enter it on my wish list so that I don't forget my interest in the book.

I have found that when I go back to my wishlist several months later, there are several books that I no longer want to read and so I delete them and I save myself the money.

>10 cyderry: That's very sensible, Chèli! And it sometimes works for me too. But now and again I get overwhelmed by the urge to buy....some book, any book. And out the window my sensibility goes.

>10 cyderry: That's pretty much what I've been doing in 2015. My plan is to be even more ruthless in 2016 - if it costs more than £2 it's going on the wishlist no matter how much I want it RIGHT NOW. There will be the very very occasional exception, primarily if I need an academic book for a project that won't wait as they are just never going to meet that price criteria even second hand, but I suspect my wishlist will be burgeoning this coming year!

I'm not going to rule out dropping hints to loved ones about the existence of my wishlist though - after all if someone else buys it for me it would be rude to turn it down, wouldn't it? ;)

>12 Jackie_K: Yes, that would be very rude! LOL

>10 cyderry: you know, as a result of tracking books in, I've also found myself buying fewer and fewer new books/hardcover books.... I did still buy a ton of books this past year, but they were mostly used/clearance! :)

I love your "Jar of Fate" system! Good luck with your ROOT reading!

Thank you everybody, happy new year to you all too!

I am after an opinion from the LT 'hive mind'. As regular readers may know, I'm a bit shocked about my book-buying and am hoping/allegedly trying to reduce it in 2016. I have just bought a (very cheap) ebook, but am not sure whether to include it in my list of new acquisitions or not. The reason being it is really a reference book that I won't read from e-cover to e-cover but just dip into occasionally as the need arises (it is called "1,001 Boredom Busting Play Ideas" by Jean Oram (no touchstone), and is, as the title implies, a book of ideas of free or low-cost activities, games, crafts etc to do with kids). My inclination is to not include it, but I'm wondering if I'm cheating or not here. What do you think?

I'd include it in the total number of acquisitions but increase your total allowable acquisitions by 1 (so if you've allowed yourself, say, 20 books this year, up that to 21). I am inclined to agree that a reference book that will be consulted periodically and out of order is not as much of a "problem" as a work of fiction.

I would not include that book! It's just like buying a cook book or a self-help book.
I think I would include just the books I bought to read for fun and not for reference.

>19 rabbitprincess: >20 connie53: Ooh, love that logic. If we don't have to count reference books or self help books (maybe exercise books, books about how to write) that means I don't have to count most of my library. LOL

Not as ROOTs anyway! I think Jackie just wanted to know if it would count as a bought book, when you have decided you can only buy a certain number of books this year.
We try everything we can to buy just that one more ;-))

Happy New Year for 2016, Jackie. Hope you have a great reading and ROOTing year.

I agree, a book you're not intending to read from cover to cover doesn't count.

Thank you everyone for helping me to clarify my thinking. Connie, I think you put best into words what I was feeling when you compared it to a cook-book, which I wouldn't dream of counting as a ROOT or including in my acquired totals. I was thinking overnight that if I'd bought this book as a paper book it wouldn't have occurred to me to ask the question, I just wouldn't have counted it as it would go on a shelf for use as and when required. I guess because I'm still a relatively new ereader owner I hadn't really thought through how I 'see' those books.

So, I am not going to count it either as a TBR/ROOT or in my list of books acquired. Thank you all for helping me to sort out my thinking :)

You are very welcome!

Looking forward to your experiences with the Jar of Fate system!

>26 detailmuse: so far the Jar of Fate is giving me some good ones! :)

My first ROOT of the year (actually #2 from the Jar, #1 is ongoing) was finished this morning. It is a slim volume of poetry by Seamus Heaney called North, and was a lovely gentle read last night and this morning. I actually bought it as a present for my husband (mainly because one of the poems shares a name with our daughter - unfortunately I didn't really get any of the classical references in it so didn't really understand it!), but with the intention of also reading it, so I included it in the Jar of Fate too along with a couple of other 'selfish' gifts!

A number of the poems relate to the 'Troubles' in Northern Ireland (where Heaney was from); I remember studying his poetry when I did English A'level in the 80s when the Troubles were still ongoing. Now we have family in Northern Ireland and it is good to see the level of violence so reduced, although I think we're kidding ourselves if we think that the problems and issues of the Troubles have completely disappeared.

Anyway. A good start to the ROOTing year, 4/5!

Perhaps I missed something along the way, but how does the Jar of Fate work?

>28 Robertgreaves: I have written down the titles of every single TBR book on a piece of paper and put them in a jar, to pull out at random to read (as I was finding that sometimes I didn't fancy *any* of my books when it came time to choose. This way it means that even those that I don't fancy will eventually get read!). I have further colour coded each bit of paper according to 11 different categories so that I can participate in the LT Category Challenge using my ROOTs to do so. My plan is to go through each category in turn pulling out an appropriately coloured bit of paper per book, and then return to the first category once I've completed them all.

>28 Robertgreaves: by the way Robert, have you started your own thread yet? I always star and try to visit the threads of people who are kind enough to comment on mine, but I can't find yours!

>30 Jackie_K: Roberts year is not parallel to ours, Jackie. He starts his year on his birthday. So he probably is still somewhere in the 2015 group ;-)))

>31 connie53: ah ok, a parallel reading universe! :)

I usually separate my year into two (part one from my birthday at Michaelmas, and part two from when I get back from my Christmas/New Year holiday, which tends to be a bit of a book-buying binge). So, I will start my ROOT thread for 2016 about a week from now.

>24 Jackie_K: I agree too ;)

Also,


& congrats on already finishing a ROOT!

Amazingly, I already have a 2nd ROOT to contribute. However, this is because it was so bad I have officially abandoned the attempt! The book was one of my 2015 freebie acquisitions, and probably the best thing I can say about it is that I didn't part with any money for it! It was Auld Acquaintance by Ruth Hay, the first in a series of 6 (you'll be really surprised to hear I won't be getting any of the other 5 books!). Hay is a retired Scottish-born Canadian who started writing in retirement and is openly aiming her books at a similar demographic. From her bio I gather she used to be a teacher, but whatever it was she taught I am pretty certain that 'use of the paragraph' wasn't part of her syllabus. It was also the most cliched and clunky writing I have read in a very long time - truly painful.

In a nutshell, a 60 year old Canadian semi-retired divorced librarian-in-a-rut discovers she has inherited a farmhouse in Scotland from a relative she has never heard of. From the reviews I gather the first half of the book consists of her friends persuading her she has to go and investigate, and the second half is her in Scotland investigating.

I was ready to give up after 2 chapters, but thought maybe it was me so read another one. Then the reading stats on my kobo said that I had still only read 13% of the book and still had over 3 hours left to read, and I'm afraid my heart just sank. I decided that rather than begrudge 3 hours of my life that I would never get back I'd just abandon it and read something better. There are so many beautifully- (and even adequately-) written books in the world that life is just too short to waste on turkeys.

I did enjoy some of the amazon reviews of the book though. My favourite one described the bit where Anna is exploring Glasgow as 'like being narrated by a satnav' which made me laugh - having ploughed through the first 3 chapters I could well believe it.

0.5/5. Not a keeper!

That's one way to ROOT, Jackie. I just hope this is the only book you will abandon this year. I hate it when that happens.

(you'll be really surprised to hear I won't be getting any of the other 5 books!)

I'm very surprised, I could not have guessed that ;-))

I've just acquired my first proper TBR of the year - it's the first of this year's free ebooks from the University of Chicago Press. I did think about not downloading it, but the subject matter is actually something relevant to us in the UK at the moment, so I thought maybe it will give me some knowledge behind my moaning about the government and their poor flood planning. The book is David Welky's The Thousand-Year Flood: The Ohio-Mississippi Disaster of 1937, and discusses the years of poor planning, excessive building etc that went on before that particular disaster, and what was learned in its aftermath.

We are OK here, but elsewhere in Scotland I know people who are scarily close to rising flood waters at the moment, and in northern England over Christmas we also saw really heartbreaking floods. Our flood defences, it seems to me, have been pared back and denied the funding they need for years, and we're now paying the price.

That's just terrible, Jackie. Perhaps the help of the Dutch is needed. We have fought against the water for ages.

Belated Happy New Year to you, Jackie, which hasn't been very happy for many parts of the UK with all those floods. Freak weather seems to be on the increase, doesn't it?

>38 connie53: as I understand it the Dutch have offered help in the past and our government declined most of it (apart from a bit of advice about dykes). Plenty of us are saying bring in the Dutch, they know what they are doing! (unlike the incompetent lot supposedly leading us!)

>39 MissWatson: I think you're right there. We keep seeing these weather events which they say are 1 in 100 years or somesuch, and we're seeing them every few years.

In this area we have a weather warning, but it hasn't rained all day and isn't particularly windy so I suspect it applies to the more exposed rural areas rather than here. Where I live there isn't any danger of flooding (I'm nowhere near a river or flood plain, for example), although if it rains a lot we might have to worry about drains bursting. But it's nothing at all compared to what people in the north-east are having to face tonight - I have a friend who lives in a village where they are preparing the village hall in case they have to evacuate homes overnight. She says she's never seen their river as high as this before.

>35 Jackie_K: good for you for giving up on it! I mean.... I have a problem w/ that too, but why waste what time we have?? Also, sounds .... erm, not amazing. ;)

>37 Jackie_K: What I find unusual (and I live in Ohio) is that people get their homes washed away, loved ones drown, and they rebuild their homes on the same sight! Not once, but two or three times.

That's is something I don't understand either.

>42 Tess_W: Here what mystifies me is that our government and planners think it's acceptable to grant permission for developers to build housing on recognised flood plains - as well as the reduction in funding for flood defence, they are exacerbating it by allowing so much building in unsuitable places. I also am pretty stumped as to why someone would want to buy a house built in the middle of a flood plain, but it's mainly the politicians who make me so cross.

My friend didn't have to evacuate last night, and the water levels seemed to peak before they got too near her house. I think that more rain is expected, but the levels receded enough during today that she's not too anxious.

In other news, I went back to work today after the Christmas break, so I think that my good reading start will slow down considerably! By the time I've done a day's work and then being with my daughter until bedtime, I don't have much mental energy left for reading! But I will try to read a chapter or two at bedtime to keep me going :)

>42 Tess_W: >43 connie53: yep, me too! I guess at least part of it is inability to actually move elsewhere for often financial reasons.... but there has to be some other option, right?!

>44 Jackie_K: yep, that too.. Glad your friend didn't have to evacuate!
Urgh, going back after winter break....

A number of my friends are posting this reading challenge up on facebook: http://modernmrsdarcy.com/2016-reading-challenge/ If I wasn't doing the random Jar of Fate thing I'd be tempted, it looks like a good way to motivate yourself to tackle a few tomes! So I thought I'd post it here in case anyone else fancied it.

Trying out a minor user name change for size as well :)

Edited to add: I'm also feeling quite proud of myself, I got suckered in by a kobo email this evening and nearly bought a book that was reduced but still over my £2 limit (only just, but enough to make me feel guilty!). But I added it to my wishlist and haven't bought it. Go me! (last year I would have bought it)

>44 Jackie_K: Here's to the stamina and strength to allow you 1-2 chapters in bed at night. That is how I read until my children were basically out of school!

