LoraShouse is ROOTing Aroung Again in 2017

Hi everybody! I'm back ROOTing again this year. The new goal will be 20 for this year since I did not make the goal of 25 last year. 20 will be more than the 15 I actually read last year, so it will be a bit of a stretch, but hopefully I am more likely to make this one. I still have a lot of large ROOTs sitting around, but I don't think there are more than two that can rival The Rise and Fall of the Third Reich that took up so much time last year.

The definition of a ROOT for my purposes will remain the same as last year, except that this year it will include books purchased in 2016. So, all physical books that I have had since December 31 of 2016 or earlier will count as ROOTs for this year.

This year's first ROOT will be The War Against Boys: How Misguided Feminism is Harming Our Young Men

Good luck with reaching your goal this year!

Welcome back and happy ROOTing!

Welcome back & Happy 2017 ROOTing -- good luck making your goal!

Welcome back and good luck!

Good luck with your new goal! That book sounds interesting.

Welcome back and Happy ROOTing!

Happy 2017 rooting!

Good luck with your ROOTing.

Thanks everybody for all the good wishes.

I finished the second ROOT tonight - Melville Goodwin, U.S.A. I think this book is out of print now. I had to order it used a couple of years ago.

The next book up is A Painted House by John Grisham. I am close to finishing a couple of books on the Kindle too. Unfortunately, they don't qualify as ROOTs for my purposes, but anyway...

Good -- think quality, not quantity! It's important to include "must reads" in nonfiction and literature as ROOT goals, I think.

I can't imagine why anyone would have a goal to "Read my Harlequin Romance collection of Fabio covers." But that may just be me.

>12 Limelite:
I have a couple of romances not only with Fabio covers, but "written" by Fabio as well - and I definitely want to read them if only to laugh at the sheer ridiculousness of them (even if I do generally prefer the lovely quality romances in my collection).

>13 Caramellunacy:
LoL -- very good!

Nobody should pay attention to my opinion of the romance genre since I've never read any of it except Heyer's delightful Regency novels as a teen.

>13 Caramellunacy: no. really? he writes? If you read them, I will DEFinitely look forward to hearing about it!

>15 avanders:, I am fairly certain they are ghost-written, but I will definitely post about them if they make it off of the TBR Mountain this year!

Hehe. Fabio covers - really? I must have blinked and missed something over the years.

All right - I finished A Painted House. That one was really good. Not sure what the next ROOT should be, but since they are going so well so far, maybe I should go for a big book right about now - maybe A Traitor to Memory, or The Rise and Fall of the British Empire. I think the last one, since I had to go pull it out of the pile to get the right name.

In case I don't get back to post again before the end of the month, here are the reading stats for the year so far:

7 of 80 Total Books
3 of 20 ROOTS
3 of 50 List Books
0 Library books
3 Kindle books
2 New Books (by request or otherwise)
1 Audible Audiobooks
0 e-book on Nook app
0 Audiobooks on Scribd
0 e-books on Scribd

Again, some of these categories overlap. I am waiting on 2 library books right now. Also, I finished the audiobook of City of Golden Shadow, but can't count it as a list book until I get through the rest of the Otherland series. That was also a good book, and I can't wait to get into the others, but sort of worried as everybody complains they are too long!

>16 Caramellunacy: oh. but still. :) I just didn't know!
Ok I'll wait w/ baited breath.... ;)

>18 LoraShouse: congrats!
Looks like good progress already :)

Also, did you like the audio of City of Golden Shadow?? I am reading the 4th in the series right now.. I never even thought about listening on audio!
Why can't you count it as a list book until you get through the rest of the series (so many more thousands of pages! ;))? Maybe I don't understand what you mean by "list book"...

Yes, the audio of City of Golden Shadow was good. I have now also finished River of Blue Fire and am working on Mountain of Black Glass. River of Blue Fire was a little slower than City of Golden Shadow, in the sense that they didn't get to as many places, but it was still good. It looks like Mountain of Black Glass is picking up a little bit, but I assume since there is another long book after it that we will still be up in the air, or suspended in our VR tanks at the end of it.

Aha! You opened the can of worms by asking about the Book List. This is kind of a long story.

