Jackie's first Category Challenge, 2016

Hi, I'm new to this group but have been involved in the 2014 and 2015 ROOT groups and enjoyed them a lot. I came across this group by accident (followed a touchstone link to a book which only I and one other LT member had ever mentioned), noticed quite a few familiar names from ROOTing, and was intrigued by the whole category thing. I am not massively ambitious and won't be tackling a 3-figure challenge or anything, but I have decided that I am going to combine ROOTing with meeting category challenges, to try and mix it up a bit.

I'd already decided over on this year's ROOT thread that for 2016 I will continue to tackle my TBRs using a Jar of Fate system (all titles on a bit of paper, pulled out at random to try and keep it interesting). For the category challenge I have taken that one step further, and colour-coded each book dependent on category. My plan is to pull out 11 different colours, one after another, and then finish up with a random one (either pulling out any old thing, or reading a book that I just can't wait for Fate to assign!) for a minimum of 1 book a month. That way I can be reasonably confident that I won't pull out 3 massive Russian chunkster novels in a row (this year I read War & Peace, and 3 more of those in a row would finish me off!). Once I've read those first 12 then I'll go back to the first category again, and so on. As it's a Jar of Fate system I won't post any possibles in advance - I'm just going to see what happens, and hopefully my categories are varied enough that it will keep my interest.

I'm not going to set myself too many limits, for either ROOTing or the challenge. For ROOTing, I am going to include any book including books bought the same year (they are all TBRs, after all) and they will have the same chance as any other to be picked out. When it comes to series (not that I have very many of those) I will decide at the time whether to just read the first and then return the rest of the series to the Jar, or read the next one(s) if I'm in the mood. Otherwise I'll try and keep it as random as possible.

I haven't assigned my categories any characters/film titles/etc as I want to find my way this first time, so will just give them their regular titles. In 2017, if this works, I will keep the same set of categories, but will try and be a bit more imaginative and even try and dare to figure out how to post pictures! For this first time though, I will keep it nice and simple.

So without any further ado, here are my categories (with brief explanations):

1. Central/Eastern Europe and former Soviet Union (reflecting my travel/academic experience and interests). There is some overlap with other categories here - could be travel writing or academic stuff, but equally could be Bosnian war fiction or Anna Karenina.
2. Celtic. Fiction and non-fiction relating to the Celtic lands (primarily Scotland as that's where I now live, but also potentially including Irish, Welsh, Cornish and Breton-related books).
3. Contemporary fiction (1969-present). Contemporary with me, so fiction from the year of my birth onwards.
4. Sexual/reproductive health/rights; parenting; children; gender. Again reflecting my academic interests and experience, and also my work. This will mainly be academic, but also includes some popular non-fiction and maybe the odd bit of fiction.
5. Academic. Some of the academic books that I've acquired over the years - text books, research methodology, stuff that I've just thought looks interesting.
6. Vintage fiction (1900-1968). Hopefully self-explanatory. I suspect this is my smallest category.
7. Non-fiction (general). Non-fiction that doesn't fall into any of my other categories.
8. Travel. Anywhere in the world - mainly but not exclusively non-fiction.
9. Ancient fiction (pre-1900).
10. Biography/autobiography/true events.
11. Religious.
12. Random.

Some of my books fall into two or even (occasionally) three categories (those are mainly academic books on sexual/reproductive health in eastern Europe!), so depending on what I pull out in what order will decide for me which category it eventually ends up in.

1. Central/Eastern Europe and former Soviet Union

1. Never Mind the Balkans, Here's Romania by Mike Ormsby. Finished 16.4.16. 4.5/5.
2. Grand Bazar Romania by Mike Ormsby. Finished 16.4.16. 4.5/5.
3. We are the Roma! One Thousand Years of Discrimination by Valeriu Nicolae. Finished 28.4.16. 4/5.
4. Camping with the Communists: The Adventures of an American Family in the Soviet Union by Karen Gilden. Finished 17.9.16. 3/5. (could also be in the Travel category).

2. Celtic

1. North by Seamus Heaney. Finished 3.1.16. 4/5.
2. Harris in History and Legend by Bill Lawson. Finished 12.5.16. 4/5.
3. Nort Atlantik Drift by Robert Alan Jamieson. Finished 19.9.16. 4.5/5.

3. Contemporary fiction (1969-present)

1. Auld Acquaintance by Ruth Hay. Abandoned 3.1.16. 0.5/5. (could also be in Celtic category)
2. The Trouble with Goats and Sheep by Joanna Cannon. Finished 13.2.16. 4/5.
3. The Princess Bride by William Goldman. Finished 24.6.16. 3/5.

4. Sexual/reproductive health/rights; parenting; children; gender

1. Post-communism and the Body Politic edited by Ellen E Berry. Finished 30.1.16. 3/5. (could also be in central/eastern Europe/FSU and Academic categories)
2. All That Matters (no touchstone) by Rebecca Schiller. Finished 3.6.16. 4/5.
3. Articulating Gender, Narrating the Nation: Allegorical Femininity in Romanian Fiction by Ileana Alexandra Orlich. Finished 29.9.16. 3/5. (could also be in central/eastern Europe/FSU and Academic categories).

5. Academic

1. Secrets and Truths: Ethnography in the Archive of Romania's Secret Police by Katherine Verdery. Finished 29.2.16. 4.5/5. (could also be in central/eastern Europe/FSU category)
2. Gendering Post-Socialist Transition: Studies of Changing Gender Perspectives, edited by Krassimira Daskalova, Caroline Hornstein Tomic, Karl Kaser & Filip Radunovic. Finished 20.6.16. 3/5. (could also be in central/eastern Europe/FSU category, and SRHR/parenting/children/gender category)
3. Public Health, Ethics, and Equity, edited by Sudhir Anand, Fabienne Peter, & Amartya Sen. Finished 26.11.16. 4/5.

6. Vintage fiction (1900-1968)

1. Madame de Treymes by Edith Wharton. Finished 5.3.16. 2.5/5.
2. Asterix and the Golden Sickle by Goscinny & Uderzo. Finished 30.6.16. 3/5.
3. A Country Doctor's Notebook by Mikhail Bulgakov. Finished 2.11.16. 4.5/5. (could also arguably be in the auto/biography/memoir/true story category).

7. Non-fiction (general)

1. Sheep for Beginners: a Dip into the World of Wool by John K.V. Eunson. Finished 5.3.16. 2.5/5.
2. Coast lines: how mapmakers frame the world and chart environmental change by Mark Monmonier. Finished 5.7.16. 3.5/5.
3. Hybrid: The History and Science of Plant Breeding by Noel Kingsbury. Finished 21.11.16. 4/5.