>46 Jackie_K: I thought there was something different to your username.
And YEAH to you for not buying the book!

>48 connie53: yeah, I thought that maybe giving my full surname wasn't necessarily a great idea (not that I'm doing anything particularly subversive on LT, but I don't think that slightly more anonymity is a bad thing!).

>46 Jackie_K: hee hee - congrats on not giving into the kobo book purchase!
& user name change - reason makes sense ;) And you're still identifiable, all that really matters! :)

>46 Jackie_K: It's like a new haircut! Looks great! ;)

A color-coded Jar of Fate! You are clearly an organizationally-minded person after my own heart.

>52 jen.e.moore: I don't know about that - I will concede that it makes doing the Category Challenge much easier to manage, but the main thing was that it was actually brilliant procrastination as I had around 300 bits of paper to colour in! :D

>53 Jackie_K: Nonsense, color-coding is always organization. Fun, procrastinating organization. ;)

>53 Jackie_K: lol
wow. you colored the papers too? I just envisioned taking already-colored paper... :)

>55 avanders: that would be much easier! But colouring them is just more fun. As is everything concerning books.

>55 avanders: >56 connie53: that would have been so much easier! But I decided on and made up the Jar of Fate, and only afterwards decided on the category challenge, so had to go back to the Jar and colour them all in. I think it was what gave my husband the idea to get me a colouring book for Christmas :)

>57 Jackie_K: LOL, That's something I've been meaning to buy for myself too. Perhaps I will visit the department store when I go down town on Tuesday.

This is the book I have: http://www.johannabasford.com/book/5 With an amazon voucher I got for Christmas I got myself some really nice colouring pencils (so I didn't have to keep using my daughter's!).

That's really lovely, Jackie. I don't know what kind of books are sold here. Maybe I should order them online.

Re colouring books, I received both Doctor Who and Sherlock colouring books for Christmas. Lots of tiny little details to colour, especially in the Sherlock one. It will be a challenge!

I have another new acquisition to confess. Rafael Jerusalmy's Saving Mozart, which was a BB from one of the posters in the Category Challenge. I had every intention of wishlisting it, but amazon had a used copy for just over £1 that was fulfilled through prime so I didn't have to pay postage. So as it met my below £2 criteria I thought I'd buy it at that price while I could!

I have just purged the wishlist of 5 or 6 books though, so am not feeling too guilty!

>37 Jackie_K: I too am tempted by the free The Thousand-Year Flood, am hesitating only because there's a similar book, Rising Tide by John Barry, whose The Great Influenza was fascinating. So I'm procrastinating until the end of the month...

>56 connie53: I can see that ;)

>57 Jackie_K: makes sense! & i love adult coloring books.. :)

>59 Jackie_K: I have colored pencils and some ultra fine markers for the thick pages :)

>61 rabbitprincess: oo fun! I really want the Harry Potter one :D

>63 detailmuse: It's not a subject I'd particularly think to buy a book about, but as it was free and I knew I would at least engage with the subject, decision made! I'm trying to be a bit more ruthless with my acquisitions this year - under £2/gifts only (with only a tiny few exceptions), and be more discerning about the freebies.

I'm looking forward to getting round to it though. I like to think that I'm fairly well up on history and politics, but it is an event I had no knowledge about at all.

Hmm I thought I'd just saved an edit, but it's not showing (yet), so in case it doesn't, what I said was that I'm still plugging away with a couple of ROOTs, I'm hopeful I'll have one read by the end of the month and hopefully both, which would be by far my best start to the year! I really can credit the Jar of Fate with that, I think I'm reading faster/more than before because I really want to know what I'm going to pull out of the jar next! I hope the novelty doesn't wear off.

>65 Jackie_K: Oh yeah I can see how that would be very motivating! I also hope for you that the novelty doesn't wear off!

>62 Jackie_K: Dang your BB's!

OK LT ROOT friends, I need your help! I have my first book-buying dilemma of the year. WWRD? (What Would ROOTers Do?)

As many of you know, I am trying to be better this year about not acquiring new and shiny books (both paper and ebooks), and have said that (for the most part) I will only acquire new books that are free/below £2 or gifts. The exceptions are mainly going to be those books such as academic books that I might need for a particular project and which I'm not ever going to find at those kinds of prices. As you may have guessed by now, I have come across a book which doesn't meet those criteria, but I really really really really want to get it! It's a pre-release offer (£5.99 in the kobo store - to compare, when it is released later this year in hardback the full price at Waterstones will be £12.99, although I found out about it because I got an email from Waterstones offering it for £6.49 if I pre-order. So I just thought I'd check the kobo store to see if they had any offers on it). The reason I particularly want it is in the Waterstones review for the book (and unusually for me, it's fiction - part coming of age, part whodunnit): "England 1976. A town somewhere in the East Midlands. An avenue within that town. The hottest summer that anyone can remember. An ordinary street, in an ordinary town, populated by ordinary people." See, I lived in an ordinary town somewhere in the East Midlands, in an ordinary avenue within that town, and remember summer 1976 really well (it was HOT). The story is told through the eyes of two 10 year old girls, which is just a couple of years older than I was that year, so I just expect to recognise so much.

Pros I can think of for buying now:
* I haven't been this excited about a work of fiction for ages.
* It's a good price for a new book.
* I love the thought of a literary trip down memory lane.
* I've only acquired 2 books this year so far.
* If it goes on my wishlist instead then it will end up costing more as the pre-release offer won't last forever.

Cons:
* It's still more than my self-imposed price limit.
* Mount TBR.
* I might not draw it out of the Jar of Fate for ages anyway.

What would you do?

(In all honesty, I'm really hoping you will tell me to buy it!!)

>68 Jackie_K: Well then I would definitely tell you to buy it, because of the time-sensitive nature of the offer! ;)

Could you get someone to buy it for you now because of the special offer, but withhold the book till some suitable gift-giving occasion arises?

I am interested in this book. What is it?! Ten is also a couple of years older than I was in the summer of 1976 and I remember that summer really well too, although my "ordinary avenue" was in Lancashire not the East Midlands.

As to whether you should buy it, it sounds like a good deal but not an insanely good deal. It probably won't be long after publishing that you'll be able to get it for that again or less. If it was an author I already knew and loved, I'd definitely get it. If the author was new to me, I'd probably hold on.

Edited to add: Re-reading your post and how it's unusual for you to get so excited about fiction I would say do buy it. I get excited about new fiction all the time so have to be a bit more restrained!

I would get it in that case BUT with the caveat that you must read it as soon as you get it. Your excitement towards the book should be excitement towards reading it and not just acquiring it so if it's a book worth breaking the rules for, then it's a book that should be read immediately so that it doesn't turn into another ROOT in the future.

I agree with Lilisin! Go and buy it and read it. You can give yourself a present now and then! You sound really very enthusiastic. So I would not hesitate at all.

Haha, thank you everyone I knew I could rely on you! ;) I promise to read it as soon as I finish the books I am currently reading (as a bonus, I am counting 2016 books as ROOTs too so it will still count towards my total!).

>71 Soupdragon: the book is called "The Trouble with Goats and Sheep" and is by Joanna Cannon. It is her first novel, but apparently she is quite well known as a blogger already. And what I hadn't realised, until I looked at the amazon page for the book just now, is that she worked originally as a hospital doctor and is now a psychiatrist. For some reason that makes me want to read it even more.

Thanks everyone!

I've downloaded a sampler from Amazon and read the first chapter. There was at least one more chapter but I resisted or I'd have ended up pre-ordering too.

It is very readable and did give me a back to my childhood in the 70s vibe. It is going on the wishlist and I'll see how long I can continue to resist for.

Another 'back to my childhood in the East Midlands in the 70s' vibe book was Where did it all go right? Growing Up Normal in the 70s by Andrew Collins which I read a few years ago. He grew up just a few miles down the road from me and I recognised so much in it (including his reactions to going back to visit as an adult after he'd moved to London).

Oh yes, I read that one a few years ago too and really enjoyed it.

I was a bit disappointed with the author's university years self in the follow-up though - Heaven Knows I'm Miserable Now. I preferred him as an angel delight eating eight year old. I think he reminded me too much of young men I had known at university in the late eighties and I empathised too much with the long suffering girlfriends!

>78 Jackie_K: haha, yes I read the sample chapter of HKIMN at the end of Where did it all go right? and decided that I wouldn't buy it, probably for that exact same reason!

>68 Jackie_K: lol WWRD ;)
I'm sure this is resolved by now, but you have very good pros for buying the book! :)

>74 Jackie_K: yep, good decision! :)

I've just acquired another - this time a free ebook, "The Unmumsy Mums" by The Unmumsy Mum - it is a taster for her book which is coming out in February. She's a British blogger, I follow her on facebook (search for The Unmumsy Mum), basically her blog is her realistic, funny, sweary and not at all airbrushed take on being a mum of 2 young boys (if you read and like the Hurrah for Gin! blog, it's a similar sort of vibe). She had so many stories submitted to her for inclusion in her book that she produced this one which is basically a collection of extra anecdotes - unfortunate mispronunciations, and general 'ground swallow me up' moments.

Someone on facebook said they'd read the whole thing in 20 minutes. I plan on saving it for a day when I need a good pick-me-up.

(meant to add - it's free in both the kobo bookstore and for kindle on the uk amazon site)

I'm hoping to get at least 2 more ROOTs read this month, which would mean that I wouldn't have acquired more than I've read by the end of the month. Which would be a significant improvement on last year!

>80 Jackie_K: I know you can do that, Jackie! With a bit more than a week to go, I'm sure you can!

I've just seen this over on bookbub, and thought of everyone here :)

Shelves. Lots of shelves. I think I'm too neurotic for some of them, but others are just lovely!

https://media.bookbub.com/blog/2016/01/25/incredible-bookshelves-ideas/

>82 Jackie_K: Great. Another source of temptation (buy books now, put down ROOTs for 2017).

Aaaaand I've already fallen. Well, how could I resist a title like Alan Lennox and the Temp Job of Doom? I'm expecting it to be very silly indeed.

>82 Jackie_K: Yes, some are lovely, but they're not BIG enough! ;)

>84 Robertgreaves: Glad to be of service! :D Bookbub is such an enabler.

>85 ipsoivan: Agreed, I loved lots of them, but did think they were a bit impractical!

>80 Jackie_K: sounds like a fun book!

>81 connie53: I agree - you can do it!

>82 Jackie_K: love it - thanks for sharing! :)

>86 Jackie_K: You're a wicked woman. Everyday Life in Ancient Rome is my 2nd purchase from bookbub. Bankruptcy looms.

>88 Robertgreaves: At least the temptation is cheap, Robert! (I usually get offers at £1.99 or less).

My 3rd ROOT of the month is an academic edited volume, Post-communism and the Body Politic edited by Ellen E Berry. This was interesting as it is quite an old book now - 20+ years, which in academia, particularly in area studies, is a lifetime! My PhD was very relevant to this particular field (central/eastern Europe, gender, sexuality, reproduction) but I started it just over 10 years ago, so it was interesting to me to see the very early debates here (which preceded my work) both about the subject itself, and also about explaining to western audiences why research into CEE was important at all. Those debates are much more sophisticated now, and even 10 years ago when I started, but 20 years ago this would have been pretty ground-breaking stuff.