I have been maintaining a list of books to read since some time between sixth grade and high school. My dad gave me a list he got from somewhere of 100 books recommended by business leaders. It included a lot of classics, so by that time I had already read several of them. Later on, in high school, we got at least a couple of lists in English classes of books that would be acceptable for doing book reports, or something like that. I also added interesting books that my classmates talked about for their book reports. Later still, I added a few other books I heard about that sounded good. I finally closed that list shortly after I got married, figuring I would never get all of them read if I kept adding every good book I heard about. There were about 350 books on that list at its longest.

Around 10 or 12 years later, I joined the Book of the Month Club, looking for some of the books on the list. I did get a few of them that way. But they kept having all these interesting books. I bought 'way too many of them, but couldn't afford all the ones I wanted to read. So, I added a second 'alternative' book list. I put all the books I had heard about that I wanted to read since closing the first list on it, and kept adding new ones they came out with. Some of the books got on there because I already had them and wanted to read the books I had already paid good money for. The Otherland series got onto the list through the Book of the Month Club, and I added it as a single entry at the time. Some of the other books that I initially added as a single book and later discovered they were a series, I separated out into individual books as I got closer to reading them, but I never did that to Otherland.

Eventually, as the original list got shorter and the 'alternative' list got longer, I moved a few books from the 'alternative' list to the original list. And finally, I decided to merge the two lists into a single list. At one time there were over 1000 books on the combined list, although I lost a page of the list in an unfortunate fall under the bed at one point, so there are probably a few that should be there that aren't any more.

Most of my ROOTs are also list books as so many of them were added because I already owned them. Having finished The Rise and Fall of the British Empire, I now have 641 books left on the list. Of these, there are 50 remaining from the original list. It looks like I will be reading list books for some time to come. And since I still keep finding new stuff (I have over 3,000 books on my Kindle, and only maybe 100 of them are list books), it looks like I will never finish all the books I want to read.

Hi, I'm back again. I finally finished The Rise and Fall of the British Empire. I learned a lot about the history of the obscure parts of the world that I didn't know before. When you learn history in U.S. schools, there is never enough time to get through U.S. history, never mind anybody else's. You sort of get the impression that the British Empire mostly fizzled into obscurity after the American Revolution, except for maybe a few flareups here and there. But of course, like so many things, that would not really be the case. They were out there sticking their fingers into all sorts of places for four hundred years or so.

Anyway, the next book up will be Becoming Madame Mao by Anchee Min. It is a list book, a ROOT, and it has a red cover (which I need for a reading challenge in one of my Facebook groups).

Probably I won't be back before the end of March, so here are the reading stats for the year so far:

29 of 80 Total Books
4 of 20 ROOTS
9 of 50 List Books
3 Library books
16 Kindle books
11 New Books (by request or otherwise)
5 Audible Audiobooks
0 e-book on Nook app
1 Audiobooks on Scribd
0 e-books on Scribd

>20 LoraShouse: Your list sounds awesome! It's great that it's not someone else's 'read before you die' list but your own, tailored for you, by you, with your own rules. I wish I'd kept track of my own reading - sometimes I can't remember whether I've read the book or just seen the movie too many times!

I have a few like that too! ;)

All right - moving on out with ROOT removal this year. I finished Becoming Madame Mao. Definitely a strange woman there. But it was a really interesting book.

Next up I am thinking something fun, or at least fairly small. I am torn between Takedown Twenty by Janet Evanovich and The Heart is a Lonely Hunter by Carson McCullers. I'm going to live dangerously and figure that I will finish one of them, or something else by the end of the month, so I will wait to post reading stats until the next time I am on.

>20 LoraShouse: thanks for the explanation! it makes perfect sense :) I could never bind myself to my lists though.... ;p
Have you finished Otherland #3 yet? I felt that the series dragged a little in the middle, but was happy to have finished it and found it very satisfying in the end!!

Hi Lora, I was away from LT for some weeks, so now I'm slowly reading my way through all threads. I love lists!

>25 avanders: same feeling here about the Otherland series. It was fun reading them together, wasn't it, Ava?
Maybe we should do that again this summer.

I'm a little over two hours from the end of Otherland #3 right now. They are in the middle of the sack of Troy. It looks like we are coming up to a particularly dangerous time, where, I figure, the book will end before heading into the last one.

