InfoQuest's 2017 ROOTing progress

Hello everyone! Last year, I had very few plans and easily accomplished my goal of 85 ROOTs, eventually reading or rereading 134 books from my shelves. I also managed to read 29 of the books acquired during that year, which was at or around my goal there also. The one goal I didn't reach was regular posting, since I more or less quit doing that in June, alas.

In some ways, I plan for this year's reading to be equally freeform and even a bit more so: I'm still counting readings or rereadings of books I own in any format, and this year, I'm also planning to count those I don't finish (if removed from my collection instead of finishing) and any acquired this year. However, I'm seriously curtailing my acquisitions this year--a limit of 72 physical books from any source--and I'm planning to continue the more thorough weeding process initiated in 2016. So I'm hoping that ROOTing will help accelerate the weeding and so have bumped my 2017 goal up to 100 books, which is probably doable even without the changes.

I'm also planning to do a weekly update on Sunday evenings, so it'll be easier to remember to comment on those books I've really enjoyed (or not), without feeling required to say something about every book, which can get overwhelming. Since apparently touchstones stop working when there are too many in one message, I'm also breaking up the list by quarters, so this first post will list only those books read from the start of January through the end of March.

And so without further ado, the list starts here...

1. Saints and sinners by Tom Holt (1 January)
2. Sister Emily's lightship and other stories by Jane Yolen (2 January)
3. Freddy's cousin Weedly by Walter R. Brooks (2 January) Reread
4. Miss Silver deals with death by Patricia Wentworth (3 January)
5. The Great Trouble : a mystery of London, the blue death, and a boy called Eel by Deborah Hopkinson (3 January)
6. The Widow by Fiona Barton (3 January)
7. Pandora by Holly Hollander by Gene Wolfe (5 January)
8. Uneasy Money by P.G. Wodehouse (7 January) Reread
9. The Wonderful Wizard of Oz by L. Frank Baum (9 January) Reread
10. Rufus M. By Eleanor Estes (10 January) Reread
11. The Light Fantastic by Terry Pratchett (14 January) Reread
12. Freddy and Mr. Camphor by Walter R. Brooks (15 January) Reread
13. The Dispatcher by John Scalzi (15 January)
14. Lady of Quality by Georgette Heyer (18 January)
15. Icebreaker by Lian Tanner (20 January) Early Reviewers
16. The Golf Omnibus by P. G. Wodehouse (25 January) Reread
17. The Tombs of Atuan by Ursula K. LeGuin (27 January)
18. Freddy the Magician by Walter R. Brooks (31 January) Reread
19. Room by Emma Donoghue (1 February)
20. Ethan Frome by Edith Wharton (2 February)
21. Guards! Guards! By Terry Pratchett (6 February) Reread
22. A Moveable Feast by Ernest Hemingway (10 February)
23. Beyond the Western Sea: Escape from Home by Avi (13 February)
24. Moving Pictures by Terry Pratchett (15 February) Reread
25. Beyond the Western Sea: Lord Kirkle's Money by Avi (17 February)
26. Reaper Man by Terry Pratchett (18 February) Reread
27. Small Gods by Terry Pratchett (19 February) Reread
28. Freddy the Pilot by Walter Brooks (20 February) Reread
29. Eleanor & Park by Rainbow Rowell (21 February)
30. Freddy and the Space Ship by Walter Brooks (23 February)
31. St. Thomas Aquinas by G.K. Chesterton (24 February)
32. Men at Arms by Terry Pratchett (25 February) Reread
33. Interesting Times by Terry Pratchett (1 March) Reread
34. The Duke's Children by Anthony Trollope (2 March)
35. Freddy and the Dragon by Walter R. Brooks (7 March) Reread
36. Feet of Clay by Terry Pratchett (9 March) Reread
37. Hogfather by Terry Pratchett (14 March) Reread
38. The Sparrow by Mary Doria Russell (14 March)
39. The Key by Patricia Wentworth (18 March)
40. Carpe Jugulum by Terry Pratchett (25 March) Reread
41. The Third Reich at War by Richard J. Evans (25 March)
42. Big Money by by P. G. Wodehouse (28 March) Reread
43. She came back by Patricia Wentworth (28 March)
44. The talisman ring by Georgette Heyer (31 March) Reread
45. The Fifth Elephant by Terry Pratchett (31 March) Reread

ROOTs for April through June (2nd quarter)