8. Travel

1. Himalaya by Michael Palin. Finished 19.3.16. 4/5.
2. Johnson's Journey to the Western Islands of Scotland and Boswell's Journal of a Tour to the Hebrides with Samuel Johnson (Oxford Paperbacks) edited by RW Chapman. Finished 3.9.16. 3/5.
3. Seriously Mum, What's an Alpaca? by Alan Parks. Finished 24.11.16. 3/5. (could also be in Biography/Autobiography/True Events category).
4. Hello, is this Planet Earth? My View from the International Space Station by Tim Peake. Finished 30.12.16. 4.5/5.

9. Ancient fiction (pre-1900)

1. Persuasion by Jane Austen. Finished 28.3.16. 4/5.
2. Around the World in Eighty Days by Jules Verne. Finished 9.7.16. 3.5/5.
3. Jane Eyre by Charlotte Bronte. Finished 27.12.16. 3.5/5.

10. Biography/autobiography/true events

1. Under a Red Sky: Memoir of a Childhood in Communist Romania by Haya Leah Molnar. Finished 25.4.16. 4/5. (could also be in the central/eastern Europe/former Soviet Union category).
2. One Hit Wonderland by Tony Hawks. Finished 10.9.16. 3.5/5. (could also be in the travel category, and a good chunk of it also in the central/eastern Europe/former Soviet Union category).
3. Memory Cards by Michael Brantley. Finished 19.12.16. 4/5.

11. Religious

1. Giving it up by Maggi Dawn. Finished 27.3.16. 4/5.
2. The Bible from Scratch by Simon Jenkins. Finished 18.9.16. 4/5.
3. An Invitation to Centering Prayer: Including an Introduction to Lectio Divina by M. Basil Pennington. Finished 21.12.16. 3/5.

12. Random

1. Among Islands by Jim Crumley (could also be in the Celtic category). April GeoCAT. Finished 24.3.16. 4.5/5.
2. Rain: Four Walks in English Weather by Melissa Harrison (could also be in the travel category). Real-life book group weather-themed read. Finished 28.6.16. 4/5.
3. Various - The Brexit Crisis: A Verso Report (no touchstone). Finished 19.7.16. 4/5.
4. Valerie Curtis - Don't Look, Don't Touch, Don't Eat: The Science Behind Revulsion. Finished 30.7.16. 4/5.
5. Vasyl Baziv - Armageddon at Maidan (could also be in Central/Eastern Europe category and Contemporary Fiction category). Finished 11.8.16 (Early Reviewer). 0.5/5.
6. Yetunde: The Life and Times of a Yoruba Girl in London by Segilola Salami (could also be in Contemporary Fiction category). Finished 15.8.16 (Member Giveaway). 3/5.
7. International Kittens of Mystery by Chris Dolley (could also be in Contemporary Fiction category). Finished 1.9.16 (Early Reviewer). 2.5/5.
8. Beyond Chocolate by Sophie & Audrey Boss (could also be in non-fiction category). Finished 26.9.16. 4/5.
9. Stripped to the Bone: Portraits of Syrian Women by Ghada Alatrash (could also be in Contemporary Fiction category). Finished 11.10.16 (Early Reviewer). 3/5.
10. Dirk Gently's Holistic Detective Agency by Douglas Adams (could also be in Contemporary Fiction category). Finished 4.11.16. 4/5.
11. Making a Mark: Letter to a Grandson on the Story of European Painting by Marjorie Ann Watts (could also be in Non-Fiction (general) category). Finished 10.12.16 (Early Reviewer). 4/5.

JACKIE!! You're here!! :D Welcome aboard! Looking forward to seeing what the Jar of Fate has in store for you next year.

Welcome, it's lovely to see you here! And some very interesting categories!

>14 rabbitprincess: >15 MissWatson: thank you very much! It's good to be here. I did have a few vague themes/characters in mind for the categories, but they weren't brilliant fits (I appreciate my particular categories can be a bit awkward to 'cast'!) so I thought I'd just get on with it and give myself a year to think of something more original! I'm hoping the combo of Jar of Fate/categories/TBR will inspire me to lots of reading! :)

Welcome on board! Love the setup!

Welcome to the challenge - looking forward to following along! I love the "Jar of Fate" idea! I may borrow that one at some time.

Welcome to the challenge, I love your setup and I'm looking forward to seeing what books the "Jar of Fate" picks for you!

Welcome! Looking forward to seeing what you read.

Your challenge looks like it will be very interesting. Looking forward to the Celtic category.

Love the look of this challenge. Ancient fiction sounds good, as does the Celtic category. But it all sounds fab. Keep us posted.

Thank you everyone for your welcome! Like the ROOT group, this group seems particularly friendly! I will have to take care that I'm not spending so long chatting with people here that I forget to read my actual books regularly :D

The Jar of Fate sounds so mysterious. It will be fun to see what gets chosen this way. Welcome to the group! Hopefully we won't add too much to your ROOTs (she said with a straight face).

Good to see you here Jackie. Welcome! Yeah, I like that Jar of Fate!

Jackie, I have loved doing this challenge for the past 7 years. Hope you have as much fun with iT!

Welcome to the group. I'm also liking your 'jar of fate'.

Thank you everyone. I am looking forward to starting!

Welcome to the group! I love your idea of a colour-coded Jar of Fate. Have fun!

>24 mamzel: The rate I've been acquiring new books this year, I don't think I'm going to need any help adding to the list of TBRs/ROOTs! I'm not addicted, I can stop buying books any time I like ...

So, I've finished my 2015 ROOT challenge (23 books read in the year, 2 up from my 2014 total), so today I start my 2016 ROOT challenge, and my very first Category Challenge! And my first dip into the Jar of Fate! First up is the central/eastern Europe category, and I'm really delighted with the book I pulled out of the Jar - Mike Ormsby's Never Mind the Balkans, Here's Romania. I acquired this in 2014, so it's not an ancient ROOT, but I've been looking forward to reading it so this marks a good start to the year.

I do have a slight dilemma though - I have both the English and Romanian versions, and while I'm going to start with the English version, I'm not sure whether to then follow it straight away with the Romanian version (while the English version is still fresh in my head!) before heading to my next category, or whether I should keep the Romanian version in the Jar for another time. I suppose what I could do is read a few pages of the Romanian version regularly whilst simultaneously cracking on with my other categories, that would be a possibility - I guess I'll see how I feel when I finish the English version.

>31 Jackie_K:
I don't know the book, but Amazon describes it as short stories, and if it is, I would read one story in English and follow it with the same story in Romanian. But I don't know how fluent you are in Romanian - if you're really fluent, then you could probably finish the English one before starting the Romanian. (I'm currently learning Portuguese, but my current level is dual language, i.e. one line in English with the Portuguese line right below.)

>32 -Eva-: Yes, that occurred to me too as a possibility, after I posted above! Having flicked through, each chapter is only 2 or 3 pages, so it would be possible to read them both in tandem (I'm pretty sure I could manage a chapter of each, rather than doing it line by line). I think that's probably what I'll do. Which will have the added bonus of being 2 ROOTs not 1!

Just a quick note to say happy new year to my fellow challengers! I hope 2016 is successful and happy for us all. :)

Happy new year, Jackie!