I like group reads too - did one last year with some fellow book bloggers, but that is the only one I have ever done. I was surprised to see you doing Otherland last year - I would have thought an entire series that long would have been difficult to keep up for a group read. But it was interesting reading your posts on it.

I finished The Heart is a Lonely Hunter by Carson McCullers, so that brings us up to 6 ROOTs now. I guess my next ROOT will need to be Takedown Twenty. That should go pretty fast, but I have also ordered two library books, so don't know whether I will finish it before the end of the month.

>26 connie53: Yes! Even though I lagged behind a bit at the end, it was very cool reading such an involved series together! This summer -- I think I can manage that ;) Any books in particular in mind?

>27 LoraShouse: fun! So close..... :)

>30 avanders: Not really, but we can start a thread to see what we come up with.

>28 LoraShouse: Nice to hear you were following us, Lora. Perhaps you could join us?

Ok, see what you come up with, and I'll see if I have it. With all the books I have piled up around here, you would think so, but there are so many people in this group come up with that I have never heard of!

I have finished Takedown Twenty for 7 ROOTs now. I also finished one of my 2 library books, I'm Not Scared by Niccolo Ammanti. Not sure which ROOT to do next after the other library book. I might finally open the two that are still in the wrap they came in, Storm of the Century and Incubus, or I might do Rainbow Six, or I might do another sort of big book, like A Traitor to Memory or London. All those are still sitting around waiting to be ROOTed out.

>32 LoraShouse: I started a group read thread.

By the way, here are my reading stats for the year so far, in case I don't finish anything else in April:

Reading Stats – 2017

44 of 80 Total Books
7 of 20 ROOTS
12 of 50 List Books
4 Library books
26 Kindle books
16 New Books (by request or otherwise)
6 Audible Audiobooks
0 e-book on Nook app
1 Audiobooks on Scribd
0 e-books on Scribd
1 book reread

>31 connie53: great idea! :)

>35 LoraShouse: lookin' good!

Just finished ROOT #8 - incubus by Ann Arensberg. This one was kind of disappointing. It was well written, and the philosophical musings and characters were good. But the supposed demon possession was kind of blah. All but the last scene could have happened to anybody it seems like, and the narrator seemed rather unsympathetic to her fellow townswomen through most of the book, although you did have to feel sorry for her when her neighbors came to her house supposedly to protect her from the Incubus and she wound up having to cook and clean up after them without any help.

Next book will be Storm of the Century by Stephen King, I guess. Meanwhile, I just ordered a bunch of books (hard copies) from Amazon. These are books from my booklist that I haven't found at the library or anywhere else. Most of them are out of print, and I ordered all of them used. One came today. The others will be along in a couple of weeks. They won't be ROOTs this year, but should still be waiting by next year.

Buying books and wait to read them until they become ROOTs. Excellent plan. LOL

I should have more than enough left from previous years to keep me busy until another year passes.

So I have now finished Storm of the Century. A screenplay, no less, so it was kind of different. Easy to read, at least. For my next trick, I think I will do Blood and Gold by Anne Rice.

It seems likely I won't finish that this month, so here are my updated stats for the year so far:

57 of 80 Total Books
9 of 20 ROOTS
17 of 50 List Books
5 Library books
32 Kindle books
16 New Books (by request or otherwise)
7 Audible Audiobooks
0 e-book on Nook app
2 Audiobooks on Scribd
0 e-books on Scribd
1 book reread
1 book from Kindle Unlimited

>40 LoraShouse: I've said it before and I'll say it again - awesome progress! :)

>40 LoraShouse: yeah, way to go!

Just finished Blood and Gold. That brings us up to 10 ROOTS for this year, halfway through. Over all totals seem good, but I feel like I am lagging a bit on list books and Kindle books. Part of the problem is the new books read on request. Some of those I get via e-mail or places like Instafreebie. So I copy them in to my Kindle app on my computer. But when I am done with them, I delete them, and they no longer show up in my 'Finished' folder there. So I feel like I have read more Kindle books that my finished count shows.

On another note, I finally finished the audiobook of Sea of Silver Light, so I am done with Otherland now. I'm glad that it ended well, but I will sort of miss all the characters.

Next up, I am thinking of A Traitor to Memory. It looks enormous, and a little daunting. I'm hoping that some of it is thick paper.

>43 LoraShouse: ooooh congrats on finishing that big series!