Some of the chapters were more interesting than others, as is usually the case in multi-authored edited volumes. I particularly liked the chapter by Ewa Hauser about gender and patriotism in Poland. Some of the other chapters, in all honesty, I skimmed to a greater or lesser degree, as I was less interested in the subject (particularly if they were looking at literature with which I wasn't so familiar). But I'm glad I've added this to my growing library of academic literature in this field. 3/5.

I have resurrected my old flickr account, and posted a picture of the Jar of Fate to it - I realised today I wanted to take a picture of it while it was still pretty full. I hope this works, but here is the link (I hope) to the photo on flickr: https://www.flickr.com/photos/68853789@N00/24343028799/in/dateposted-public/

Yay, it worked! It looks like a very full jar! ;)

Yes. Around 300 titles in there (meep)!

Edited to add: now with one extra! I was reminded of Project Gutenberg, and I knew I shouldn't have, but I couldn't resist ... so now I also have a free copy of Samuel Hall Young's Alaska Days with John Muir. I want to read a bit more about Muir, and am happy to go down the free route :)

>91 Jackie_K: A candy jar of books! A lot of work went into that.

>93 Jackie_K: BB! The Muir book was free on Kindle, too...so it's in "that" pile!

>96 Jackie_K: I find Muir a fascinating character. So full of life and massively ahead of his time in many ways, but also really quite 'out there'. I got a book of his selected writings last year, so I thought this would be an interesting counterpoint, being the perspective of a friend of his.

>93 Jackie_K: That jar really does look packed with possibilities :). Also, that book sounds interesting. I have a thing about Alaska.

I can see the jar too! Looks very colourful and inviting to use.

Yes - I am always really excited when I finish a book to find out what the next one is going to be! I think everyone should have one (the colouring in was fun too!) :D

I think I won't find a jar that's big enough ;-))

I'm wondering, having just added a couple of BBs to my wishlist from the Category Challenge group, whether I should also keep track of LT-inspired BBs. I think thus far in 2016 I have added 10 and bought 1 more (Saving Mozart) for a total of 11. I'm quite pleased with that - I'm sure last year I would have bought more of them.

I think I will keep a ticker (because, tickers! Yay!), but won't note down all the titles, because I might decide after a period of time that I don't want to read them after all and remove them from the wishlist (that did happen with 3 or 4 BBs from last year).

In other news, I have just received a voucher from amazon for a free kindle book (because I bought a paper book with them, and think I also registered the Kindle app, although I've not actually downloaded it. I think I just wanted to have a quick preview of a book, which is the only reason I accessed the app). I don't have a kindle, or a tablet, and can't imagine reading a book on my laptop or phone, so I'm not sure what to do with it! I'm struggling to resist the lure of the freebie, but probably will have to go for something that I would dip in and out of rather than read for stretches at a time. A quick question - if I download the kindle app to my laptop, and then in the future get another laptop, would any books transfer to the new laptop via the app, or would I never see it again once my laptop ends up in the great scrapyard in the sky?

Great idea to get a BB-ticker, Jackie.

And concerning the laptop thing I'm clueless.

>101 Jackie_K: They will come with you as long as you have access to your Amazon account. :) If you've downloaded them to your laptop PLUS five other devices (...I think) then you might have to convince Amazon that you don't own the old laptop any more, but up to six devices you're free and clear.

>101 Jackie_K: I used to wonder about that but no you don't lose your books as >103 jen.e.moore: says.

I do seem to have lost my Thomas Hardy audiobook read by Alan Rickman which I downloaded from iTunes a few years back . Have no idea where that is...

Which of the Amazon freebies do you think you might chose? I got that email too and am not usually one to turn down a free book, but out of the six possibles offered I've read two and don't fancy any of the other four at all.

>103 jen.e.moore: Thank you, that's very helpful! Hopefully I won't get through too many laptops and fall foul of the 'more than 6' rule (although I really don't like my current laptop, so would happily replace it before it needed to be changed, unlike all my others which I replaced when they were pretty much breathing their last! I've only had it just over a year though, so can't yet justify that!).

>104 Soupdragon: Ooh, I hadn't actually checked the link and so hadn't realised that it was a choice of just 6! Have just looked - I only fancy 2 of them too! So it will be either Divergent (which isn't my usual type of book AT ALL, but I have a sample on one of my eReaders and actually quite enjoyed it, so have kept meaning to get a copy when I could find one cheap enough!), or The Corrections. My husband has watched some of The Last Kingdom and it just looks to me like yet another Game of Thrones wannabe (I really really dislike all of those programmes!), and the other 3 induced various levels of not-interestedness.

I've also got another acquisition to confess: this month's University of Chicago Press free ebook. It's Outside the Gates of Eden: the dream of America from Hiroshima to Now by Peter B. Hales.

>105 Jackie_K: Those are the two that I've read. I think the other choices are genre fiction that are pretty unappealing unless you're a fan of that genre.

I read Divergent with my teenage son a few years back and quite enjoyed it.

I was supposed to be reading The Corrections for a book group years ago but gave up on it a third of the way through as I was actively disliking reading it. I was a very new mum at the time with not a lot of reading time and my mind was in a bit of a haze, so it was probably more to do with me than the book.

>101 Jackie_K: Yes, as long as you download the app to the new device, you can access your books. And I think if you change laptops, all you have to do is "de-register" the old one on your account and that will open up a new slot in the list of 6 devices eligible for you to link to your account...if that makes sense :). I recently de-registered a tablet I'd broken and registered a replacement one without any problems.

>91 Jackie_K: love it! :)

>99 Jackie_K: (and I still can't believe you spent all that time coloring -- at least you had fun w/ it!)\

>101 Jackie_K: and >103 jen.e.moore: yep ;) That's what I was going to say :) Fun on getting a freebie!

Thank you everyone for the advice re the kindle app. Actually it turns out I haven't downloaded the app at all, I have the kindle cloud reader, and goodness knows how I'll access that, but I'll work it out eventually. I downloaded Divergent in the end, because I thought it was the kind of thing that although I was happy to have it as a freebie, if it got lost or forgotten for not being drawn from the Jar of Fate for ages then I wouldn't be as bothered, plus as I'd only read a bit of it at a time because of it being on the laptop I thought that Divergent suited that better. The only other book that caught my fancy on the list (by Jonathan Franzen) struck me as the kind of thing that I might get a bit more into, would be more likely the kind of book I'd want to keep, and so would want as a proper book (either paper or on my ereader).

So as well as having Divergent to add to the Books Acquired pile, I am also in the process of getting a 99p book from the kobo store (they are having a sale. Again. Suckered yet again), 60 Postcards by Rachael Chadwick. It looked like a nice, worthy, but not too cheesy read. Most of the other books in the sale I wasn't fussed about, or I had already got in the last sale, so I don't feel too bad. I haven't quite got it yet - for some reason my browser is on a spectacular go-slow and isn't letting me into my basket to complete my purchase. But I'll get there in the end.

>109 Jackie_K: I hope you do. I really don't get those technical things. I'm just happy I use a less complicated way to get ebooks on my Kobo. And I haven't touched that for months. I'm perfectly happy reading only paper books ;-)

>110 connie53: I'm happy with either now - I'm not one of these purists who insists that only paper books are 'proper' or 'real' books, but I'm also happy enough to keep the paper books I've got and not worry about the clutter! I'm not a huge technology fan though so don't have to have every new-fangled app and gadget as soon as it appears!

In other news, I have kept my word and started reading The Trouble with Goats and Sheep (which folk here helped persuade me I really did need to buy!) straight away. I'm about a third of the way through and am absolutely loving it, I love how subtle her writing is, dropping clues and hints rather than assuming the reader needs everything spelled out, and it's so very readable. I'm really pleased I went for it, and will definitely be recommending it!

>111 Jackie_K: Oh my, a BB!

>111 Jackie_K: yay! I'm glad you're loving it! and yeah, BB...

In fact, I've added it to my RL book group's jar of fate! :)

You have such interesting categories, like most all the ROOTers whose threads I've visited.

My system is "As the Spirit Moves Me." That's about all the organizational approach I'm capable of.

While I've managed 2 MOTs so far, the spirit of moving is upsettingly absent as of now.

>114 Limelite: Thank you - I previously used the 'as the spirit moves me' system, but as you say, sometimes I would look at (what felt like) all 300 of my TBRs and didn't fancy a single one. At least with the Jar of Fate I stand a chance of getting through (or at least starting) the ones that I consistently keep putting off!

>114 Limelite: Is your MOT the same as our ROOT, Limelite?

I made a list last year, Jackie and read twice as many on the list. This year, I didn't want to be "tied" down, wanted to be "free"! And...I'm not reading nearly as much. I wonder if there is a correlation?

>117 Tess_W: Maybe you could make a short lists for two months or so. With books to choose from. Select 15 titles and read 5 out of 15. That gives you freedom. But that would be rather difficult with your jar!

>117 Tess_W: >118 connie53: I don't know about a correlation? But I have found that I have read and started loads more books this year since starting the Jar system than before. I guess we all have different ways to kickstart our reading mojo :)

>117 Tess_W: ooooh interesting. For me, I think there is -- making the list pushes me along because I'm eager to get to the next and the next and the next after that... ;)
But I also very much understand the feeling of wanting to be free. When I make orders (i.e., not just a list of books to read, but what order I will read them in), I will delete and reset every so often, just to give myself some space ;)

I look at some of the chunksters on my shelves and then think, no I've got to get through more ROOTs or I haven't fitted in all of this month's challenges yet. And so chunksters don't get read. While if I was more free-ranging and less target-oriented I would probably just read them when they reached the top of the pile.

>121 Robertgreaves: I deliberately set my ROOT target quite low, so that if I pulled out a chunkster from the jar (or indeed a succession of chunksters!) I still had a chance of meeting my goal.

>121 Robertgreaves: There is time enough to read a chunkster and reach your goal in the end, Robert. Come on, live dangerous!

>123 connie53: lol ... when reading chunksters = living dangerously... ;)

>122 Jackie_K: me too.. actually, I focused on chunksters this year, so set my goal really low! But I'm also trying to read other books too :)

I finished The Trouble with Goats and Sheep yesterday, I am so pleased that I let you lot persuade me to buy and read it quickly! I don't think I have ever read a book so close to its release date before!! I enjoyed it very much, with one or two minor quibbles, so am giving it 4/5. It would have been 4.5, but for one plot device which I wasn't entirely convinced by (although towards the end it made a bit more sense), and because I felt it ended a bit abruptly. At first I thought that it could do with one more chapter to tie up all the loose ends, but then thinking about it some more I don't think that any more - it's not so much that I wanted loose ends all tied up (mostly they were), but more that there was just a bit too much of a jump from the penultimate to the final chapter, so I think that what it really needed was another penultimate chapter! Anyway, it's a relatively minor quibble - I found the writing very readable, her characterisation was great, and she dropped enough clues to make you think you were getting somewhere and figuring things out but not enough that things were too obvious. There were a few points where I laughed out loud, and I did think she captured both East Midlands suburbia and the mid-1970s really well. I've seen it described as part coming-of-age, part whodunnit, and I think that sums it up well (although I think the coming-of-age bit would have been better served by my idea of an extra penultimate chapter so that I could see how Grace and Tilly resolved their disagreement after Grace let Tilly down with the newspaper article just before Tilly got ill again). (Edited to add: that's the first time I've done a spoiler, so relieved it worked!!)