>36 lkernagh: thank you, and a very happy new year to you too Lori!

I have read my first book, actually it is in my 2nd category (Celtic) as my books in my 1st category (central/Eastern Europe) are ongoing, and I'm finding that reading both the English and Romanian means that I can't read huge amounts before needing a break to read something else. The book I read was a volume of poetry, North, by Seamus Heaney, whom I studied years ago at school and enjoyed. This poetry first appeared in the mid-70s, and there is a lot of focus on the 'Troubles' in Northern Ireland, where Heaney is from. I didn't get all of the classical references, but even so really enjoyed this poetry. 4/5.

I have now pulled out the next book from the Jar, in my Contemporary Fiction category. Auld Acquaintance by Ruth Hay. It has had mixed reviews as far as I can tell, so we'll see how we go with it. It's the first in a series, I got it for either free or next to nothing via bookbub.com last year, so if it's a stinker at least I won't have spent a fortune on it. It could also fit into the Celtic category, as it's about a Canadian woman who inherits an old house in Scotland, but I'll be counting it in Contemporary Fiction.

Well that was quick. I started Auld Acquaintance last night, and abandoned it after 3 chapters - it was a complete turkey! It is 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! But I have counted it in my Contemporary Fiction category anyway, as at least it is now off the (virtual) shelf.

Next up out of the Jar of Fate is one from my 'sexual & reproductive health & rights; parenting; gender; children' category, and it's one that could also have been pulled out for the 'central/eastern Europe' and 'academic' categories. Edited by Ellen E. Berry, Postcommunism and the Body Politic. It's quite an old book now, 20 years old, I'll be interested to see how it holds up given all the more recent scholarship I've read.

Belated Happy New Year and may none of your other books turn out to be such turkeys!

>38 Jackie_K: Yeowch! Will be avoiding that one for sure!

Get the klunker out of the way first. It can only get better from here on out.

A belated welcome to the Category Challenge! I started my thread very late compared to others, and now I'm trying desperately to catch up.

Great review! Here is hoping your next read is of the more stellar/interesting variety. ;-)

Thanks everyone! After Auld Acquaintance I am fairly confident that the only way is up!

I started back to work today, so the quick progress I was making with my books will probably slow down a bit, as once I'm back from work and dealing with my toddler daughter till bedtime I don't have too much mental energy left! I'll try and manage a chapter or two at bedtime though before I turn out the light!

You are off to a great start, even with a clunker. Good luck on the rest of your reading.

Welcome to the challenge. Interesting categories. I'll be waiting to see what you read in your Celtic category.
I also have a TBR book jar. Just for the books that aren't already pre-planned for one of the CATS. This year the majority of my reads have already been assigned to certain months so this years TBR jar is tiny.
Sorry you had to abandon a book so early in the year. Hopefully it'll be the only clunker this year.

>46 VioletBramble: thank you Violet! I hope it's the only clunker too - usually if I abandon books it's because I'm distracted or run out of time before the book group meeting or suchlike, otherwise I try to finish them even if I don't like them, as to abandon them deliberately feels like I'm Breaking The Rules. But, new year new me, I've decided life's too short so if I hate it after a few chapters then I will abandon without guilt!

The jar of fate is a great idea! And you have really interesting categories. Hopefully no more turkeys!

>48 LisaMorr: Thank you Lisa! I hope so too!

I have a couple of books on the go, I am hoping at least 1 will be finished by the end of January. Now I'm back at work though my mental energy levels in the evening when I'd normally be reading are lower than before, so reading is a bit sluggish!

Next finished book to report, in my "sexual/reproductive health/rights; parenting; children; gender" category.

It's 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'm still reading the two books in my first category (they are all vignettes, so it's very easy to dip in and out over a period of time, rather than sustain the reading. I should finish them both in February though), and will also start a new book too, Joanna Cannon's The Trouble with Goats and Sheep which is new and hot and shiny off the press. My fellow ROOTers helped me justify buying it, but I did promise to read it straight away after finishing my current books rather than let it languish on the shelves. I'm going to go back and add it to my 3rd category (Contemporary Fiction (1969-present)) rather than my 12th 'random' category, as I'm still feeling a little bit guilty that the book I've already counted in that category was abandoned rather than finished!

I finished The Trouble with Goats and Sheep by Joanna Cannon yesterday. It's a second book for my Contemporary Fiction category. 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).

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'm not going to choose another book just yet as I am *still* reading the two books I started on 1st January. They are proving great for dipping in and out of, but I think I need to knuckle down and get on with them as I'd like to have them finished this month. I'm also reading a book over Lent which I will count towards my Religion category (even though I didn't actually pull it out at random, I deliberately chose it as a specific Lent book). It's Maggi Dawn's Giving it up. So far I think it's OK, but I haven't really got in 'the zone' with it yet. We'll see how we go.

I've now finished my first book in my 'Academic' category - 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.

My next category is Vintage fiction (1900-1968), and for that I've picked out a short novella, Edith Wharton's Madame de Treymes. It's less than 100 pages, so hopefully won't take me too long (although I've never read any Wharton before, so I don't know how I'll find her writing style).

I've now finished Madame de Treymes. 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 written in 1907). 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 to add: I've gone for 2.5/5 after all).

Glad that the book was at least short!

I'm slightly embarrassed that I have finished two books in one day! (that doesn't happen very often!) 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 for my 'Non-fiction - (general) category, so I also managed to finish it 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.

I've now finished Himalaya by Michael Palin for my Travel category. It 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

Next up for my Ancient Fiction (pre-1900) category is Persuasion by Jane Austen (I can't believe I've never read that before!), and Among Islands by Jim Crumley for the April GeoCAT.

>56 Jackie_K: Yay, Persuasion! Hope you enjoy it!

I've finished a book which I'm putting in my Random category (it could also count for my Celtic category, but I picked it out separately from the Jar of Fate so that I could read it for the April GeoCAT). I loved it so much though that I read it right through and finished it before April has even started!

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.

>57 christina_reads: I am enjoying it so far. I mean, it's really predictable and obvious how it's going to end up eventually, but it's still enjoyable. I didn't think from the first chapter that I would like it (I am not an Austen purist, I like the books of hers that I've read, but am not obsessed or anything!), but it is definitely growing on me.

Another book finished today, bringing me to 10 for the year. I don't think I've *ever* read this many books in 3 months before. This is for my Religious category. It 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 now racing through Persuasion, and it has started to get a bit less predictable. I mean, I'm pretty sure still who Ann will end up with, but now am trying to guess who is the Mr Wickham equivalent. My money's on Mr Elliott. Less than 100 pages to go, so I'm hopeful it will be done by the end of the month, but will certainly be done by the end of the week.

I finished Persuasion (for my Ancient fiction (pre-1900) category) 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 want April to be the month that I finish the two books I started in January, which I have been dipping into regularly and making good progress, but need to finish now! I've also picked the next book out of the Jar of Fate, for my autobiography/biography/true story category, and am really looking forward to that one.