>44 LoraShouse: I love Elizabeth George; she is one of my favorite authors! I've not read that book, but I'm putting it on my wish list. I'll keep an eye out for your opinion!

OK, finished A Traitor to Memory. A little over 700 pages, and I think it took about 10 days of actual reading. An excellent book. A mystery. Some of it was predictable, but some definitely was not. I don't think I had heard of Elizabeth George outside of this book until recently, and it was just a lucky find that I came across it at a library sale a couple of years ago.

For my next book, I am thinking Benjamin Franklin's Own Story. That is one from the early part of my list, and I haven't read much from that part of the list in a while, except for The Arabian Nights which I have been reading on forever. It's not a ROOT since it is on my Kindle (in fact, the fact that they had the entire Arabian Nights for free for the Kindle was kind of the tipping point for me getting a Kindle in the first place. But I'm over all disappointed in the book. If I was the king, I would have had Scherezade's head well before a thousand nights were over.

Also might as well update my reading statistics while I am here.

Reading Stats – 2017

73 of 80 Total Books
11 of 20 ROOTS
22 of 50 List Books
7 Library books
40 Kindle books
23 New Books (by request or otherwise)
11 Audible Audiobooks
0 e-book on Nook app
2 Audiobooks on Scribd
0 e-books on Scribd
1 book reread
1 book from Kindle Unlimited

Great stats! I looked at The Arabian Nights free Kindle download and decided it would need an amount of dedication I wasn't prepared to give right now. Good for you for persevering.

Finished Benjamin Franklin's Own Story. This is a book that includes The Autobiography of Benjamin Franklin and then continues past the end of that work to the end of Franklin's life. I had already read the Autobiography, as it was also on my list, but it was years ago, and while I remembered it generally, there was a lot I had forgotten.

The next root up will be City of Darkness, City of Light.

This version of The Arabian Nights is the Richard Burton translation. In real life, it is eighteen volumes and costs a fortune, which is why the Kindle version is such a good deal. It is large, however. The main work is in the first 10 volumes. So, I read that, and the introduction, and the Final Essay, and several appendices, and would have been happy to quit there. But I was looking for the stories of Aladdin and Ali Baba - the mist famous of the Arabian Nights stories, and neither of them was in there at all! One of the appendices mentioned other translations, and an early French translation is evidently where Aladdin and Ali Baba come from. So, in the last 8 volumes, they have put in stories from some of the other translations. And I am still reading, hoping to come across them somewhere. I am now (hopefully) nearing the end of volume 12, and still nothing. When I find those 2 stories, I intend to quit.

>51 LoraShouse: Wow, I admire your tenacity! I had overheard a discussion of English teachers last year and I seem to remember that the conclusion was it was added in the 17-18th century by a French translator?

Just dropping by to say Hello!

Hi Laura, just stopping by to say Hi. I've been away from LT for some time due to RL things. But now I'm back trying to keep up with threads.

Yes. My impression was that it was something like that. I am now in the middle of the footnotes for book 12. *sigh*

Hi. Thanks for stoppin' by.

Nice to see you back. You're very virtuous to come back and comment. I try to read some of the other threads, and find I have nothing to say.

Alright! Just finished City of Darkness, City of Light. Very good novel about the French Revolution. This is the first thing I have read that gives more than a glancing look around the edges of that famous bit of history. Interesting to see Benjamin Franklin making a cameo appearance here, since I just read the book about him.

Next up will be If Love Were All.

Reading Stats for the end of July are:

80 of 80 Total Books
13 of 20 ROOTS
26 of 50 List Books
7 Library books
44 Kindle books
25 New Books (by request or otherwise)
12 Audible Audiobooks
0 e-book on Nook app
2 Audiobooks on Scribd
1 e-books on Scribd
1 book reread
1 book from Kindle Unlimited

Your total books and ROOT totals are looking pretty impressive! I have *no* idea how you can have read 80 books by now - this year and last year have been my best reading years ever, and I'm going to be delighted if I hit 50 by the end of December!

>57 LoraShouse: I'm on summer break so I have time to visit all threads that have new posts. And I like doing that, so....

I like your stats and agree with Jackie. I aim for 75 books this year and I think I will reach that goal. But if you have read 80 books, with 5 months to go, WOW!