The basic gist of the story is that a woman who lives on the avenue goes missing, and we gradually realise that she probably knew the secrets of most of the others who live in the same street. Two ten-year old girls, Grace and Tilly, set out to find out what happened to her, and gradually realise there's more to most of the people on the street than they let on.

Highly recommended. Very impressive as a first novel, I thought.

I've been feeling a bit stressed about reading, and I think it's related to the two books I started on January 1st. Don't get me wrong, I am thoroughly enjoying them (I am totally counting them as two books, even though they are actually the same book in two different languages, and I am reading the same chapter in each as I go along - it's definitely at least twice the work!!) and they will be starred very highly when I do finish them. But because the chapters are mostly so short, I think I've been putting pressure on myself by thinking I could read two a day (forgetting that that actually means reading four a day, two in a foreign language!) in order to finish by the end of the month. And it has started to rob me of my enjoyment of them. So, I have decided that (given that I am also doing the Category Challenge, and am picking out different categories in order) I am going to just go with the flow, read a chapter or two when I feel like it, and just aim to finish before that category comes round again. That is so much more realistic (I have about 6 books to get through before this category comes round again) and has taken the pressure off so much that I'll probably finish them quicker! :D I'm also finding this year, much more than before, that I am enjoying having two or three books on the go at the same time rather than just the one. I think reading War and Peace over several months last year must have started me into that habit!

In other news, I also decided that in addition to all my tickers, I'd also track how much I'm actually spending on new acquisitions (I'm glad I didn't do that last year, I think it might have been a bit of a shock!). So far I'm quite pleased - I have 8 new acquisitions so far this year, and have spent £8.01, which if it wasn't for that rogue 1p would be very pleasingly matching! And actually 5 out of the 8 have been freebies, so I don't think I'm doing too badly.

Good idea to take some of the reading pressure off! Reading the same book in two different languages is a tremendous amount of work.

Also, that is brave to be tracking your spending on new acquisitions. Only 8 pounds for the year is very impressive!

>127 rabbitprincess: thank you! I think it's less scary to do it this year as I have set a goal of only (or rather, mostly) acquiring books that cost £2 or less (or freebies!). I have only broken that rule the once so far and hopefully won't again (although all bets are off if a trip to Barter Books happens).

Re the reading in two languages, I think it is less work doing it this way than my original plan (which was to read the English book first, then the Romanian one either as my next book, or at some indeterminate time in the future). That I think would have been much harder. At least doing it chapter in one, then the other straight after, means that I know the gist of what I'm reading already, so can read it a bit quicker than I would do starting from scratch!

>126 Jackie_K: I agree: a difficult read (like your current pair) can be so satisfying, but "stressful" is a turnoff. Glad you're finding a way around it. I like having several books going at once. If they're different enough, I usually rotate around; if they're similar, I tend to get caught up in one until it's finished.

>126 Jackie_K: Very good decision, Jackie. Reading should be fun!

>126 Jackie_K: I agree w everyone else - good call on taking the pressure off of yourself! Very cool to be reading the books side by side like that - I imagine that would be very beneficial insofar as understanding the more subtle nuances of the foreign language. :)

Also, tracking $$ spent on books? Scary but brilliant... Perhaps I will do that next year... For now, partial-ignorance is still (partial-)bliss ;)

One more acquisition for me, and the first bookbub bargain of the year. It's Margaret Truman (daughter of Harry S. Truman)'s White House Pets. It brings me to a total of 9 acquired so far, and exactly £10.00 spent. I'm quite pleased that I've managed to resist the lure of bookbub up till now!

I'm going to have to slow down my rate of acquisitions though if I'm going to stand any chance at all of not buying more than 25 in a year! If I keep up this 2-monthly rate I'm looking at a total of 54 by the end of the year - which is less than last year, but still not great as it will still result in a net gain in total TBRs. I'm really not sure I can do it - especially as there might be a Barter Books visit next month if our planned trip down south happens ...

>132 Jackie_K: Hmm, maybe make your acquisitions "no more than 25 a year from sources other than Barter Books" ;) Also glad you were able to get your spending to a nice round number!

>132 Jackie_K: I have bought 4 books so far this year. It helps a lot when you can't go to bookshops. And I hope to keep up this slow pace. 2 books a month is acceptable. That would make 24 for the year. And I challenged my self to 70 books this year! 70-24= 46 books more read than bought. Let's see if I can keep it that way.

>133 rabbitprincess: Yeah, I need to figure out a way of Barter Books not really counting. To be fair, I think I've been pretty good the last couple of times I went, and only got a couple of books each time. But it only takes one day where they have loads of what I want, and I'll be scuppered!

I love Barter Books and am all in favour of supporting second hand bookshops. Buy and enjoy!

>132 Jackie_K: well. It's okay, we'll forgive you ;)

>135 Jackie_K: I have a similar problem... it's so hard to NOT buy books when they're only $5 per bag (paper grocery bag size)... so I similarly struggle to somehow justify those purchases despite my acquisitions surpassing my reads. For now anyway :)

I managed to squeeze one more ROOT in for February, finishing yesterday evening. It was an academic book that I had really wanted to read, by an anthropologist I really rate: Katherine Verdery's Secrets and Truths: Ethnography in the Archive of Romania's Secret Police. It is based on a lecture series she gave at Central European University a couple of years ago, and details her early thoughts based on research in the archives of the Securitate (Communist-era secret police in Romania), including seeing her own file (she was researching there in the 1970s and 1980s). Really excellent stuff, very interesting and (unlike plenty of academic books, sadly) very readable. 4.5/5.

She is currently working on her memoir of researching in Romania during the Cold War. I can't wait for that to come out.

In acquisition news, I am going to get this month's University of Chicago Press free ebook, but they are having technical difficulties so I'm going to have to go back and download it later. Which as it is a freebie will bring me to the very satisfying position of having acquired 10 books overall, and spent exactly £10.00.

>138 Jackie_K: Very good, Jackie. That is something I could never do in Holland. Books are rather expensive over here.

>139 connie53: yes, I think in general they are here too. But 6 of the 10 books I have acquired so far were free, and 3 out of the remaining 4 were under £2. I'm quite impressed!

>140 Jackie_K: Good score.

Woot! 10 books for 10 pounds! Sounds like a great deal :)

Thanks folks!

I saw this link this evening, and for some obscure and completely unknown reason thought of this group! ;)

https://media.bookbub.com/blog/2016/03/03/images-about-bookstores-that-every-rea...

Wow. That's really not us at all!

>143 Jackie_K: LOL!

I finished my 6th ROOT for the year (1st for March), taking me to 50% of my (admittedly not very large) goal for the year. It was a short novella, Madame de Treymes by Edith Wharton. I have mixed feelings about it - good things were (a) it was short (sorry - not a very profound reason to be positive!), and (b) the quality of the writing was obvious. However, less good things were (a) I didn't care for any of the characters or have anything much in the way of sympathy for them, and (b) despite the quality, the writing really was a bit flowery for my taste (I guess it is a product of its time - it was published in 1907 as a novella, having originally been published in a magazine in 1906). The ending just struck me as being pointlessly cruel, like it's OK to play with peoples' lives. I'm glad I can now say I've read some Edith Wharton, but I can't say I'll rush out to buy any more.

3/5 (might reduce that to 2.5/5 on further reflection, but 3 for now). (Edited: I changed it to 2.5/5).

>146 Jackie_K: I've tried Wharton (Age of Innocence) and I, like you, found no characters that could like and I found the writing pretentious.

>147 Tess_W: Phew, I'm glad it wasn't just me!

When I first decided to do the Jar of Fate, I was worried in case I pulled out a succession of chunksters. But the last few days the opposite has happened, and after the previous very short novella finished today I pulled out another miniature book, which I also finished today! Sheep for Beginners by John K.V. Eunson was a gift from a friend (we tend to specialise in silly gifts to each other), and is set up as a history of the contribution of sheep to world politics, geography, history, etc. Some facts are vaguely true, others are just elaborate set-ups for puns. I kind of enjoyed it, particularly as (from the amount of Scotland-related facts) I suspect the author is Scottish, but I couldn't help thinking that it wasn't as funny as he thought it was. It wasn't much to challenge the old brain cells, but was OK for a bit of fluff. 2.5/5.

Thanks to a BB from avidmom I have acquired one more book, Have Personality Disorder, Will Rule Russia: An Iconoclastic History by a Recovering Russophile by Jennifer Eremeeva. I would have wishlisted it, but as it was free that seemed a bit pointless so I have downloaded it! That takes me to a total of 11 books this year (of which 7 are freebies), still only spent £10. It also means that I have taken 23 BBs so far this year, but only acquired 2 of them (so far!).

>149 Jackie_K: LOL I just d/l that book for free on my Kindle!

>150 Tess_W: This place is dangerous! ;)

>151 Jackie_K: It certainly is. And I almost hate to tell you, but I got this book for $.99 while looking for the other one! Six Years at the Russian Court. It's the tale of the nanny to the Czar's children.

>152 Tess_W: Whoah! Turns out that's free in the kobo bookstore too. So, er, guess what just happened? :) (off to update the acquisitions ticker...).

bad influences on each other, Jackie!

Maybe next year I should think about giving up book-acquiring for Lent. As if giving up chocolate isn't hard enough ... Not getting any books would be SO difficult!

>149 Jackie_K: sounds fun. Downloaded.

>156 Robertgreaves: Like I say - dangerous group, this! :)

>143 Jackie_K: Love it!
esPECially this one:
and aaaand

>146 Jackie_K: lol sounds like not a lot to recommend the book!

>149 Jackie_K: I love that title.

>152 Tess_W: and that sounds fascinating too! man... so many good books...

Nothing to do with my challenge, but I just have to share this link with you. I love absolutely everything about it. Libraries, Scotland, social media, famous author, book clubs, humour, you name it it's got it. Enjoy!

http://mashable.com/2016/03/07/j-k-rowling-orkney-library-feud/#vsBy_3tI5gqH

>158 avanders: That Sarah Anderson comic in the middle is me exactly.

<159 I loved that! Thanks for sharing it.

>159 Jackie_K: that is fantastic.

>160 rabbitprincess: It's so on point ;)

>159 Jackie_K: Loved it!

>138 Jackie_K: Sounds interesting. I read Timothy Garton Ash: The File. A personal history some years ago with a somewhat similar theme. He tracks how he was suveyed by Stasi and uses this as a prism to tell the story - or part of it, at least - about the secret police.

>164 Henrik_Madsen: Ooh thank you Henrik - yet another BB!