I have finally finished the two books I started on New Year's Day for my Central/Eastern Europe/Former Soviet Union category. 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 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.

Yay! Congrats on finishing those two books! It is an impressive achievement :)

>62 rabbitprincess: thank you very much! I have already picked out my next book, which is in English, but I must admit I am really hoping the next one (which is back to my central/eastern Europe category) isn't in Romanian - otherwise I might have to choose another one! I really hadn't appreciated just how draining it would be, even though I do speak the language and had the English version to help me! I'll definitely have to pace out the foreign language reads.

I have finished my first book in my biography/autobiography/true story category, and with that completed my challenge (in that I was aiming for 1 book in each of my 12 categories - I will keep going beyond this!). 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've finished We are the Roma!: One Thousand Years of Discrimination by Valeriu Nicolae today, the next in my central & eastern Europe/former Soviet Union category - 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.

I finished my second book in my Celtic category yesterday, 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.

You mean you bought it in Steòrnabhagh! ;) I had to look that up... I remembered vaguely how it was pronounced, but spelling in Gaelic is difficult! The book sounds very interesting.

>67 rabbitprincess: yes exactly! (I was too lazy to look up the spelling!)

>66 Jackie_K: & >67 rabbitprincess: Sounds like a very interesting read. Congratulations on attempting spelling and pronunciation!

My next book is for my sexual/reproductive health and rights/parenting/children/gender mega-category. The book is by Rebecca Schiller and is called All That Matters (sorry no touchstones for either, it appears). 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.

>64 Jackie_K: >65 Jackie_K: Very interesting choices! Romania is a country I only know very little about, I might take a first step to change that soon.

>71 Chrischi_HH: Hello, thank you for stopping by! I have been fascinated by Romania ever since the 1989 'revolution', and been there many times (including a couple of extended stays where I worked there for a longer period, in 1994 and 2007), so I lap up any book I can find! I can't travel so much now I have a young child, so I have to travel from my armchair now.

My 2nd book in my academic category is now finished. This is a 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.

I just finished 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.

>74 Jackie_K: - The movie was so much better. Agree that the asides were really annoying.

>75 LittleTaiko: The more I speak to people about it, the more it appears that that's a pretty universal opinion! Someone needs to do an abridged version :)

I've finished another book - #20 for the year, and my 4th for June. I'm counting it in my 'Random' category (the category for books that I want to read outwith the Jar of Fate system). This was a new purchase, for my real-life book group. 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.

And I managed to get one more read for June, just sneaking under the wire! 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.

>77 Jackie_K:
Asterix & Company are always an entertaining go-to. I was ages since I've read any, so I need to do a little marathon one of these days. :)

Next in my Non-fiction (general) category was last month's free ebook from the University of Chicago Press - Mark Monmonier's Coast lines: how mapmakers frame the world and chart environmental change. I was mainly attracted by the bit after the colon in the title, so although this is quite a technical, academic book, in an area where I know next to nothing, it was definitely worth persevering with. The first 4 or 5 chapters were probably a bit too technical for me, and there was a bit of skim-reading going on I must confess, but thereafter I found it very readable and interesting, and accessible to a novice. I found the history of cartography, and his applications to the American coast in particular, very interesting. 3.5/5.

Next up, some ancient (pre-1900) fiction.

>77 Jackie_K: I grew up with Asterix and my daughters had enjoyed the books too. I too love the puns on names, some of which I didn't grasp, reading the books as a child. It's definitely worthwhile rereading the books as an adult.

My 23rd book for the year is now finished. I think this means I have beaten my number of books read in the whole year for the last 2 years! It's for my Ancient Fiction category, and is Jules Verne's Around the World in Eighty Days. It's not the kind of book that ever particularly appealed, but when I got my first eReader it was already loaded onto it, and I have to say I rather enjoyed it. I don't think the characters are particularly rounded or anything, but this was a quick and enjoyable romp round the world with lots of derring-do and general silliness. 3.5/5.

>81 Jackie_K: It is a very silly romp! I always found it a bit stressful, though, because I don't like to be late for things ;) Twenty Thousand Leagues Under the Sea is my favourite Verne.

>82 rabbitprincess: Yes, I can totally relate to that! I think I will see if Project Gutenberg have any more Verne, as I'd happily read more.

>83 Jackie_K: The version I read of Twenty Thousand Leagues is an abridged translation published by Puffin Classics. I don't know what I'm missing, but that version is good enough for me :) Gutenberg probably has a full translation.

Journey to the Centre of the Earth is also fun.

>81 Jackie_K: - That was a fun book!

>82 rabbitprincess: - I hope to get to that one sooner than later.

I sneaked in a quick read whilst reading a much longer and slower one. This is actually one of this month's new acquisitions, but because of the subject matter I wanted to read it now rather than leave it for the Jar of Fate and then not reading it for years! So I've added it to my final 'Random' category. There isn't a touchstone, as it is a hastily produced volume of writing about Brexit. It was a freebie from Verso Books - for anyone who's interested in a short, left-leaning collections of writings (some from the Verso blog, and other left-leaning sites) on the immediate aftermath of the UK's (IMO) disastrous vote to leave the European Union, it's free for the rest of July at this link: https://www.versobooks.com/books/2352-the-brexit-crisis

I had actually read the first chapter before (it will have been linked on facebook), but the others were new to me and gave me a lot of food for thought. Some of the chapters on racism and class have really challenged me, and I suspect I'll come back to them. 4/5.

I had to abandon the Jar of Fate temporarily - being away from home on holiday we have found toddler bedtime much more challenging this week, and the only way we could get her to go to sleep in her bed (which was in our room) was to go to bed at the same time and lie in the dark with her. So although I had chosen the next two Jar of Fate books (both paper books), I needed to quickly choose a book on my kobo so that I could read it under the covers! Luckily my 'Random' category covers this sort of eventuality! I chose a relatively short book of popular science writing (one of last year's free University of Chicago Press ebooks), which I thought was pretty good: Valerie Curtis Don't Look, Don't Touch, Don't Eat: The Science Behind Revulsion, which was about her work on disgust. It was actually really readable, and only one thing made me really go "Ewwwww!". 4/5.

>87 Jackie_K:
I've never heard of it before, but what an interesting topic! BB for me.

I interrupted my regular categories for my first ever LT Early Reviewers book (added to category 12, Random). Unfortunately it was an utter turkey. My review is here: https://www.librarything.com/work/18026977/reviews/132779302 (the TL;DR version: clunky, poorly translated, corny, don't bother). The book was Armageddon at Maidan by Vasyl Baziv. I think it's fair to say I won't be seeking out any more of his work. 0.5/5.

>89 Jackie_K: Congrats on your first ever LTER book! Sorry it was such a stinker!