>59 LoraShouse: wow, 80 - that's great! Well done! :))

Another one down. If Love Were All was pretty easy. I guess it's what you would call 'chick lit' about a woman dealing with the death of her husband and other family issues that come up over the course of a couple of years. She suddenly remembers an old flame who declined to come back to her after he returned from Vietnam, and she feels compelled to find out why - so much so that she spends two summers looking for him. Her family is scandalized that she wants to find him, and that she doesn't want to spend the rest of her life in the house where her husband died.

Next I will be reading Rainbow Six. Rather a large book for a popular paperback. But I think I can get through it and have at least as many ROOTs done this year as I did last year.

I think I have done well with my reading goals so far this year. Part of the reason is that several of the books I have been asked to read and review have been children's books, so they were pretty short.

Last year my total goal was 75 books and I wound up reading about 120. But I have so many Kindle books to read that it feels like I am monstrously behind.

You're doing great with your ROOTing this year, again.

>63 LoraShouse: Tom Clancy paperbacks are huge, and the hardcovers are enormous! Same with John le Carré. The 1990s seemed to be the era of thrillers in monstrous hardcovers that are almost physically impossible to read without a book stand, if my dad's bookshelves are anything to go by.

I just wanted to drop by to say hi :)
I couldn't possibly catch up on the threads here (explanation on my own thread), though I wish I could!
I hear that you feel like you have a little more time again at some point after having a kid... here's to hoping ;)

>57 LoraShouse: hee hee ;) I'm sure you have things to say... you can write just whatever you think of! ;D But lurking is fine too... whatever you prefer :)

Thanks everybody for all the encouragement.

I finished Rainbow Six today. So now I have as many ROOTs done this year as I got through all last year.

I think the next ROOT I will tackle will be Black House. This is also another really big book for a popular paperback. But it seems like everything I have is either really big or (possibly deceptively) small, and I don't want to use up all the little ones now only to be left with only huge books for the next few years.

And here are my reading stats as of now. I probably should have sneaked on and posted them at the end of August, but hadn't finished the latest ROOT yet, and was rushing to finish another read & review book, so I just didn't. So there.

97 of 80 Total Books
15 of 20 ROOTS
32 of 50 List Books
9 Library books
53 Kindle books
30 New Books (by request or otherwise)
15 Audible Audiobooks
0 e-book on Nook app
2 Audiobooks on Scribd
2 e-books on Scribd
2 books reread
1 book from Kindle Unlimited

Nice stats!

Finished Black House yesterday. I had been dreading it, but it was pretty good and went really fast. So yay! I am now ahead of last year for reading totals. Next I am reading (integrity). It is kind of political/philosophical. I was afraid it would be boring, but so far it doesn't seem to be. Also, it is less long, so hoping I can finish it before the end of the month.

I did manage to finish (integrity) a few days ago. Next up will be The Illustrated Chronicles of Matthew Paris. Only 3 more to go to reach the goal now! However, I have two library books that I will be reading next.

So here are the reading stats for the end of this month, as I likely won't finish anything new before then:

110 of 80 Total Books
17 of 20 ROOTS
37 of 50 List Books
9 Library books
62 Kindle books
35 New Books (by request or otherwise)
16 Audible Audiobooks
0 e-book on Nook app
3 Audiobooks on Scribd
2 e-books on Scribd
2 books reread
1 book from Kindle Unlimited

Finished The Illustrated Chronicles of Matthew Paris a couple of days ago. A lot of it was a little bit on the dry side, being a recital of all the people (for example the king, the pope, other nobles, other clergymen) who were competing with each other to extract money from the various churches and abbeys. It did, however, have a really interesting account of how one of the crusades in the year 1250 fell apart.

The next book, I think will be Millennium, another long-ish book at around 750 pages, but hopefully it won't be too dry. Only 2 more to go to make the goal this year!

But probably won't get past this one before Halloween. We have a new grandbaby due in 2 days. So here are the updated reading stats for the year so far:

123 of 80 Total Books
18 of 20 ROOTS
42 of 50 List Books
11 Library books
67 Kindle books
38 New Books (by request or otherwise)
20 Audible Audiobooks
0 e-book on Nook app
3 Audiobooks on Scribd
3 e-books on Scribd
2 books reread
1 book from Kindle Unlimited

Congrats on closing in on your goal. And even more felicitations on the new grandbaby!

great stats and great anticipation - good for you! :)

Congratulations on the new grandbaby!