>165 Jackie_K: You're welcome! We all need more of those ;-)

ROOT #8 overall (#3 for March) is now finished, and is one I really enjoyed. Himalaya by Michael Palin is a TV tie-in book from his series travelling from the Khyber Pass to the Bay of Bengal in the early 2000s. The book covers his journey through Pakistan, northern India, Nepal, Tibet, Yunnan (China), Nagaland and Assam (northern India/Myanmar border), Bhutan, and Bangladesh. He is just such a genial travelling companion, who takes such a generous interest in the places he sees and people he meets, always seeming to find the best in them, with gentle humour and respect. Obviously it's not an earth-shatteringly detailed history of any of the places he visits, as he goes to so many places he can only really scratch the surface, but nevertheless this was a really enjoyable piece of armchair travel. 4/5

In other news, I am going to be minimally online for the next week, as we catch up with various family members. We might well see Barter Books too at some point in the next few days. So the bookshelves (and bank account) are bracing themselves. I've already chosen my reading for the next week, and am hopeful that I'll have at least one more ROOT read by the end of March.

>167 Jackie_K: Eagerly awaiting the report from Barter Books if you go! :D

>168 rabbitprincess: I'm going to try to be good and limit myself to just a couple of books, but we'll have to see what they've got in! I always have the same aim ("just one or two") but sometimes there's just too much temptation!

One of my reads for the next couple of weeks is a Barter Books purchase from last year.

Glad you enjoyed your "travels' through the Himalayas and hope you have a good time with family & Barters!

I have 1 more ROOT to add this week - a wonderful book which I read deliberately (ie not pulled randomly from the Jar of Fate) to coincide with the April GeoCAT (although I had thought I would just start it and finish it in April, I loved it so much that I kept reading till I finished it. Will have to find another GeoCAT read now!). Jim Crumley's Among Islands is quite an old book (mid-90s) so one or two of the factoids in it are now out of date (eg Eigg is now in community ownership, and Skye is attached to the mainland by a bridge), but his love of the Scottish islands shines through both his beautiful, poetic prose and his wonderfully atmosepheric photos. I love the Scottish islands so am always eager to read anything about them, and this book was a real treat. 4.5/5.

I should have another ROOT to add on Sunday, as I am reading a book of Lent readings and it finishes on Easter Sunday. More then...

The planned trip to Barter Books took place on Monday. Eep. So I have 5 new acquisitions to confess to, and my £2 rule went out the window, (£26.60 spent in total, bringing my total for the year to £36.60). But 4 out of the 5 books won't take me too long, so it didn't feel as extravagent as some previous trips. Those 4 are all Asterix books (in French) by Goscinny and Uderzo (I don't have the books to hand so will add the titles when I get back home at the weekend), I'm trying to build up a collection of them and Barter Books is usually a pretty good place to find them. The other book I got was the second in the 'Call the Midwife' series of memoirs by Jennifer Worth, Shadows of the Workhouse (I acquired the first one in a kobo bookshop sale last year). Other than that, we also got a book (about trains) for my husband, and a couple of books (a pop-up zoo, and a Charlie & Lola book) for my daughter. And had a lovely lunch, and had the joy (as usual) of seeing our daughter's face light up as the model trains above the bookshelves near the tills came past. It's such a brilliant shop. Luckily (for the bank account) we are likely going home a different way, so that should be it for now!

>171 Jackie_K: Sounds like a great shopping expedition!

Another ROOT to add today, bringing me to 10 for the year (and close to my deliberately lower target of 12). I don't think I've *ever* read this many books in 3 months before. Today's was Giving it up by Maggi Dawn, it is the book I have been reading throughout Lent, just a few pages from Ash Wednesday to today. It took me a week or so to get into it, but by the end I really liked it. It felt like there was a bit of meat, it wasn't just a superficial couple of paragraphs on the daily readings, and some new insights into the old familiar Easter stories. 4/5.

I'm also racing through my next ROOT (Persuasion) so I'm hopeful that I will finish that by the end of March. It'll certainly be done by the end of the coming week even if I don't make the end of the month.

I've added the titles of my Barter Book acquisitions to my post #2 above where I'm recording them all. The first one made me really pleased that I had bought the French books, even though my French is quite rusty - I remember when I was at school (when I was pretty good at French) reading the French versions and finding them much funnier than the English ones, and enjoying the plays on words in the original language. The first one I put in here was Asterix chez Rahazade, which I could see straight away was a play on words on the story of Scheherezade, and thought it was really quite clever. But the touchstone goes to the English version, Asterix and the Magic Carpet, which obviously completely loses that beautiful play on words.

I'm looking at my list of acquisitions though, and thinking that 25 for the year is clearly not very realistic for me, given that I'm at 17 already! However, looking at it another way my ratio of ROOTS Read:Books Acquired is less than 1:2, which is loads better than last year (when I ended up acquiring nearly 3 times as many books as I read). So I think I will aim instead for the end of the year for my ROOTs:Acquisitions ratio to be no more than 1:2 - if I can keep reading at this rate then that may well be more achievable and realistic.

Good luck on that ratio of buying/reading! I made a New Year's resolution that I would purchase NO books this calendar year. So far....so good. (Although I did get some from my mother, out of about 8 I kept 1). For the first time in 20 years I feel good about my bookshelves and their manageability. Also, I think because they are more manageable that I am reading more! And although I participated in LT Santa Thing I requested Kindle books (and got 3 lovely titles!) so as to keep my shelves in order.

>174 Tess_W: Wow, tess - NO acquisitions at all? I am very very impressed at your willpower!!

I am trying to go for more ebooks, as far as possible. Of my 17 acquisitions this year, only 6 are paper books, so at least I haven't added too drastically to the clutter!

The closest I have come to you on the willpower front is to wishlist rather than buy BBs as far as possible. I am tracking BBs this year too, and so far this calendar year have taken 34 BBs just from LT (this group and the Category Challenge group). I've only acquired 3 of them (they would have been either free or under £2). That's pretty good going for me.

I've managed another ROOT, I finished Persuasion even quicker than I thought I would (thank you, Bank Holiday Monday!). I really enjoyed it, even though it was obvious who Anne would end up with, and who would turn out to be the baddie. I didn't think, from the first chapter, that I would like it as much as I did (I don't have much sympathy for toffs with pretensions of grandeur and status like Sir Walter Elliott). But it was delightful throughout, even if there wasn't as much going on as in the other two Austens I have read (Pride and Prejudice and Sense and Sensibility). I didn't quite enjoy it as much as those two, but I'll still give it an enjoyable 4/5.

I'm now just one ROOT short of my goal for the year, so that feels pretty satisfying (even though it is a low goal!).

>176 Jackie_K: One more ROOT, Jackie! Very good. And congrats on the new acquirements.

>176 Jackie_K: Congratulations. That's excellent progress!

I've got 4 more acquisitions to confess to today, but at least they were all free! Verso Books are offering 5 free ebooks today only (details are here if anyone's interested: http://www.versobooks.com/blogs/2575-psst-downloading-isn-t-stealing-for-today ), and I ordered 4 of the 5. They are: Revolution in the Age of Social Media (about the Egyptian revolution in 2011), Hacker, Hoaxer, Whistleblower, Spy (about Anonymous), Inventing the Future (about postcapitalism), and The Boy Who Could Change the World (the writings of Aaron Swartz).

My ROOTs/acquisitions ratio is still just under 1:2 (only just though, it's 11:21!). And tomorrow is the Uni of Chicago Press free ebook day, so it might be 11:22 by this time tomorrow!

Ooo, verso! I'm going to check that out. Thanks for the tip.

>180 ipsoivan: too late. I had a look and they said the ebook freebie offer had expired

Yes, I missed it. Boo. But I'm sure I can track down the ones that look most interesting to me through the university library system. They look too specialized for my city's library.

>181 Robertgreaves: >182 ipsoivan: yeah sorry - I should have posted earlier to give more warning (and of course it was UK time so would expire before the end of the day for friends across the Pond). It's actually worth signing up at their site for emails from them - they don't email very often, but occasionally have some really great offers like these.

And I did get the free UoC Press book this month - Helen Morales Pilgrimage to Dollywood.

>183 Jackie_K: Thanks for the tip!

OTOH, the Chicago Press book for this month looks really good

>185 ipsoivan: you're welcome!
>186 Robertgreaves: yes, I downloaded it, thought it looked really fun.

Just passing and waving, Jackie!

I have another acquisition to report - via Bookbub, it's very prescient given the news this week about the 'Panama Papers'. Treasure Islands: Tax Havens and the Men who Stole the World.

Edited to add: I'm hopefully just a few days away from finishing 2 ROOTs and thus exceeding my target. Which means that (for a while) I will be below the 1:2 ROOTS:acquired ratio :)

>189 Jackie_K: Way to go!

>189 Jackie_K: wow you are REALLY CLOSE! And awesome that you'll be below the 1:2 ratio! :)

Hi Jackie! Thanks for visiting my thread and thought I'd return the favor. I loved the Libraries-J.K. Rowling link and congrats on your hard ROOTs work.

According to your tickers you only need one more ROOT, Jackie! I know you can do it!

Good work on those ROOts. Congrats on being almost finished!

Thanks everyone. I can now report that I have met and exceeded my target for 2016 - thanks to just finishing a book twice! In English it is Never Mind the Balkans, Here's Romania by Mike Ormsby, and the same book in Romanian is Grand Bazar Romania. I read it a chapter at a time first in English then in Romanian, to help me with my language (and I have to say, I'm glad I did it that way rather than reading the whole book in English and then the Romanian afterwards). I'm definitely counting it as two ROOTs though - reading a whole book in Romanian is no mean feat, even with the English one alongside to help! I started it at the new year, and dipped in and out between then and now.

I really enjoyed this book. Mike is a British expat, former journalist who has made his home in Romania (although he still travels the world with work), and I have to say that I absolutely recognised his Romania (speaking as someone who has also lived and worked in Romania over a similar period to this book, although for shorter periods of time). Sometimes I cringed, sometimes I smiled, a couple of times I laughed out loud (especially at the bit about trying to persuade the locals to open the train window during a summer journey. Oh my goodness that brought back memories!). I felt like an insider at times as there were things that he wrote about that I remember from when I was there - Sibiu in 2007 when it was European Capital of Culture, and also in Bucharest when the fountains near the Palace of the People were dyed all sorts of colours for a couple of days. I wonder if I crossed the road in front of him anytime? Thankfully probably not if his descriptions of Bucharest taxi-drivers are anything to go by!

I really liked the set-up of this book - it reminded me of the Radio 4 'From Our Own Correspondent' in that it is a series of vignettes of different times and places and people. Some of the people appear in various chapters, others are just one-offs, but all were spot-on in their portrayal. Most of the vignettes were only 3 or 4 pages long, so it was really easy to read a couple at a time in each language, but some of them were longer (10 or 12 pages) and my only (ridiculously minor) complaint is that most of the longer ones were towards the end, so when I was in the home strait and just wanted to read a quick few pages at a time it felt like a slight incline at the end of a marathon.

I definitely recommend this book to anyone who's interested in contemporary Romania. It's definitely warts-and-all, but full of affection as well as irritation - this particular one-time expat thought it was great.

>195 Jackie_K: Congrats, Jackie. I know that was work as well as enjoyment!

Congrats on meeting your goal for this year! And kudos on finishing the Romanian book, great work!