Another quick one for the Random category, a short ebook which I received yesterday as part of the LT Member Giveaway. Yetunde: The Life and Times of a Yoruba Girl in London is a sweet book which I read in one go. Baby Yetunde narrates some of the things that happen in her daily life in London, including some of the folk tales that her mum (who is Nigerian) tells her. Mostly in English, but with generous smatterings of Yoruba, which are translated at the end of the book (I thought that worked well, as translations at the time would have interrupted the flow, but I did appreciate having the translation there somewhere). Some of the day to day stuff wasn't so interesting (eg her description of her mum's living room), but the baby's eye-view of other things like a swimming lesson and baby massage class was quite cute. I think the author captured well how parents imagine their child sees the world (let's face it, none of us truly knows what is going on in their head, but I'm pretty sure there's some plotting going on in there somewhere!). The folk tales involved animals (most often a tortoise, although frogs and scorpions also featured) and were pretty Aesop's Fables-like. I might read some of them to my daughter sometime.

This is the first in what is presumably to be a series of self-published books. I think they will be a lovely keepsake for the author's daughter.

I received a free pdf copy of this book, via the LibraryThing Member Giveaway scheme, in return for honest feedback.

3/5.

>89 Jackie_K: I am sorry to hear about that terrible Early Reviewers, but your review is great. Very thorough and helpful. Thumbs up!

I have two books to add for September so far - #1 and #2 for September, #28 and #29 for the year to date.

Number one is Chris Dolley's International Kittens of Mystery which I received for the August LTER, so is in my 'Random' category. This was a very short ebook which seemed better-suited (to me at any rate) as a series of blog posts. The author seems to have lots of cute photos of his various kittens, which at some point he decided to use to illustrate a story - cute idea, but I think that even as a short book the idea was quite stretched, whereas as blogs it would probably have worked better. Having said that, the kittens were definitely very cute, so it was a pleasant-enough 20 minutes spent reading. Just not a particularly earth-shattering 20 minutes. I hadn't realised when I requested it that it was from 2011 - that would explain the use of the 'I can haz cheezburger' language that you see less of now. 2.5/5 stars.

My one gripe is that even though it was a short book (47 pages when it was loaded), only 31 of those pages were the actual story. The rest of it was an excerpt from another book, and then lots of reviews and descriptions of even more books by the same author. Which would have been fine at the end of a full-length book, but this felt like it was over-egging the pudding somewhat!

The second book (in my Travel category) is Johnson's Journey to the Western Islands of Scotland and Boswell's Journal of a Tour to the Hebrides with Samuel Johnson (Oxford Paperbacks) edited by RW Chapman (sorry for the long drawn-out title, it was the only way I could get the correct touchstone!). I started this back in July, but it's taken me quite a while to plough through, it's a bit of a chunkster (not hundreds of pages - around 450 - but very small print so it felt like much more!). This was one of my Barter Books purchases from last year. The two diarists Dr Johnson (he of Dictionary fame) and James Boswell recount their voyage (taken in the late 18th century) from Edinburgh to around the Hebrides and back; this volume puts both books together. So firstly it's Dr Johnson's "A Journey to the Western Islands of Scotland", which in some ways was an easier read for me, in that it was an account of the places they went to and selected people they met (see later on for Boswell's focus, which was less what I was hoping for). There was one passage near the beginning where they are travelling north of Aberdeen where he talks of being told of a previous weather event where the sand dunes were deposited inland and the landowner ended up giving up his land rather than pay to sort it out. That was interesting to me as I am pretty sure that is the same place where Donald Trump has built his highly-contested and locally unpopular golf course, where he thinks that he can control the sand dunes. Other than that, my main impression of Dr Johnson was that he could be quite bitchy, and there was a fair bit of English superiority coming across, even in the many passages where he was obviously appreciative of the hospitality he was being shown. There was also a lot of approval of the feudal system and aristocracy/royalty which I really don't like. I think what didn't help was that the image in my head of Dr Johnson is entirely based on his appearance in an episode of "Blackadder the Third", so it was sometimes hard to take it seriously! After that I read Boswell's "The Journal of a Tour to the Hebrides", which I found much harder to read. Unlike Johnson's account, which was based on places, Boswell's was just a daily account, and he mainly seemed to write about the contents of conversations, regardless of whether they were relevant to the places they were visiting that day. So I did a lot of skim-reading of this one. He also seemed, like Johnson, pretty approving of status/aristocracy, but the really overwhelming impression was of his utter reverence of Dr Johnson, so I found that quite difficult, that he was praising this man for saying stuff to his hosts which I often considered quite rude! This focus just cemented the "Blackadder the Third" character as the Dr Johnson in my head! Even though I was skim-reading, it didn't make this particular account go any quicker! It was just quite hard work, I found - I had to skim, but still look frequently to see if the conversation had stopped and he had actually put in a few sentences about the place they were visiting (which was what I wanted to read!). Overall, I'm really pleased I've read both of these, but I'm not sure I'll be rushing to read them again. 3/5 stars.

My 30th book for the year so far (if you'd ever told me in the last twenty years that I'd have a year where I read 30 books in less than a year I'd never have believed you!) is now read. It was One Hit Wonderland by Tony Hawks, in my Biography/Autobiography/True Story category, although it would also fit in the travel category, and big chunks of it in my central/eastern Europe category. It's another of his doing-daft-things-after-a-drunken-bet books, following on from Round Ireland with a Fridge and Playing the Moldovans at Tennis, both of which I loved. The premise for this one was that Tony had had a minor hit in the UK charts in the late 80s with a novelty record, and he was bet that he couldn't have another hit record anywhere in the world within the next 2 years. Cue trips to Nashville, Amsterdam, southern Sudan, Romania and Albania and various daft adventures along the way in search of the elusive hit song. Initially I thought I wasn't going to enjoy it so much - the opening few chapters (Nashville) was amusing but felt a bit forced (which to be fair was pretty much his experience of the place) - however I laughed out loud several times during his trip to Amsterdam (especially the bit at the airport which had me crying with laughter, I was very glad I wasn't reading it in public!). So by the end of the book I was cheering our hero on and really enjoyed the read. For me overall I'd say this was the weakest of the three silly bet books, but still a fun read. 3.5/5.

>93 Jackie_K:
I have a copy of A Journey to the Western Islands of Scotland &The Journal of a Tour to the Hebrides and it's not one I expected to show up on very many people's reading list, so thank you for that review! I love that you played Blackadder in your head while reading! :)

>96 Jackie_K: Haha, I hope I haven't spoilt it for you by putting Blackadder in your head too! :D

>96 Jackie_K:
Blackadder can only add to enjoyment, never detract! :)

My next book (in my Central & Eastern Europe/Former Soviet Union category, though it could also count for the Travel category) is Camping with the Communists by Karen Gilden. It's subtitled 'The Adventures of an American Family in the Soviet Union', which pretty much tells you all the background you need. It was interesting from the perspective of taking place in the midst of the Cold War (a 6 week camper van trip in 1977), so lots of fairly predictable culture clashes, although I did like the family involved (Karen, her husband and 11 year old daughter) and think that their desire and openness to travel was quite unusual for the time. I think the book was let down by being written down so long after the actual trip - although some memories would have remained pretty vivid, 36 years is a long time, so I think it was probably a bit superficial in places. 3/5.