46. The Truth by Terry Pratchett (1 April) Reread
47. Eggs, Beans, and Crumpets by P.G. Wodehouse (1 April) Reread
48. Daniel Deronda by George Eliot (12 April) Reread
49. Working for Bigfoot by Jim Butcher (13 April)
50. Down and out in Purgatory by Tim Powers (19 April)
51. Latter End by Patricia Wentworth (20 April)
52. Wicked Uncle by Patricia Wentworth (23 April)
53. Words and Rules by Steven Pinker (27 April)
54. Eternity Ring by Patricia Wentworth (9 May) Reread
55. Thud! by Terry Pratchett (9 May) Reread
56. The Catherine-Wheel by Patricia Wentworth (11 May)
57. Miss Silver Comes to Stay by Patricia Wentworth (16 May)
58. Making Money by Terry Pratchett (17 May) Reread
59. Unseen Academicals by Terry Pratchett (21 May) Reread
60. How God Became King by N. T. Wright (23 May)
61. Pawn in Frankincense by Dorothy Dunnett (26 May)
62. Ninefox Gambit by Yoon Ha Lee (29 May)
63. Venetia by Georgette Heyer (31 May) Unintentional reread
64. Every Heart a Doorway by Seanan McGuire (1 June)
65. Snuff by Terry Pratchett (4 June) Reread
66. Cards of Grief by Jane Yolen (9 June)
67. Hamlet, Revenge! by Michael Innes (24 June)
68. Yvain: The Knight of the Lion by M.T. Anderson & A. Offermann (25 June)
69. St Francis of Assisi by G.K. Chesterton (30 June)

ROOTs for July through September (3rd quarter)

70. The Corinthian by Georgette Heyer (17 July) Reread
71. A Comedy of Terrors by Michael Innes (20 July)
72. Mystery Mile by Margery Allingham (25 July) Reread
73. Three Men in a Boat by Jerome K. Jerome (27 July) Reread
74. Moby Dick by Herman Melville (28 July) Reread
75. Behind the Throne by K.B. Wagers (31 July)
76. Larklight by Philip Reeve (14 August)
77. Orthodoxy by G.K. Chesterton (15 August) Reread
78. Sinners in the Hands of a Loving God by Brian Zahnd (19 August)
79. Margery Allingham Box Set 1: Look to the Lady, Police at the Funeral, Sweet Danger by Margery Allingham (25 August) Reread
80. Raising Steam by Terry Pratchett (mid to late August)
81. Through the Wall by Patricia Wentworth (4 September)
82. Fuzzy Nation by John Scalzi (23 September)
83. The Forever War by Joe Haldeman (24 September)
84. The Mary Roberts Rinehart Crime Book by Mary Roberts Rinehart (30 September) Partial reread

ROOTs for October through December (4th quarter)

85. The Fashion in Shrouds by Margery Allingham (3 October) Reread
86. Traitor's Purse by Margery Allingham (7 October) Reread
87. Parable of the Sower by Octavia Butler (14 October)
88. Parable of the Talents by Octavia Butler (14 October)
89. The Canon: A Whirligig Tour of the Beautiful Basics of Science by Natalie Angier (17 October)
90. Raven Stratagem by Yoon Ha Lee (4 November)
91. The Tiger in the Smoke by Margery Allingham (6 November) Reread
92. Bellwether by Connie Willis (6 November) Reread
93. Rescuing Jesus : how people of color, women, & queer Christians are reclaiming evangelicalism by Deborah Jian Lee (8 November)
94. Step Aside, Pops: A Hark! A Vagrant Collection by Kate Beaton (9 November) Reread
95. Raid of no return : a World War II tale of the Doolittle Raid by Nathan Hale (10 November)
96. The Foundling by Georgette Heyer (12 November)
97. Underground Airlines by Ben Winters (24 November)
98. The Estate of the Beckoning Lady by Margery Allingham (25 November) Reread
99. Whose Body by Dorothy Sayers (30 November) Reread
100. The Silent Pool by Patricia Wentworth (30 November)
101. Black sheep by Georgette Heyer (3 December)
102. Vanishing point by Patricia Wentworth (15 December)
103. What if? : serious scientific answers to absurd hypothetical questions by Randall Munroe (17 December) Reread
104. A Lot Like Christmas: Stories by Connie Willis (21 December)
105. Just William at Christmas by Richmal Crompton (22 December) Reread
106. Rumpole at Christmas by John Mortimer (22 December Reread
107. The Story of the Treasure Seekers by E. Nesbit (28 December) Reread
108. The Emperor's Snuff-Box by John Dickson Carr (31 December)

Acquisitions and Weeding Process



As mentioned in my initial post, I'm curtailing my physical book acquisitions this year, primarily for space and logistical purposes. While I'm not planning a move in the immediate future, I expect to do so in the next couple years and so hope to reduce my physical book holdings to 2000 or fewer within that time, which will be easier to move and shelve than my current 2600+ volume library. Mental health also plays a role, as dueling anxieties make the ownership of thousands of weighty tomes both a panic-inducing hazard and a consummation devoutly to be wished. It's complicated, but I've decided it's probably better to go with fewer books and ignore the irrational reasons on both sides.

