Vestafan's ROOTs go even deeper in 2021

My resolution this year is to read only books I already have. (Naturally, I have already come up with three exceptions to this rule and am working on a fourth). My aim is to read 60 ROOTs during the year - I could aim for more, but I'm going to try and read some weightier volumes this year, so I'm allowing for that.

Good luck with your 2021 goal, I hope you get some great reading done!

Welcome back and good luck with your goal!

Hi Sue! I was sure you had a thread made before, but I can't find it anymore, my mistake I think.

Welcome back and good luck with you goal. Happy ROOTing.

Welcome back and have a great reading year! Good idea to build in room in your goal to accommodate bigger books.

Hi Sue! Looks like you were having trouble getting your ticker to show on the ticker thread. Connie has created a guide for us after Ticker Factory updated their site.

Hi Sue. If you follow the steps described in the ticker thread you have to copy the HTML code. That's the last one of the choices you have. I hope that helps!

>4 connie53: Hi, yes I had a bit of brain fade and have only just managed to create and paste a ticker!

>6 humouress: Thank you! I think I've just managed it, but it's useful to know there's a guide.

>7 connie53: Thank you! I've just worked that out, but appreciate everyone's input.

I saw your ticker in the ticker thread. Hurrah!!!

Already the first month of the year has gone! I've read seven ROOTs this month:

Agatha Christie's Complete Secret Notebooks by John Curran
Lethal Investments by Kjell Ola Dahl
Black Narcissus by Rumer Godden - read because the novel was dramatised on TV over Christmas - neither the book (although it is quite subtle) or the TV drama live up to the fantastic Powell and Pressburger film
Gallows Rock by Yrsa Sigurdardottir - the fourth in the Freyja and Huldar series and very enjoyable
In the Name of Truth by Viveca Sten
Sorry for the Dead by Nicola Upson - the latest I have read in her series with Josephine Tey becoming involved with crimes, but with a slightly disappointing ending
and
Greenbanks by Dorothy Whipple - another satisfying and engrossing novel by this author published by Persephone

I've managed 6 ROOTs this month:

Trust Your Eyes by Linwood Barclay
The Terracotta Dog by Andrea Camilleri - the second in the atmospheric Montalbano series
The Wrestling by Simon Garfield - a sometimes funny but more often melancholy account of the British wrestling scene of the 1960s to 1980s
Now You See Them by Elly Griffiths - the latest in the Brighton Mystery series
Punishment by Anne Holt - Modus series book 1
and
Dregs by Jorn Lier Horst - first in the Wisting series

>13 vestafan: I love Linwood Barclay!

Great job, Sue.

>14 connie53: Yes, always that extra twist! I've got a couple more of his books at home which I hope to read sometime this year.

I've managed 7 (!) ROOTs this month:

All Fall Down by M J Arlidge
Cold Malice by Quentin Bates
The Snack Thief by Andrea Camilleri
Body and Soul by John Harvey
The Final Murder by Anne Holt
Memento Mori by Muriel Spark
and
Remain Silent by Susie Steiner

It seems a bit crime-heavy, so perhaps I'll try for a bit more variety next month.

Hi Sue! Ohh, Arlidge is one of my favorite writers, along Harlan Coben and Linwood Barclay for crime-books!

Happy Easter to you and yours!

>17 connie53: Thanks for the Easter greetings - the chocolate has now all been consumed!

Only three ROOTs this month - I just haven't been able to settle to anything. Anyway, they are:

Dirk Gently's Holistic Detective Agency by Douglas Adams
Thirteen by Steve Cavanagh - a good read with an ingenious plot
and
The Serpent's Teeth by Ovid

Only 4 ROOTs this month, as I was distracted by the latest Robert Galbraith novel which has 900+ pages, was a library book and of course couldn't be renewed. But I did read:

Journal of a Disappointed Man by W N P Barbellion
The Dead Shall be Raised and Murder of a Quack by George Bellairs
The Poisoned Chocolates Case by Anthony Berkeley
and
Death in Oslo by Anne Holt

No coincidence that all these were Kindle books as the Galbraith is far too heavy to read in bed!

Four more ROOTs read this month. It would have been more, but some library requests came through.

The Mystery of Three Quarters by Sophie Hannah - one of her Poirot books which I enjoyed but felt rather over complicated in its resolution
What Dark Clouds Hide by Anne Holt - the last in her Vik/Stubo series with an abrupt and shocking ending which I was not expecting
The Haunting of Hill House by Shirley Jackson
and
Want You Dead by Peter James

Now I wonder which Galbraith book you've read, Sue. I've read 4 and seen the series (quit good too)

>22 connie53: It was the latest, Troubled Blood, which I enjoyed very much. I know that nobody dares edit her books now and they get longer and longer, but I actually enjoy all the extra detail and like Strike and Robin as characters. I've read all the series up to now and look forward to the next one.