Two more to add today:

Category: ReligionThe Bible from Scratch by Simon Jenkins. In the interests of disclosure, I have to say that I do know the author, so obviously am already favourably disposed towards his book, but I did genuinely enjoy it in any case! I actually bought it several years ago, when I first knew him, and started reading it but got distracted so never finished it at the time, and since then another edition of the book has been forthcoming. But hey, better late than never. This was the 2nd edition of the book, which is basically a brief background to the Bible - main personalities, who wrote the books, what was going on at the time, the main themes in each book - liberally sprinkled with Simon's cartoons. It's not exactly deep theology, but would make a really good introduction to the Bible for someone that wanted to know the basics, as it cuts out a lot of fluff that you get in many commentaries. 4/5.

Category: CelticThis was a wonderful book of poetry, Nort Atlantik Drift by Robert Alan Jamieson. Jamieson is from Shetland, and all the poems are written in Shetland dialect, but with commentary and translations in English, and also a number of photos illustrating each one. I visited Shetland a few years ago and loved it - I would go back in a heartbeat - and I was pleased with how much of the dialect I was able to understand (although I was grateful for the translations too!). The poems are all short (1 small page) but I thought were very profound and beautiful. I can see this making a great gift for friends I know who also love Shetland (it will also make a good change from the chocolate I usually buy them!). The only reason I gave this 4.5 rather than 5 stars (unheard of for me and poetry, which I often find quite daunting!) is that the photos were a bit grainy. I'd have loved to see some of them in colour, and many of them a bit sharper. But that's a very minor point, this was a beautiful book. 4.5/5.

Thought of you yesterday while reading The Game of Kings, by Dorothy Dunnett -- part of the action takes place in Stirling!

>100 rabbitprincess: Ooh I'm not familiar with that one! Yet another to add to the list.

Sigh. So many books, so little time.

I've just finished an interesting not-diet book called Beyond Chocolate by Sophie & Audrey Boss, its subtitled "How to stop Yo-yo dieting and lose weight for good" (and, since it was just pirate day the other day, can I just note that I just typed 'yo-ho dieting' to start with, which made me laugh). Beyond Chocolate is a group/organisation which has been going for a while which I discovered quite recently and I've been following them on facebook. Mainly there they post articles they find which are more about body-positivity and the pointlessness of diets, and I found myself basically agreeing with their premise. I'm certainly someone who has been on a number of diets over the years, with varying degrees of success, but like (according to them) 98% of people who diet, it's never been a long-term change and I've ended up heavier than before at the end of it all. This book outlined the principles of their approach, which I can sum up as savouring food, nothing is out of bounds, apart from the all-or-nothing approach of most diets, and rethinking your relationship to food and your body and exercise. I found quite a lot of things which I can put into practice straight away - particularly about slowing down when I eat, thinking about why I'm eating (particularly when I'm grazing between meals, which is a particular weakness of mine), and also rethinking my approach to waste. I can see how following these principles will, in the long term, lead to a much healthier relationship with food and with myself, and maybe I'll lose a bit of weight too, although that's not my aim (I think that not having weight-loss as my aim as I started the book is a big plus, it doesn't feel like such a huge change in my outlook).

My main criticisms would be that it did feel ever so middle class aspirational, and also that it would be a lot easier to put it fully into practice if you are on your own and can do whatever you like when you like. Because I don't do the bulk of the cooking in our household I may well need to adapt a bit. But that's not insurmountable.

Overall, I would recommend this book, particularly if you're stuck in the all-or-nothing points-counting trap of many diets.

4/5

>102 Jackie_K: Yo-ho dieting would probably involve a lot of rum ;) And maybe ham, if the pirates in question were the pirates from the Aardman Animations film. "The best part of being a pirate...is HAM NITE!!!"

Here's one for my "Sexual/reproductive health/rights; parenting; children; gender" category (it could also appear in my central/eastern Europe & former Soviet Union category, and the Academic category). This was a short book (c100 pages) but quite heavy-going, it was an academic book in a field not my own so I could only read it in short bursts! The book in question is Articulating Gender, Narrating the Nation: Allegorical Femininity in Romanian Fiction by Ileana Alexandra Orlich. She takes five Romanian fiction classics from the late 19th/early 20th centuries and discusses the portrayal of women and the significance of this. It was interesting in parts, although I would have appreciated a bit more of the national context at the time that the stories had been written. It has made me want to get hold of one of the books she discusses, although I am not sure I will be able to find it in English translation and I'm pretty sure if I read it in Romanian it would take me years! 3/5.

My other current read is a bit lighter, which is what I need for a bit after reading this one!

I've finished my most recent Early Reviewer book, for my Random category. The book is a short one (76 pages), a selection of short stories: Stripped to the Bone: Portraits of Syrian Women by Ghada Alatrash. 3/5 stars.

I loved the idea of this book - seven short stories giving snapshots of the lives of seven Syrian women - both in Syria and in exile - introduced by a piece of poetry. I did enjoy reading it, and found many of the stories moving. However, it didn't quite work for me, and I think that's because I found I had so many questions of each story, each woman, each situation, that weren't answered because the stories were so short. In fact I think that this book would have worked much better if it was a big novel, so that all of the stories could have been fleshed out more. There was so much potential here and I think that the short story format just didn't allow that potential fully to come through.

Another issue I had relates to the formatting. The book frequently used comments in square brackets to explain the meaning of a name, or the history/significance of places or terms, immediately after the name/place/term appeared in the text. I found this really quite intrusive (especially as some of them were really long, and just plonked in the middle of a sentence in the story), and would have much preferred them as endnotes or footnotes.

I'm just back from holiday, and read a couple more books while I was away:

#1 (in the Vintage Fiction category, although arguably could also be in the autobiography/biography/true story category too) was A Country Doctor's Notebook by Mikhail Bulgakov (translated by Michael Glenny). This was a wonderful read - Bulgakov (probably best known for the fantastical The Master and Margarita) originally trained as a doctor, and spent a few years around the time of the Russian Revolution in a small rural clinic in the middle of nowhere. These 9 stories are semi-fictionalised and semi-autobiographical (it would appear) - accounts mainly of the rural clinic, with a couple from a hospital in a nearby town. I found all the stories so very moving - particularly the longest one, Morphine, about a colleague's descent into addiction. I honestly think this book should be on every medical student's compulsory reading list. An extraordinary book. 4.5/5.

#2 (in my Random category rather than Contemporary Fiction, as it wasn't a Jar of Fate pick but a book group selection) was Dirk Gently's Holistic Detective Agency by Douglas Adams. This is really embarrassing to admit, but I have never ever read anything before by Adams (although I've intended reading HHGTTG for years!). I picked this up as my real life former book group (with whom I am still in touch via facebook group, even though I can't attend meetups any more) chose this for this month's read, and as it was on my TBR pile I was happy that for once I could join in from a distance. I thoroughly enjoyed this one - the writing was just brilliant. Funny, clever, and not a word out of place - even if I wasn't particularly sure what was going on (especially at the beginning) I still really enjoyed the mere experience of reading it and savouring the words! There were aspects of the story that didn't quite work for me (particularly the Electric Monk), but overall I really enjoyed my belated introduction to Adams. 4/5.