Thank you everyone! It was harder work than I expected, and I am glad I had the English version alongside it. I think I'm going to read in English for a bit now, to try and chill out a bit!

I have a job interview later this week so reading will take a back seat while I prepare for that. But I've already pulled the next title out of the Jar of Fate and am really looking forward to this next book, so hopefully I will be able to get through it quickly.

>198 Jackie_K: oooh, good luck with the interview!

Good luck with the interview, Jackie! And congrats on reaching your goal!

Good luck with the interview! What type of job is it?

>199 Britt84: >200 connie53: >201 Tess_W: Thank you very much! It is a research position at my local university, on a project which combines a lot of my interests and experience. It's part-time, which absolutely suits me from the point of view of having a small child. It is a fixed-term job for a couple of years, finishing just about the time my daughter starts school, so the timing would be perfect. I have to prepare a presentation for the interview, so that is going to be this week's main job!

Again Good luck, Jackie.

Sounds marvelous, right up your alley! Good luck, again!

Congrats on meeting your ROOT goal and best of luck with the interview!! Crossing all things crossable.

Good luck with your interview!

Good luck, Jackie!

>195 Jackie_K: Wooohooo Congrats!!


>198 Jackie_K: and Good luck on your interview!!
>202 Jackie_K: sounds like a wonderful job!!

Any news about the interview?

Thank you everyone. I heard today I didn't get the job. The interview went OK, but I guess there was just a better person on the day for that particular role. I am OK about this - I'm going to have a weekend of not thinking about it, and then start planning alternative routes to world domination :D I do have some ideas, but as they involve self-employment I need to think very carefully.

>210 Jackie_K: oh bummer, well their loss, and I'm sure the right job for you is out there!!
Good that you are okay with it :) Enjoy your weekend!
We'll patiently await a detailing of your take-over-the-world plan ;)

>211 avanders: You can take sitting in a hollowed-out volcano stroking a hairless cat as a given :D

lol oh good, I was hoping you wouldn't forget that one! ;)

>210 Jackie_K: It's "fate", "providence" or whatever you call it! I'm a firm believer that doors close or open for a reason; often times when we don't understand. But I agree with Ava, that the perfect job is just waiting for you!

I'm sorry to hear about the interview but hope your next plot for world domination succeeds ;)

>214 Tess_W: There's a saying here in Scotland, "what's for you won't go by you". Sometimes I find it really annoying (when *yet another* thing has gone by me, usually!), but other times very comforting.

Re world domination, I really should just watch my daughter and learn from her. I'm pretty sure she's been planning world domination since day 1! (she's currently attempting it through the medium of the tantrum, though, which I'm not convinced is her most successful strategy).

>216 Jackie_K: LOL at the daughter/tantrum!

>216 Jackie_K: Hi Jackie! I agree - doors open and close for a reason and perhaps there's one just waiting for you. Can I be on your team when your plan for world domination comes to fruition?

I envy your daughter her tantrum - I'd like to have one now but it doesn't really become a 62 year old woman to scream and carry on and fling herself around. Sad, but true. Control is overrated.

>201 Tess_W: So sorry to hear, but I think you've found a way to get over it.

Ahhh, the tantrum fase! I forgot about that.

>218 karenmarie: I know the feeling. My heart goes out to you, LOL

Thank you everyone for the commiserations. I really am fine with it - it would have been a great job for me, but I choose to believe that there is better in store for me, somehow and somewhere!

In the meantime, I have finished my 3rd ROOT for April, and 14th for the year (2 over target). I thoroughly enjoyed this one and would absolutely recommend it. Under a Red Sky: Memoir of a Childhood in Communist Romania by Haya Leah Molnar is the memoir, written as an adult in the US, of the first 10 years of her life in Romania in the mid-late 50s/early 60s, before her family emigrated first to Israel and later to the US. Born Eva Zimmerman, initially her family shield her from her Jewish roots to protect her from anti-Semitism. Gradually she picks up more about her Jewish identity, the fate of various family members during and after the War, the prejudice they still faced two decades later, and also more about the realities of life in a surveillance society - having to be careful who she talked to, and observing her family trying to outwit potential 'moles'. Although written as an adult, this memoir captured a child's eye view of the time beautifully, I thought, and is a fascinating insight into a time in history less written about than the decades before it.

I only had a couple of very minor quibbles about this book, which is why I ended up giving it 4 stars rather than 4.5. Firstly (and most pettily), the book's designers fell into the trap that lots of books relating to Communist era eastern Europe fall into, namely setting their titles in a faux-Cyrillic script. In this case, each 'A' is replaced with the Cyrillic letter that looks a bit like an 'A', but is in fact Cyrillic for 'D'. It's in the main title of the book, and in each chapter title, and it just got on my nerves. I suppose I should be grateful they didn't reverse the 'R's as well, like they did in the film poster for the film Borat (I wouldn't have watched that film anyway, I don't think, but that was the final straw for me, and I have boycotted it ever since because of that!). Secondly, although the descriptions in the book were beautiful and evocative, I occasionally got a bit irritated that they seemed to stray into the dialogue in the book, particularly when Eva was asking her parents to describe their past. It just made those sections of dialogue less natural-sounding, and just jarred a little. Not enough to spoil the overall impression of the book, as I say I think it was wonderful, but it was just enough for me to notice and wish the dialogue had been written slightly differently in those places.

Anyway, those very minor quibbles aside, I strongly recommend this book. Eva's/Haya's (Eva is her Romanian birth name, Haya the Jewish name she was allocated on arrival in Israel, the point at which the book finishes) family were a wonderful set of characters, and she evokes the time and place and people fantastically.

I'm feeling ever so rebellious - I pulled out the next title from the Jar of Fate, and was all set to start reading it last night, but then made a discovery which has led to me abandoning it for another book. I originally pulled out The Brothers Karamazov, and although my heart sunk a little (it's not War & Peace, but is still a bit of a chunkster) I was ready to give it a go. As it happens I have two freebie copies on my eReader - one from Project Gutenberg and one from the bookstore that Sony promoted before it was bought out by Kobo. When I opened the first one I found that it was the translation by Constance Garnett, and was instantly put off - who the translator was didn't occur to me when I first downloaded all these books, but since I started War & Peace I've found out a bit more about the various translations of Russian classics, and Constance Garnett is way at the bottom of my list. My friend with the Masters degree in Russian literature described her as thinking she was Jane Austen and translating that way, which results in a massive clash of styles which just doesn't suit the Russian sensibility at all. And then her wikipedia entry includes a sentence which decided me once and for all against her work:

"In her translations, she worked quickly, and smoothed over certain small portions for "readability", particularly in her translations of Dostoyevsky. In instances where she did not understand a word or phrase, she omitted that portion."

I'm sorry, but if I'm going to read a translation I want it to be accurate and the full thing. So I checked the second copy of the book I had, and unfortunately that was the Garnett translation too. I've just checked Project Gutenberg and they've only got the one version, so I have decided (particularly in light of the fact that they are both freebies) to just not bother with them and eliminate them from my library. If I find a free/very cheap version translated by someone more credible then I will add it again, but that's that for now. I'm not going to count it as a ROOT as I didn't read a single word, but it does feel good to have one less title in the Jar of Fate anyway! :)

>221 Jackie_K: you know, I never pay attention to translators.... but I agree w/ your response to Constance Garnett's style and approach and I will try to avoid her in the future too!!
Appreciate the info :)

So... new book from the jar of fate?

>222 avanders: The new book is a 100 pager. Result! :D (it's We are the Roma!: One Thousand Years of Discrimination by Valeriu Niculae. With any luck I'll squeak this one into April's totals too).

>221 Jackie_K: Good idea! I would be interested to hear which translation you do end up picking, if the book comes across your path again.

And as a translator myself (albeit one that does not do literature) I am embarrassed that Garnett simply omitted bits she didn't understand! That does nobody any favours.

>221 Jackie_K: So, which translators does your Russian literature expert friend recommend?

>221 Jackie_K: I read the Pevear and Volokhonsky translation a couple of years ago. I think experts generally approve of their translations. The book itself was a bit of hard work, but that hasn't kept me from eyeing Crime and Punishment as a soon-to-read.

Since I don't know Russian,....any translation for me will suffice. If Garnett leaves out a few words from novels such as W&P and Anna Karenina, will I know or miss them? I'm sure not! But for the purists, here is a great article about Russian translations:

http://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2005/11/07/the-translation-wars

>223 Jackie_K: woo hoo! I kind of love it when I "get to" read smaller books... maybe it's a reflection of how much else is going on in life?

>221 Jackie_K: Translations definitely matter, and Garnett sounds pretty awful.

>225 Robertgreaves: We were mainly talking about War & Peace, and she recommended Pevear & Volokhonsky, or the newer one by Anthony Briggs (mentioned in Tess's article - that is a really good article, I enjoyed it!), although she also said that the Maudes' translation (which is the one I read last year) is OK (that was the one that was approved by Tolstoy). I've other friends who also rave about Pevear & Volokhonsky, so I think they are the ones I would seek out.

I downloaded quite a few of the Russian classics, I'm going to have to check them all out now!

>221 Jackie_K: Oh, crap, I think my copy of The Brothers Karamazov -- which I constantly keep intending to get to Real Soon Now -- is the Garnett translation, too. (I'm not at home so I can't check the book itself, but LibraryThing seems to think it is, anyway.) And that sounds unbelievably awful. SIGH. Right, well, new plan, if it does turn out to be that version: replace the book, and then read it Real Soon!

I read Anna Karenina with at he Pevear and Volokhonsky translation and War and Peace with the Garnett translation. To be honest I'm no Russian literature guru, I could find no argument with either.

>232 Tess_W: I think I have to face the fact that in some things, I'm a bit of a snob, and I guess this is one of them! Not that I'm proud of it, but it's just how I am.

I've finished We are the Roma!: One Thousand Years of Discrimination by Valeriu Nicolae today - it was a short (just under 100 pager) book written by a Romanian Roma who heads up one of the main Romanian Roma NGOs in Bucharest and is an eloquent manifesto calling for greater understanding and more considered action to address issues of inclusion and discrimination. It gave me a lot of food for thought. 4/5.

>232 Tess_W: By the way Tess, I keep meaning to say to you - I am using the bookplates you sent me over Christmas as bookmarks for all my paper book reading, and they make me smile every time I see them as they remind me of the kindness and generosity of my unseen online friends!

>233 Jackie_K: You can be snob in that area, tis one in which you are permitted!
>234 Jackie_K: Oh good! I'm glad you are enjoying them!

One more acquisition to confess to: Kobo bookstore have an 80% off sale, most of the books I wasn't interested in, but did find Neil Gaiman's Stardust for 99p (and I did check with my husband first that he didn't already have a copy!).

>233 Jackie_K: I do think translations are important, of course, when I'm doing historical research. However, when reading for pleasure, meh!

>236 Jackie_K: Happy Saturday! I've started checking my LT catalog on my smartphone before buying books. It saves duplicates. 80% is fantastic and glad you found a Neil Gaiman.

>238 karenmarie: I don't catalogue books I haven't yet read, so can't do that, but did discover when I was writing out my little slips for the Jar of Fate that I had a couple of duplicates I had no idea about. I should be pleased there weren't more, I guess! I wouldn't normally check with my husband, as we have such different tastes in reading, especially in fiction, but he is the Neil Gaiman fan here!