So I'm going to attempt to add only 72 paper books this year, which is half those acquired in 2016 and (coincidentally) an average of 6 per month. I'm not counting ebooks or e-audiobooks, since those take up no space and haven't been a major expense till now anyway. Also, I don't plan to list titles here, but all items tagged "acquired in 2017" in the Your Library collection will be the relevant titles and will be counted in the ticker above. I'm not sure yet what to do about any acquired-then-weeded titles, but we'll see how that goes.

I'm also gradually weeding through my collection and will occasionally update the ticker below to readjust the number of physical items in my catalog. At the start of the year, I've got 2631 books in "Your Library," though I know there are some uncatalogued items still lying around, so the total is a bit higher. So as I add more books and weed them, I'll adjust this ticker accordingly. It's a weight loss ticker, so it's saying pounds instead of books, which is rather disconcerting but thankfully not relevant.



Ticker died due to lack of use, but as of 1 June, Your Library count is down to 2511 books, so I've deaccessed 120 books (more with the few uncatalogued). Most have been removed in the past week.

Down to 2259 as of 20 June after another long weeding session this past weekend. There are still two bookcases and a couple boxes to go through, so while it's unlikely I'll get down to 2000 in this round (and I actually have a few books to add, alas), things are definitely moving in the right direction!

Good luck with your plans for reducing your physical library. Happy ROOTing.

Welcome back and good luck with your different goals! Your ROOTing is off to a good start!

Welcome back & Happy 2017 ROOTing!

All the best with your goals, and happy new year!

Happy ROOTing, Rachel. I love all those tickers.

I wish you success for your endeavor and enjoyment in your reading!

Welcome back and good luck with your challenge!

Best of luck with your goals - I, too, expect we will need to move sometime in the not too distant future (and I have run out of additional shelf space), so am hoping to do a better job of weeding (and general decluttering) this year, so I can empathize with the conflicting oppressive versus desirous feelings.

Happy rooting in 2017!

Thanks for the well wishes, everyone!

So far, so good on the reading front. I've read approximately one ROOT per day, though the first three had been started before the new year. I don't expect to keep up that pace now that the school year is starting back up again tomorrow, but it's nice to have a good start.

None of my ROOTs so far have been particularly bad, though I don't think I'll keep my copies of The Widow or The Great Trouble, primarily because both are ARCs and, while decent reads, weren't especially marvelous or authors I expect to become favorites. The former was psychological suspense, I guess, though there wasn't much mystery or suspense to it (the psychological part was fairly interesting, though), and the later was children's historical fiction. I was interested in the historical part more than the fictional part, though, as the child narrator's story wasn't quite as fascinating as Dr. John Snow's epidemiological research. I'd like to read The Ghost Map, which Hopkinson cites as the most interesting non-fiction account, but it isn't a ROOT, so I'll think about it later.

I'm continuing my P. G. Wodehouse reread on audiobook started last year and, having finished all the Mr. Mulliner, Ukridge, Blandings, and Jeeves books, am now back to the miscellaneous and stand-alone novels. It's been grand fun, and Uneasy Money was an interesting one, mostly because of its slightly more realistic take on relationships (in that the heroine and hero acknowledge that their rather rocky, whirlwind romance might falter once the giddy feelings subside). Of course it had it's laugh out loud moments too--a millionaire's brief return to boyhood was particularly funny. And I have a paper copy, so it counted as a ROOT, even though I "read" a different edition. (Nigel Lambert's generally a good reader, but his American accents are quite awful, like those of most Wodehouse narrators...)

I'm also rereading and/or listening to the Freddy the Pig books, some of which are ROOTs, like Freddy's cousin Weedly, which is one of the middling installments. Reading these novels as an adult, the political/social subtext is quite fascinating, though the droll observations on human nature in the guise of commentary on animal behavior is still definitely the best part of this series, though John McDonough's narration is a close second. I wish he/Recorded Books had decided to record the whole series, but I'm definitely going to listen to all the ones that are available (the next being two books from now, as well as a ROOT--Freddy and Mr. Camphor).

A more intermittent "project" is reading the Miss Silver mysteries of Patricia Wentworth. I own quite a few and just discovered that my library offers access to the whole series through Hoopla, so I've started reading these chronologically as well, skipping those I've already read for now. Miss Silver deals with death was a rather "unfair" one, in that I don't think sufficient clues were given as to the identity of the murderer, but since I'm not much of a puzzler when reading mystery fiction, it's not a major drawback.