I think by now the baby will be a few days old. I hope everything did go well.

Hope all is well and you are enjoying the new grandbaby.

So. Tried to post a picture of the grandkids, but no luck.

Anyway, I finished reading Millennium A History of the Last Thousand Years, a different kind of history book. That makes 19 for this year. Only 1 more to go.

Just started reading Sophie's Choice. It looks kind of long too, but is interesting so far. Maybe I will finish before the end of the year.

I think I can, I think I can...

But probably not before the end of November.

Here are the reading statistics for the year so far:

137 of 80 Total Books
19 of 20 ROOTS
46 of 50 List Books
11 Library books
74 Kindle books
43 New Books (by request or otherwise)
23 Audible Audiobooks
0 e-book on Nook app
5 Audiobooks on Scribd
4 e-books on Scribd
2 books reread
1 book from Kindle Unlimited

Good luck with your reading everybody, and have a happy holiday season!

Too bad about the photo - if you manage to upload it to your profile page we can talk you through how to get it on this thread. I say 'we' - a group of us worked our way through the process earlier this year with mutual support! I haven't done it for a while so of course I've totally forgotten how....

You can take your time with Sophie's Choice, your stats are admirable!

Yes, you can make it!

You are so close to your goal! Wonderful too how much you exceeded your overall goal. I'm musing about how to handle next year.

You've got this!

Go, Lora! You can do this!

Thanks for the cheers!

I did manage to finish Sophie's Choice. So that makes my ROOT goal for this year (first time - yay!).

But I decided that I probably won't finish Emile in time to count it for my list goal for this year, so I thought I would try to run in one extra ROOT that was also a list book to make up for that. So for my next ROOT I will be reading Get Anyone to Do Anything, which is pretty short and an easy read. That way, if I finish it and also work really hard on the other list book I am currently reading, Playing for Keeps, I should have my Goodreads goal, my ROOT goal, and my list book goal all covered for this year. I didn't really have goals in the other categories.

I will wait until I finish the next book to post statistics again, as I hope to have it done before the end of the month.

Thanks again!

Congratulations on your ROOT success!

Well done! :)

Hello... sorry for such a long absence! I kept seeing that "unread" number get higher and higher and was completely intimidated... Finally, I figured it's better to just stop by and say HI. :)
I wish I had time to go through these threads and read all about what you've all been doing and reading! But, alas, I very much do not. But I think of you often!! And my "hello" is heartfelt and repeated often in my own head ;)

I'm not sure how I will remain involved next year, but I will be around in some fashion!
xo

>86 LoraShouse: Yes, you did it! You reached your ROOT goal!

I did actually finish the extra ROOT list book, and so fast that I had time for another short ROOT as well - Pay Dirt, bringing the ROOT total for the year to 22, 2 over the goal. I also finished the other list book, so reached that goal as well. I think for the last few days of the year I will focus on trying to finish some of the books on my Kindle as there are so many. Then I can start with new ROOT and list goals for next year. I hope we will be doing this again next year... I know it must be a lot of work to keep it all up though.

Thanks again to everyone for their encouragement all year, and hope to hear from all of you again in the new year!

And here are the reading stats for the year so far:

Reading Stats – 2017

146 of 80 Total Books
22 of 20 ROOTS
50 of 50 List Books
11 Library books
79 Kindle books
45 New Books (by request or otherwise)
23 Audible Audiobooks
0 e-book on Nook app
5 Audiobooks on Scribd
5 e-books on Scribd
2 books reread
2 books from Kindle Unlimited

I probably won't finish any more ROOTs this year, and don't plan on finishing any more list books either since I currently have a nice 600 books left on the list. I will try to read another 50 of those next year, some of which will undoubtedly be ROOTs as well. If I am lucky, I will finish one or two other books before the end of the year. I am making good progress on the audiobook of Outlander, and working on some Kindle books as well.

Congrats!

Congrats on exceeding your goal and looking forward to hearing from you next year!

>91 LoraShouse: Yes there is a new 2018 group up and running!

Happy Holidays, Lora!

Hi LoraShouse! I hope you had a wonderful Christmas & Happy New Year!


& Congrats!