I have an achievement I wish to share. Today I decided not to get this month's free University of Chicago Press ebook. This is a very rare thing for me, and feels like a little victory against the encroaching TBR pile.

I shouldn't feel too smug though, as I did buy a book two days ago as Verso were having a 50% off sale on a few of their titles. I've decided that I'm just going to do one post tallying all my new acquisitions at the end of each month, rather than confessing each one in individual posts. I can't think why I didn't think to do that before.

What's the book fromCUP?? I live vicariously...

It's "Ebert's Bests" (no touchstone), a collection of Roger Ebert's 'best of' lists. I didn't fancy it either.

>240 Jackie_K: LOL, Jackie! When I was young my best friend was Catholic and was supposed to go to confession each Saturday morning. She told me she only went once a month, saved up all her "sins" for a month!

>238 karenmarie: >239 Jackie_K: interesting... when I originally signed up for LibraryThing way back when (almost a decade ago now?), that was actually my primary motivation... cataloging all the books in the house, esp. those I hadn't read, so I didn't get duplicates! The only exception (to acquiring duplicates) tends to come at the library clearance sale (twice a year), because the books are so cheap (as many as you can fit in a grocery paper bag, which is usually around 30-35 "normal sized" books, for $5) and it's so frantic in there, I don't take the time to confirm. Then I just give away the duplicates :)

>240 Jackie_K: whoa Jackie - congrats! Definitely a victory! Do feel smug, because it's even more of an accomplishment since you recently bought a book... not less of one!

>243 Tess_W: LOL, that is *exactly* the sentiment I was aiming for! :D

>242 Robertgreaves: I've never heard of Roger Ebert, and I'm not really much of a film buff, so I had zero interest in it. However, there have been plenty of their other free books where I've known next to nothing about the topic, but have found the book really interesting (others which have been more of a dud, but were at least worth the try). I just find it very difficult to get that excited about film/TV.

>245 Jackie_K: Roger Ebert was an American TV/film critic, possibly why you hadn't heard of him. Originally he partnered with Gene Siskel and their chemistry/opinions made them fun to watch. They were with the Chicago Sun-Times.

I've absolutely given up on books of lists.

>242 Robertgreaves: Thanks, Robert. Sounds like a pass for me too. Sounds like they are trying to appeal to a wider audience than the usual university press followers.

Sounds like you are doing a very good job with the book buying restraint, Jackie. When it comes to book buying I don't have the same kind of willpower but I think I might be slowing down, probably because I don't have much time to hang around in bookstores.

>240 Jackie_K: Congrats! I think every new book passed up (when shrinking the TBR pile is a goal) is something to be proud of :). Also, I really liked Stardust when I read it a couple of years ago; that's cool that you found it so inexpensively.

>start planning alternative routes to world domination
Go girl! And kudos on going for the job and going for a better translation!

I finished my first ROOT for May yesterday (16th for the year). Harris in History and Legend by Bill Lawson. This is one of the few books I can more or less date when I got it, as I bought it while on honeymoon on Harris, so know I have had it since the beginning of January 2008. I'm pretty sure I bought it in a bookshop in Stornoway. It is mentioned in a lot of the guides to the Outer Hebrides, which is why I bought it - Lawson is a Harris resident and genealogy buff, and this book is fantastically well researched and fascinating to read. I did find, as he uses the Gaelic spellings for names and places, that it slowed me down a little bit, and it left me wishing I knew how to at least read and pronounce the various letter combinations so I could read them correctly in my head. Gaelic is such a beautiful language, particularly to listen to - I could honestly listen to the phone book being read in Gaelic - but it is pretty impenetrable to look at!

Anyway, I digress. It's a really interesting read, about a beautiful part of the world. Some of the stories are probably taller tales than others (there is a huge oral storytelling tradition in that part of the world), but Lawson is very open about that, and it's no worse a book for that! I also learnt a lot about the history of the island, including something I hadn't realised before, which was about how complicated the Highland/island clearances were. It was also a good reminder of how hard life was there. A good lesson for me, as I do tend to romanticise Scottish island life somewhat. Highly recommended for anyone into the Hebrides, and/or genealogy. 4/5.

>251 Jackie_K: What a small world...I teach about the Highland Clearances during my Industrialization unit!

>252 Tess_W: It's a huge part of Scottish history, but I guess because I'm English so wasn't taught about it at school I've just gleaned bits and pieces here and there, mainly since moving here, so had a very simplified view of it all. I hadn't realised, for example, how when parts of the island were cleared for sheep, not everybody went to either the big cities or to the New World. Some of them were forced onto ever smaller crofts on the other side of the island. And of course a handful of people were forced to stay to work on the sheep farms. The system of rents/tenancies etc was very complicated. I think I want to read up some more about the Napier Commission.

>253 Jackie_K: I think the Enclosure Act in England was the counterpart to the Scottish Highland Clearances. When we get this unit, I offer my students 5 points extra credit if they will "decipher" or put this doggerel in modern English: The law locks up the man or woman who steals the goose from off the common; but leaves the greater villain loose who steals the common from the goose. Very few students "get" it!

Hi Jackie!

>240 Jackie_K: Yeah, yeah and hurrah! Good for you!

>251 Jackie_K: Interesting sounding read, Jackie! Thanks for sharing.

>251 Jackie_K: Very cool that you are able to track that book's origin in your life, and that it has such a romantic beginning ;) And even better - that it turned out to be such a great read for you!

>257 avanders: Completely coincidentally, the next book out of the Jar was from the same time, as it was a wedding present! (it couldn't be more different though!)

>258 Jackie_K: wow, what are the chances?! That's so fun to be able to bring back wedding memories based on the whim of your jar of fate ;) Hope the next one is/was as enjoyable!

I love your "Jar of Fate"; knowing me I would pull one out, say "Nah", and put it back in!

>260 karenmarie: I worried about that, but it hasn't happened yet! I did decide, after reading a book in Romanian earlier this year, that if I picked another one out (I have a few) within a few books then I would put it back and choose something else, as it did take quite a lot mentally even though I also had the English version to help me out. Other than that though I'm trying to be quite strict with myself - I wanted to give the books that I have thought 'nah' about up till now as much of a chance as the others! And apart from one absolute turkey towards the start of the year, which I abandoned after 3 chapters, I've been pretty pleased with the Jar's choices so far!

ETA: As I've colour-coded them for categories, and had 11 categories overall, I decided to also include a 12th random category which means that after I've read one from each of the 11 categories picked randomly from the Jar, I will choose a book that I really want to read and can't wait for Fate to take forever to bring it to the surface! So that has added a bit of sparkle to the challenge too, and means that I try and get through the books quite quickly if there's one I'm particularly excited about and really want to read soon. And if later on I pick out that book from the Jar, then I can go right back in and pick another one instead. I honestly can't believe how exciting it has made reading - I wish I'd started doing it years ago!

I'm glad that you've got a method that works for you and makes your reading more exciting. Brava!

>261 Jackie_K: Having a category for a book you are excited to read sounds like a great idea, and one that I might incorporate into my reading the TBR alphabetically by author challenge. I think I may allow a wild card read every 5th book, just to shake things up.

Oh, how fortuitous: that will be soon! Ok, maybe every 10th book!

>260 karenmarie: lol I think w/o any external accountability, I'd do the same.... ;)
With my RL bookgroup, though, there is that accountability, so it works for us for that...

>261 Jackie_K: fun new sparkle! I love how you're always tackling your challenges so creatively!

>253 Jackie_K: The Highland clearances are complicated, Jackie. It all depended on what the landlord wanted to do. The people living on the land did own it but were tenants, sometimes for many generations. The Napier Commission didn't come about until many highlanders had been left one way or another. Some of the people who had left were not that badly off but headed out for better prospects when they saw the writing on the wall. My Scottish forbears left Skye and Islay and did well for themselves in their new country.

>265 Familyhistorian: I think what I hadn't fully appreciated was that when a family was a tenant, as the children grew up they were often given a section of the croft to work (rather than a new croft somewhere else), meaning that each croft in effect got smaller and smaller until they were not able to support the family sustainably.

Interestingly, now in Scotland we have a lot of calls for significant land reforms as we still have large areas of the country which are owned by a relatively small number of rich landowners (quite a few of whom are unknown to the authorities). Some community buy-outs have been very successful and are a good example of sustainable living - it's something I'd like to find out more about, and is something I find very appealing in theory as a way of life (could I hack it in reality? I don't know!).

A round up of my May acquisitions:

1. Kate Evans - Red Rosa (touchstones want to link to Wuthering Heights).
2. Lisa Lynch - The C-Word.
3. Ben Goldacre - Bad Pharma.

In contrast, I only managed to finish one ROOT (Bill Lawson - Harris in History and Legend).

It got me thinking about my ROOT/acquisition ratios some more - I was aiming for no more than 1:2, and so far I've managed that (16 read:27 acquired), but some months have been more successful than others! So the stats (although it's only me that's interested) are:

January - 3 ROOTS / 5 acquired.
February - 2 ROOTS / 4 acquired.
March - 6 ROOTS / 12 acquired (whoops).
April - 4 ROOTS / 3 acquired.
May - 1 ROOT / 3 acquired.

So April has proved that I can, if I really want to, read more than I acquire. I wonder if I can manage that again? :)

If it makes you feel better about your March, I acquired 15 books in May! ;)

Hope you like the Ben Goldacre. That's the one of his I haven't read yet, but I've enjoyed his other work. He was actually giving a talk in Canada earlier this month and I wanted my brother to go on my behalf, but he couldn't :(

>268 rabbitprincess: yes, I like Ben Goldacre a lot, and he is a really engaging speaker so it's a shame your brother missed the talk. I think the #Alltrials campaign that he is a part of is really important (to ensure that all clinical trials report their data and findings, rather than just those with positive results).

>267 Jackie_K: Hi Jackie! You're ROOTs/acquisitions are very reasonable, in my opinion - but I'm very good at compartmentalizing and absolutely refuse to compare my ROOTs read vs. books acquired. *shudder*

>270 karenmarie: I did the comparison for the first time last year, and was really shocked! (my ratio last year was around 1:3, so for this year I decided to aim for 1:2. I'm pleased that I'm there or thereabouts so far, it's a definite improvement on last year).

>269 Jackie_K: I would have gone myself if the timing had worked out better. It was the weekend before I was planning to come down to visit anyway, and I couldn't justify making the trek home (four hours by train) two weekends in a row.

It is a very important initiative! It's horrifying to think/read about how many trials are quietly swept under the rug or modified to present the results in the best possible light rather than being honest.

>267 Jackie_K: Those acquisition amounts look very small to me, Jackie. You are doing very well even if you aren't meeting your self imposed goal.

>273 Familyhistorian: thank you - I am pretty close to my self imposed goal (in terms of ratio anyway!), although it's not doing anything much for reducing my actual TBR numbers! I'm pleased I'm doing better than last year (both in terms of reading more and acquiring fewer - relatively speaking!).