>106 Jackie_K:
He did have a wonderful way with words, Adams. I've read The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy a few times now, but Dirk Gently's Holistic Detective Agency is still on Mt. TBR.

ETA: If you want to try something of his that is less quirky (albeit a little frightening), he wrote a book called Last Chance to See about endangered animals.

>107 -Eva-: Last Chance to See is on my wishlist - I took it as a BB earlier this year from either this group or the ROOT group. As I understand it, it has been updated 25 years on with Stephen Fry.

>108 Jackie_K:
Yes, Adams' book is based on his trip (and radio show) with Mark Carwardine and Stephen Fry did the trip again (and a TV show) with Carwardine 20 years after the radio show.

And the "kakapo scene" from the Carwardine/Fry TV show is a must-see. :D

>110 rabbitprincess: I must try and get hold of that show - if I recall correctly it is a DVD as well as a book.

>110 rabbitprincess: Indeed it is. The kakapo bit is on YouTube, though, if you want a preview. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9T1vfsHYiKY

>106 Jackie_K: I loved Bulgakov's A country doctor's notebook too. The weather conditions reminded me of when we had a rural property in northern Alberta. Brrr.

>106 Jackie_K: I've read the Hitchhiker series but Dirk Gently's Holistic Detective Agency has been on my shelves forever. You've motivated me to move it up on the stack.

>113 VivienneR: I'm not sure I'd have coped with the weather conditions as well as Bulgakov did! (I suppose he just got by in the circumstances he found himself in. But I'm pretty sure I'd not have done so well!).

>114 mathgirl40: It's definitely worth a read! I'm keen to get to the Hitchhiker books, although quite when I'll get time for that I don't know!

It has taken me the best part of this month, but I've finally got another book to report (in my general non-fiction category). This was another former UoC Press free ebook, from a year or two ago, Noel Kingsbury's Hybrid: The History and Science of Plant Breeding. It was every bit as nerdy as it sounds, but not at all dry or boring - in fact, I found it a really readable and accessible book which was surprisingly fascinating. I know absolutely nothing about plant breeding, and I suspect if it had just been about the science of it all I would have skimmed it, but the history side of it was really interesting, particularly as he covered developments throughout the world, including the developing world and former Soviet Union. I found the discussion on ownership of genes, and of issues around sharing knowledge between developed and developing world particularly interesting, but there were also fascinating insights into empire, history of genetics, farmers vs academics vs private enterprise, etc etc. It was also primarily focused on food crops rather than ornamental plants (which just got one chapter). The fact that I knew nothing about the subject (science especially, or the history) wasn't a barrier to understanding what was going on, and in fact I feel like I've learnt quite a lot! It concluded with a brief overview of GM technology and the debates around that.

There were a few places where I thought the proof-reader had had a bad day (especially chapter 14 - lots of silly errors!), but other than that minor irritation I'd actually really recommend this as accessible and interesting, it would be a good present for the nerd in your life! 4/5.

I have another ebook and two paper books on the go - am confident I'll get at least the ebook finished by the end of the month, so it's been a fairly good reading month for me after a slow October.

>115 Jackie_K:
I can recommend the audioversions of Hitchhiker's - the first one is read by Steven Fry and the rest by Martin Freeman.

Hybrid: The History and Science of Plant Breeding doesn't sound like it would be for me, but you may have just solved a Christmas-gift problem for me, so thank you for that!!

>116 -Eva-: You're welcome! I hope the recipient likes it!

I always feel slightly nervous when people get a book based on my recommendation. I am aware that my reading tastes are sometimes a bit idiosyncratic, and so worry that people won't get what I'm on about when I rave about a book!

Jackie! My library ordered Hurrah for Gin! I am first on the holds list :D

Ooh, enjoy it! She is hilarious!

My 40th book of this year is Seriously Mum, What's an Alpaca? by Alan Parks. This is the first in a series of 3 memoirs, detailing Alan and his wife Lorna's moving from the UK to start a new life in Andalucia, living in the middle of nowhere and breeding alpacas. It was a quick and easy read, and mostly I enjoyed it, although I did sometimes find myself getting a bit frustrated with their naivety (eg assuming that just because someone was a fellow Brit that they wouldn't rip them off). He also came across as a bit, well if not judgmental, at least willing to make some not very flattering personal comments which I didn't think were entirely necessary. I also wasn't mad on the sections that were in the 'voice' of their various animals (dogs, alpacas, feral cat/kittens, and chickens), but I realise that that is personal taste - I've seen reviews saying this was one of the best things about the book! Despite that though, I did like their keenness to stay away from expat enclaves and get immersed in the local way of life, and wanted things to work out for them. They also were pretty open about things that went wrong and they wish they'd done differently.

This would be a good book to read for anyone thinking of a radically new lifestyle somewhere else - it's a good reminder to not be naive, but also that it's good to just go for things rather than spend your life thinking 'what if?' I have the other two books in the series, and will be interested to see how things end up for them. 3/5.

This was pulled out for my travel category, but I've decided that for the other two books they fit better in the biography/autobiography/true events category - I guess this book was travel in that they moved from the UK to Spain, but the rest of the books are them living in the same place.

Next up, just finished this evening - book #41 for the year, #5 for November. It's a bit of a hefty academic tome which has taken me quite a while - Public Health, Ethics, and Equity, edited by Sudhir Anand, Fabienne Peter, & Amartya Sen. I cited one of the authors in this book in my PhD, and got a copy of the book after I'd finished the PhD (I'd originally accessed a library copy) as I'd thought then I wanted to get into it when I had a bit more time. Midway through this reading of the book I was a bit disheartened, as I felt like I was really struggling with it, and I'll be honest, although I read the first 3 chapters and final 3 chapters all the way through, the other 9 chapters in the middle I pretty much skimmed them all. I was feeling really thick, like my brain has atrophied since I was studying at that level, but getting into the final 3 chapters in particular did encourage me that I haven't completely lost it! I think the problem for me was that a lot of the book is very theoretical and even philosophical, which is not really the way my brain works. The final 3 chapters were looking at the issue of health equity from an anthropological/ethnographic perspective which is much more where I'm coming from, and basically making a point which was the crux of my PhD, which was that it's all very well having overarching universal theories and rights/wrongs, but if you don't take on board and interact with local understandings and local mores, then you are only going to get so far with your health equity and health promotion efforts.

I'm giving this 4 stars - even though I struggled with a big chunk of it I could still recognise the quality of the scholarship. This is in my view a really important book in the field, even though it is a bit old now (published in 2004). 4/5.