Pandora by Holly Hollander, though also a murder mystery, was something rather different. I mean, it did work as a murder mystery of a fairly straightforward variety, but since it's a Gene Wolfe novel, you always get the feeling that there's a lot more below the surface, if you were reading more closely. The decision to title and narrate the story as he did makes the novel doubly intriguing; it's fairly common of course to write a mystery in the first person, but Wolfe draws so much attention to it (and is notoriously prone to using unreliable narrators), that it seems awfully important. Like just about every other novel of his I've read, I guess it will have to wait for a reread to figure out what, if anything, is going on beyond or behind what the narrator says.

Well, I'm currently in the middle of four more ROOTs (though "in the middle" is arguable in the case of a half of them), and I've not got much else to say at the moment, so I guess I'll go back to grading and and listening to The Wonderful Wizard of Oz. I'll probably finish the book before the grading--hurrah for procrastination...

You read 9 ROOTs in 9 days!? WOW.

I kneel before such ambition, organization, and scheduled discipline. You and many other enthusiastic ROOTers have given much thought to your goals. I am impressed by your prep work and clear vision of what you desire to accomplish Reading Year 2017!

"We who are about to die from embarrassment in comparison of our own casual and lackluster approach salute you!" Heh heh.

The Wizard of Oz was a favorite book before I saw the movie at age 5 or 6. My early childhood collection of Baum books so beautifully illustrated by John R Neill have been handed down through the generations to my grandsons. I hope you get the chance to read several Baum tales of Oz in those editions. They're magical.

>15 InfoQuest: WOW .. approximately one ROOT per day. I wonder if I'll ever do that!
but Congrats on all those ROOTs pulled already!

Thanks, Lady of Quality might possibly have been a reread as well, since one of the two editions I apparently gathered was marked "read," but since I didn't remember any of it and also had managed to acquire an unlistened-to audio edition, I decided to count it as a "new" read. It was rather light on incident for a Heyer, but I really liked the heroine's independence and didn't find the romance too appallingly sexist.

Because I've not got enough rereads going, I've started on a chronological Discworld revisit. Actually, I'd never read them chronologically at all, so it's rather interesting to see how things changed and evolved. Unfortunately, most of the earlier novels don't count as rereads because I either never owned a copy or had an ugly paperback that I'd disposed of, since I didn't quite love Pratchett's earlier works. On a reread, The Light Fantastic (the only ROOT thus far) was not as completely flat as I remembered it being, probably because it came right after The Color of Magic, which wasn't itself all that marvelous. Still, it's fun enough and is a stepping stone to more engaging installments. And I do rather like Rincewind.

Icebreaker was an Early Reviewer audiobook that I'd more or less forgotten about, and it wasn't bad for a middle grade dystopian/post-apocalyptic trilogy opener. The reader did a nice job, but I think I'll give this one away, since I'm not likely to want to listen to it again, even if I wanted to reread it.

The Dispatcher was a pretty interesting novella, but suffered primarily from being a novella, I think. It just felt like there were so many more implications and ideas that could have been worked out from the premise. It was rather amusing to read something set in Chicago, but it didn't really have a strong sense of place (not that it matters much), at least to this occasional visitor and metropolitan inhabitant.

Rufus M. and Freddy and Mr. Camphor were both lovely little kids' books and very enjoyable to listen to. I'm listening now intermittently to another Eleanor Estes story, but it's not a ROOT (Pinky Pye), and though I'm still going chronologically through the Freddy books, I've still not reached another ROOT but will soon.

While 9 books in 9 days was pretty awesome, I'm satisfied with 15 in 22 days and probably won't even keep up that rate, but we shall see. I've been reading Rain : A Natural and Cultural History for way too long and will eventually finish it, since it's another Early Reviewers title, and have also read about half of Wodehouse's Golf Omnibus, which is good but hard to take in large doses, not least because I've never actually played it and don't have much desire to do so...

I have purchased 6 books this far this year (all due to Better World Books' New Year's sale) and have only set a handful aside to give away or sell. Since they're still in the house and on LT, I've not yet counted them as weeded. So nothing outstanding on that front, but every little bit helps!

>19 InfoQuest: 15 books in 22 days is still mighty impressive! And regardless of whatever rate you keep up, my guess is you will far surpass me ;)

>15 InfoQuest: I really loved The Ghost Map, so I can definitely recommend it! Great as a historical account, but also reads a bit like a mystery novel in following Snow's attempts to find out what causes the epidemic.

>20 avanders: I totally agree with that.

Wow, you've been quietly ROOTing away and making great progress - well done! :)

>23 floremolla: very quietly! You are even one third away from your goal, Rachel!