Only two ROOTs this month - I've acquired quite a lot of library loans to read, and the burst of hot weather we've had made it hard to concentrate. But I did read

The Nature of the Beast by Louise Penny
and
Man at the Helm by Nina Stibbe

And just before the end of the month I read

We Begin at the End by Chris Whitaker - I was really gripped by this book particularly the central character Duchess, a young girl who has had to do and endure more than any child should. I became completely taken up by anxiety about what might happen to her, and also what she might do. I would highly recommend this novel to any crime fiction fan.

>25 vestafan: Interesting, Sue. I have Alle slechte meisjes by this author somewhere on my digital shelves.
But the one you mention sounds really good too.

August has been a bit more productive a month for reading ROOTs. I have managed 7!:
The Scent of Death by Simon Beckett
The Eaten Heart by Giovanni Boccaccio
Die Again by Tess Gerritsen
The Dry by Jane Harper
See Them Die by Ed McBain
Eros Unbound by Anais Nin
and
A Great Reckoning by Louise Penny

My favourite of all these is The Dry, which I've had on my TBR pile for ages. This is an atmospheric and gripping crime novel set in a drought-stricken farming community in Australia. It's constructed in that really satisfying way that makes you have your first inkling of the solution to the mystery just before you turn the page and have your suspicions confirmed. I'm definitely going to seek out more books by this author.

>27 vestafan: I love the books by Simon Beckett but those by Jane Harper even more. There is always a tension underneath and plot twists too. There are four books translated and I've read them all.

>28 connie53: I've just bought the 2nd and 3rd of her novels and plan on reading them soon. A real find!

I've only read three books in the ROOT category and have spent a lot of time reading books I bought on a recent trip to Cambridge.

The three are:

Magnetism by F Scott Fitzgerald
I Know a Secret by Tess Gerritsen
and
Glass Houses by Louise Penny

I hope to do better next month!

>30 vestafan: Same here. Those new and shiny ones are calling louder than the older ones.

>29 vestafan: Good for you. You will love them.

I've had quite a productive ROOT read this month. There have been 5 in all:

The Boy in the Headlights by Samuel Bjork
You Are Dead by Peter James
Ten Plus One by Ed McBain
Kingdom of the Blind by Louise Penny, and his childhood on his couce
and
Unnatural Causes by Richard Shepherd

The first four are parts of series I have been reading over a period of time - the Shepherd book is a memoir by a forensic pathologist that I thought would be about his cases (and there are some very notable ones, particularly for UK readers), but turns out to be more about the effect that his work had on his life and the influence of his childhood on his choice of career. I thought it was an honest account of how the cumulative effect of the cases he encountered provoked a psychological breakdown.

>32 vestafan: I really liked Unnatural Causes. Shepherd has a new book coming out called The Seven Ages of Death that sounds good too.

>33 rabbitprincess: Another to add to my TBR list! Thanks for the heads-up.

Five more ROOTs read during November. It would have been more but I got distracted reading the new Richard Osman book.

Anyway, I read

The Innocence of Father Brown by G K Chesterton
The Wisdom of Father Brown by G K Chesterton
Passing by Nella Larsen
Quicksand by Nella Larsen
and
A Better Man by Louise Penny

Just a bit of a health warning on the Chesterton stories. As well as being period pieces in terms of locked room murders and ingenious ways of causing death, they are also very much of their time in their references to ethnicity and religion in a way I find quite jarring. The fact that these are short stories means that these references crop up over and over again. I'm not sure if this reflects on Chesterton's deeply held beliefs or whether he was unthinkingly echoing the general views of the era. Because I am a bit of a completist I shall press on with the stories - I will be interested to see if the language and/or attitudes change in the later collections as WWII approaches.

You are doing a lot of reading. Peter James is one of my favourite writers too.

My final group of ROOTs read this year are:

The Intellectuals and the Masses by John Carey - a fascinating book about the views of early 20th century writers and intellectuals about eugenics, and their anxiety about mass education and the growth of the suburbs
The Incredulity of Father Brown by G K Chesterton
The Secret of Father Brown by G K Chesterton
The Scandal of Father Brown by G K Chesterton
You Don't Know Me by Imran Mahmood - a crime novel where a man defends himself against a charge of murder by telling his life story to the jury - it begins promisingly but becomes more and more far-fetched as the story proceeds
Something Childish But Very Natural by Katherine Mansfield
and
Look What You Made Me Do by Helen Walmsley Johnson - a memoir by a victim of coercive control

Happy new year, Sue. See you in the 2022 ROOTers!