I have another ROOT to add to the pile - #17 this year, and #1 for June. There doesn't appear to be a touchstone for it, and the only version of it I was able to find to add to my LT library was the audio version, so the OCD in me is a bit wound up by that! But hey, a ROOT's a ROOT, and I know I read it :D

It's another short one - I am still working my way through the fiction book that I started mid-May (I'm about half way, and enjoying it), but I got curious as to what the Jar of Fate had for me next, so took a sneaky look and as it was a very short one (less than 80 pages) I started it straight away to increase my numbers and make up for my slow May! The book is by Rebecca Schiller and is called All That Matters. It is basically a manifesto for introducing a human rights perspective into women's choices in childbirth. It is a very good introduction to issues around this, although the academic in me would have liked a heftier tome going into more detail. It is coming very much from a feminist perspective (I approve!), and I appreciated her focus on dignity and choice whatever the woman's choice - as the book started with a description of her own home birth I was worried that it might be advocating primarily for non-interventionist physiological births (I had an elective Caesarian, which was absolutely positive and the right thing for me), but she was very fair about this, and whilst acknowledging that most women would prefer a physiological birth she did nevertheless advocate against a one-size-fits-all approach. This is a very readable introduction - 4/5.

>275 Jackie_K: Sounds like a great read! I have never heard of an elective Caesarian!

>276 Tess_W: I wonder if it's different terminology across the Pond - it's just a C/section that is planned in advance (as opposed to an emergency section if labour progresses scarily and needs to then go to section because the baby has to get out Right This Minute). As it happens mine was only planned a couple of days in advance - I went in to be induced, but nothing happened despite 3 days of gels and pessaries and other delights (!), so they said I could have a day off and they could try again, or I could have a section the next day! Someone else I know had an elective Caesarian because of placenta praevia (so they already knew there was no way she would be able to give birth physiologically).

>277 Jackie_K: Ok, just not called elective in US....I also had 2 C-Sections, the first I went through labor for 24 hours and only dilated to a 1....then the baby's heartbeat slowed--he was getting tired! Then the 2nd was scheduled because the Dr. said if I did not dilate with the 1st, then then probably would not with the 2nd. So I guess my 2nd was elective!

>276 Tess_W: - >278 Tess_W: A lot of doctors in the US will automatically schedule a C-section for subsequent pregnancies if the first was a C-section. It is an assumption, but probably a valid one in most cases, that subsequent labors would have problems too. I had a C-section with my daughter because I went through 44 hours of labor, only dilated to 5, and daughter's heartbeat slowed with each contraction. Plus it was back labor..... no fun at all. Total of 45 hours labor, once they decided to do the C-section. I'm grateful that we both lived.

My niece's wife's C-section was scheduled many months in advance because she had had polyps and cysts removed before she could even get pregnant, and they knew they couldn't let the baby go to term for what we call here in the US a vaginal birth because of the risk to Amber. My gorgeous great-nephew Oliver turns 1 on January 12th, and Amber had no complications from the C-section.

>267 Jackie_K: inspiring! I ... definitely need to work on that whole aspect of book ownership ;p

>275 Jackie_K: lol it always irks me when I can't find the touchstone.. sometimes it just seems to be a weird glitch, but some of them don't exist. And although I've searched, I've not yet been able to determine how to create a missing touchstone. I *think* the website coding is supposed to do it automatically when a title is entered... but I don't know. Anyone else know?

>280 avanders: I'm not sure. When I was adding it to my library I was at least able to find the audio book, but I couldn't see it anywhere on the touchstone list (turns out about 20 million people have written a book which features the phrase 'All That Matters').

>279 karenmarie: Interestingly there is quite a push (sorry pun not intended!) for what we call VBAC over here (vaginal birth after Caesarian), as the thinking is that in otherwise low-risk pregnancies it isn't inevitable that subsequent deliveries have to be Caesarian. There's no guarantee, of course, but overall I think I like the approach. Having said that, if I were to ever have another baby I would happily just go for another section. Mine was a very positive experience overall, although I know that many women do not like the thought of being cut open. I must admit I didn't feel at all like I missed out through not going through labour!

Well. I've just written a long message asking for fellow ROOTers' advice about whether to buy 5 books or just 1 with my recent birthday money, only for me to do something stupid and have it disappear into the ether. So rather than spend ages typing it out again, I just bought them all :D

They're all ebooks, so at least I'm not adding to the (external) clutter. And one of them does fall into my sub-£2 rule. And it's not my birthday every day (is that enough justifying myself? It has cheered me up no end, so was definitely worth it!).

>282 Jackie_K: Birthdays always justify books and you've even got special money for them! A no-brainer to me.

Happy Birthday, late or early..... did I miss it?

Haha I think your computer just wanted you to indulge for your birthday ;) Enjoy your gift loot -- it doesn't count when you buy it with other people's money!

>283 karenmarie: thank you Karen, it was yesterday (but I didn't advertise it on the day, it's not a significant one thankfully!).

>284 rabbitprincess: excellent point! I'm not sure I'll quite go so far as to declare them freebies, but I like the idea!!

Slightly annoyingly though, I have had to contact kobo's facebook page to ask for help - when I went to sync the new books from the website to my desktop app, one of them didn't appear in the library. A closer look at the page for the book shows that it is only downloadable on IOS, Android, Windows or a tablet - I have to say, it hadn't even entered my head that kobo would sell something that couldn't be downloaded to one of their eReaders, so I never even checked! (won't make that mistake again!). I don't own a tablet, and my eyesight is not good enough for me to read it on my phone - if I'd realised I couldn't get it on my eReader I would have bought a paper copy that I know I could read! Typically, it is the one book out of the five that I would have got if I'd decided to just go for one rather than all of them. Anyway, hopefully they can help - thanks to a tip from folk here last year I learnt that the kobo facebook page is the place to go to for help, as I already know (from bitter experience) that their official customer service is rubbish! Hopefully they will be able to help me get it refunded so I can buy it in a readable version.

Happy late birthday! All birthdays are significant, you lived another year to tell about it! And it's your birthday so whether you wanted to buy books or elephants, tis your choice!

>286 Tess_W: What Tess said!!!!!

>281 Jackie_K: lol yeah, I think that's the difficulty, isn't it. I don't really understand the touchstone algorithm here on LT.. maybe if I did... ;p

>282 Jackie_K: oh no! I hate it when I lose messages x-|
lol well that's a good use for your birthday money ;)
And also,

>285 Jackie_K: that is completely irritating!

Happy Birthday, Jackie!

I think I'm going to figure out my reading vs buying stats. I like the idea!

Thank you everyone for the birthday wishes! I am of an age where I don't feel any different from the previous year, but very very very different from 10 years ago!!!

>289 connie53: I found it very eye-opening - last year it was a bit shocking, but I'm encouraged this year that I'm not buying quite so much.

>290 Jackie_K: I did all right when I see my stats! Bought less books than read books.

Happy belated birthday, Jackie!

My 2nd ROOT for June (#18 overall) is now finished. This is an academic tome that I have been reading off and on for the last 3 years - I got it as one of the chapters was something I wanted to reference in an article I wrote; I have to say that that chapter, by Tatiana Zhurzhenko, was by far the best in the volume, but I'm glad I've read the rest of it now. It is edited by Krassimira Daskalova, Caroline Hornstein Tomic, Karl Kaser & Filip Radunovic, and the book is called Gendering Post-Socialist Transition: Studies of Changing Gender Perspectives. It is an introductory volume, most importantly by local (as opposed to western) scholars. I'm giving it 3/5 overall, although giving this sort of book a score at all feels a bit odd.

It's good to carry on challenging my brain cells now I'm not working in academia any more! But I'm going to go back to my fiction read for now, for something a bit lighter, and hopefully get that finished by the end of the month.

>293 Jackie_K: Congratulations, Jackie! What perseverance. I admire that. I have personally found that after something heavy I "reward" myself with a lighter fiction read.

ROOT #3 for June, #19 overall was finished yesterday evening. William Goldman's The Princess Bride, the 25th anniversary edition. This is another one I can date when we got it (end of 2007) as it was a wedding present from my sister-in-law. My husband is the one who introduced me to the film, so it was a very apt present.

I absolutely love the film, and so was looking forward to the book but expecting it not to reach the dizzy heights of the film. And so it was - if you're just going to do one or the other, film or book, definitely watch the film! The book is great, of course, when it sticks to the story, but I did find Goldman's asides increasingly annoying, and it probably could have been getting on for a hundred pages shorter without all the extras. So I've just given it 3/5, whereas the film is a resounding 5/5.

Next up is a brand new book which I bought for my real life book group's summer themed read. Luckily I'm counting new books as ROOTs too, and it's a short one, so I may even manage to squeeze another one in before the end of the month.

Strange that such a popular book isn't translated in to Dutch.

>296 connie53: Yes, I would have thought that it would have been, particularly as the film is so well known globally.

I have another ROOT to add - #20 for the year, and my 4th for June. This was a new purchase, for my real-life book group, but as I'm counting my new books too I don't feel too guilty (plus it was nice and short too). I don't get to book group much (it's the group I was part of when I lived in Glasgow, and I've not really been since I moved to Stirling), but I stay in touch with them on facebook, and join in with the book of the month if it appeals or if it's on my TBR list. Each summer for the past few years we have gone with a theme instead, and each of us has just read anything we can find related to that theme. This year's theme is 'weather', I couldn't remember if I had any weather-related titles in the Jar so I did a quick search on amazon for some ideas and came up with Rain: Four Walks in English Weather by Melissa Harrison, which I enjoyed very much. It's only just over 100 pages, and she does four rainy walks in four different English locations, at different times of the year. It's part descriptive travelogue, part natural history, part musing on literature and myth, and I thought it was lovely. I was particularly moved at the end of the final walk (in Dartmoor) where she described scattering her mum's ashes on one of the Tors, and the rain returning the ashes to the landscape her mum loved so much. 4/5.

What's more, the Jar of Fate has given me yet another very short book, so I'll hopefully finish that this evening too! I set my target deliberately low at the start of the year, in case the Jar gave me a succession of chunksters, but it's been the opposite, I think this will be my 6th or 7th short read. Ah well, maybe 2017 will be the year of the chunkster!

>297 Jackie_K: Maybe I'll be able to join you in 2017, the year of the chunkster... ;)

And I've just managed to sneak one more ROOT under the wire, for a total of 21 for the year (5 for June). This was one of my Barter Books purchases last year, Goscinny & Uderzo's Asterix and the Golden Sickle. It was the usual Asterix silliness and puns, great fun. I particularly enjoy the punning of people's names.

I gave it a slightly lower 3/5 (as opposed to 3.5 which I gave the last Asterix book I read) simply because this particular book was a small copy, and I found it really difficult to make out the writing, even with my fancy new varifocals. I've got a couple of other small ones on the TBR, but I'll remember in future to buy the larger copies when I'm adding to my collection.

Yay for spending Birthday money on books! I have a Kobo too. Thanks for the tip about going to their Facebook page, Jackie.

>300 Familyhistorian: I can't stress enough the difference between whoever it is who admins their facebook page and their hopeless customer service dept! I've found you need to send the page a private message rather than writing on their wall though.

I think, with 300 posts and it's the 1st of July, now might be the time for a Part 2 thread. I've never done one of these before, so it may take some time ...