My first book for December (42nd for the year) was a book I won in last month's Early Reviewer giveaway - Marjorie Ann Watts' Making a Mark: Letter to a Grandson on the Story of European Painting. This is a factual book aimed at the author's 14 year old grandson (who I believe may be autistic) who asked her loads and loads of questions about art to the point where she thought writing a book would be easiest!

I appreciated how from the beginning the publisher and author made it clear that they had wanted to include all-singing, all-dancing colour versions of the paintings under discussion but that this was not possible for ereaders, where most devices still only render pictures in black and white. The lists at the end of each chapter featuring suggested pictures to look up online were helpful, although it is a bit of a cumbersome solution. I did though appreciate the further correspondence from the publisher, who said that in response to reader feedback they were going to include links to sites (eg art galleries) where there are examples of the various styles of art under discussion. That was a good touch, and I think shows that the publisher and author are very much open to reader suggestions about improving the book where possible.

I really liked the idea of the book - a whistlestop tour of European painting (with the odd American thrown in for good measure, particularly in the 20th century) aimed as I mentioned at the author's grandson who asked so many questions about art that writing a book seemed like the logical thing to do. I did wonder if it would be a bit simplistic, but I found it a very readable and well-written introduction to art which managed to be accessible without being patronising (for example, whilst she is thorough at explaining the various schools and -isms in European art, she doesn't micro-explain every single term but assumes that the reader isn't completely without knowledge and that they can always look up terms if necessary). There are useful endnotes at the end of the book where some terms may have needed greater explanation.

I would certainly recommend this as a good introduction to European painting for those (like me) who are aware of art but don't really know much about the history and background to each movement, or how the various schools of European art relate (or not) to each other.

4/5. My best ER book so far.

Great review, Jackie. That's a book to watch out for.

Thank you Vivienne, I was certainly pleasantly surprised that it lived up to the ER blurb which prompted me to request it in the first place. Of course pictures included at the relevant point in the text would have been great, but I appreciate the technical difficulties that that would have entailed.

Taking the morning to play catch-up on all the threads in the group. As Eva mentioned, Astrix and Co are always a good, entertaining read! Love the books your Jar of Fate chose for you.

>96 Jackie_K: and >97 -Eva-: - Blackadder!!!!!!

My next book in the Biography/Autobiography/memoir/true events category was one of my freebie acquisitions from earlier this year, and it was quite a treat! Michael Brantley's Memory Cards is a memoir of rural life in North Carolina from the 1970s to now, and is a lovely gentle read. It's not a linear memoir, his chapters usually relate to a particular topic or character in his life, and then within the chapter there are lots of little vignettes which leap about in time, so it flits from one time back to another, then back to the original vignette to continue the story. Having looked at some Goodreads reviews I could see that some people didn't like that, but it worked really well for me, helped by the fact that he is a really good writer (he teaches English and creative writing). It's not a part of the world or a culture that I particularly know at all, but he evoked a time and place beautifully. 4/5.

I've just picked a book out of the Jar for my Religious category. I still have a couple of fiction books on the go - one of which I should finish by the end of the year, the other possibly not, so I shouldn't really get another one out, but I realised that if I can finish one more Religious book as well as the ancient fiction book I'm confident about finishing then I will have completed at least 3 books for all of my categories this year, which is kind of satisfying (even though technically my challenge was for 1 in each category so I completed it ages ago).

>127 Jackie_K: You can do it! :D That would be awesome! And even without that, you have had a most excellent reading year.

>127 Jackie_K: That must be a very great feeling, to have read so many books beyond your original target. Congratulations!

>128 rabbitprincess: >129 MissWatson: thank you, yes it has been a good year! And it transpires that the book from the jar is another short one so should only take a couple of evenings! (not that I'm shallow or anything)

>130 Jackie_K: I think it is called being economical with one's time. There are so many other things to do at this time of the year!

My 3rd book for December (#44 for the year) is finished, another nice short one for my Religious category so ideal for the end of the year and pushing up my totals! This was M. Basil Pennington's An Invitation to Centering Prayer: Including an Introduction to Lectio Divina, a book which I bought shortly after I moved to Scotland when I went on a weekend retreat at a monastery near Perth. This was a simple, short introduction to the practice of centering prayer and Lectio Divina, and whilst it was good as far as it went, I can't help thinking I'd get more out of it if it was used in a retreat or group setting (so that I could have someone reminding me what to do!). 3/5.

It's reminded me that I have some books by Margaret Silf, in the Ignatian tradition, which I really like and which work much better for me in an individual setting. I must dig those out sometime.

In other reading, I am currently about 3/5 of the way through Jane Eyre, I had hoped to finish it by Christmas but don't think that's going to happen. I am going to take it away with me though, so I will be very disappointed if I've not finished it by New Year and added it to my 2016 total (and completed my new challenge of at least 3 books in each category).

My 45th book for the year, in the Ancient Fiction category, is finished, as is my revised category challenge (at least 3 in each category). Technically it's a reread, but as I last read it 30+ years ago it definitely counts as a ROOT (I remembered hardly anything at all about it, so I might as well have been reading it for the first time). It was Charlotte Bronte's Jane Eyre. I liked it, up to a point - I think I'm more of an Austen type than a Bronte, if that makes sense, I'm really not so fussed about dark and brooding. It's beautifully written and so very evocative. I know that reading a 19th century book with 21st century sensibilities is not going to get the most out of it, but it's difficult not to, and so I found the portrayal and treatment of Bertha Mason really difficult to take, even though I appreciated the beauty of the writing and the masterful portrayal of Jane's growing love for Rochester. Therefore I'm giving it a slightly mean 3.5/5 stars, and I think I might have to get hold of Wide Sargasso Sea which I understand is the story from Bertha's perspective.

I really need to remind myself that these things aren't real, they're only stories!!

I think this will be my last book for 2016 - have already started on my first book for the 2017 CultureCAT.

Woo hoo!!!! Excellent work! :D

And I even managed to sneak one more under the wire, which I added to my 'Travel' category. Today our planned trip out for a walk round a local lake/nature reserve was scuppered by fog meaning we would both freeze and wouldn't see a thing, so instead after lunch I sat down with the book I bought my dad for Christmas but then reclaimed as he'd been given it by someone else as well (I did order him something else instead, he's not lost out!). The book is Tim Peake's Hello, is this Planet Earth?: My View from the International Space Station, and I ended up reading it from cover to cover. What a lovely way to end the year, it is a gorgeous coffee table book, with photos and very brief captions taken by British astronaut Tim Peake during his mission on the International Space Station (December 2015-June 2016). I followed his mission on social media, he was an absolutely brilliant advocate for science and really enthused children and adults alike for both the various science experiments he was doing and also his photos of Earth from space. Earth really is so very beautiful, and precious, and fragile. So that's 46 books in total read this year, I'm super-impressed with myself!

Happy new year, when it comes, everyone!

Yay, Christmas gifts that you can take back for yourself if necessary are the best kind of gifts!

Happy Hogmanay when it comes!