madhatter22 Reads Roots by Category - 2022 ed.

These are pretty much a repeat of my 2021 challenges. I fell far short on them last year, but I'm always optimistic on January first!
I'm hoping to make a dent in the ridiculous TBR pile that I have no room for, and I also want to reach for something other than mystery/horror/humorous essays by women at least once in a while.

ROOTs are any books already owned as of 1/1/22. (Most of which I hope to get off the shelf.)
The category goal is at least 3 books in each one (plus one of each of the series.)

The Next Book in Every Series I've Started
1. I Am Half Sick of Shadows - #4 in Alan Bradley's Flavia de Luce series (ROOT, 9/3)
2. Gwendy's Final Task - #3 in Richard Chizmar's & Stephen King's Button Box trilogy (borrowed, 8/23)
3. Red Bones - #3 in Ann Cleeves' Shetland series (ROOT, 1/4)
4. Hidden Depths - #3 in Ann Cleeves' Vera Stanhope series (ROOT, 11/12)
5. The Story of a New Name - #2 of Elena Ferrante's Neapolitan Novels
6. Faithful Place - #3 in Tana French's Dublin Murder Squad series (ROOT, March)
7. Dragonfly in Amber - #2 in Diana Gabaldon's Outlander series
8. The Ink Black Heart - #6 in Robert Galbraith's Strike/Ellacott series (borrowed 10/2)
9. The Magician King - #2 in Lev Grossman's Magicians trilogy
10. Ritual - #3 in Mo Hayder's Jack Caffrey series (ROOT, 5/28)
11. All Things Wise and Wonderful - #3 in James Herriot's All Ceatures Great and Small series
12. Tales from the Cafe - #2 in Toshikazu Kawaguchi's Before the Coffee Gets Cold series (borrowed, 2/12)
13. Irene - #2 in Pierre LeMaitre's Verhoeven trilogy
14. The Assassin's Blade - prequel to Sarah Maas' Throne of Glass series
15. Secondhand Souls - #2 in Christopher Moore's Grim Reaper series
16. Nemesis - #4 in Jo Nesbø's Harry Hole series (ROOT, 3/18)
17. How the Light Gets In - #9 in Louise Penny's Armand Gamache series (ROOT, 6/15)

I Want to Read Every Book Ever Written by ...
1. Barbara Pym - Jane and Prudence (ROOT, 1/6)
2. Patricia Highsmith - Deep Water (ROOT, 2/9)
3. Roald Dahl - Danny Champion of the World (new, 7/27)
4. Tove Jansson - The Summer Books (ROOT, 9/21)
5. Stephen King - The Colorado Kid (ROOT, 8/3)
6. Louisa May Alcott - The Inheritance (ROOT, 10/2)
7. Agatha Christie - The Mysterious Affair at Styles (borrowed, 11/6)

It's About Time I Finally Read Something by ...
1. Dawn Powell - Come Back to Sorrento
2. Haruki Murakami
3. Rebecca West - The Return of the Soldier (ROOT, 9/7)
4. Stephen Graham Jones - My Heart Is a Chainsaw (ROOT, April)
5. Sally Rooney - Normal People (borrowed, 6/10)

Never Lend Me Your Books (I've Had Some of These for Years)
1. Pat of Silver Bush - L. M. Montgomery (ROOT, 1/23)
2. Mistress Pat - L. M. Montgomery (ROOT, 2/9)
3. Jane of Lantern Hill - L. M. Montgomery
4. Eden's Outcasts - John Matteson
5. My Dark Vanessa - Kate Elizabeth Russell (borrowed, 10/21)

Classics I've Been Vowing to "Finally Read This Year" for Many, Many Years
1. The Forsyte Saga - John Galsworthy
2. The Tenant of Wildfell Hall - Anne Bronte
3. The Group - Mary McCarthy
4. Oliver Twist - Charles Dickens (ROOT, 12/6)
5.

I Have an Entire Bookcase of Dusty Short Story Collections
1. Lord, the One You Love Is Sick - Kasey Thornton
2. Homesick for Another World - Ottessa Moshfegh (ROOT, 1/30)
3. Someone Who Will Love You in All Your Damaged Glory - Raphael Bob-Waksberg (borrowed, 7/29)
4. The Wonderful Story of Henry Sugar and Six More - Roald Dahl (ROOT, 7/26)
5. Raised in Captivity - Chuck Klosterman (ROOT, 9/2)
6. The 2022 Short Story Advent Calendar - Michael Hingston (new, 12/25)

I Really Am Interested in All These Books on Language I've Been Collecting for 25+ Years
1. Wordslut - Amanda Montell
2. Because Internet - Gretchen McCulloch
3. Dreyer's English - Benjamin Dreyer (ROOT, April)
4. Nine Nasty Words - John McWhorter
5.

Proper Biographies/Autobiographies/Memoirs/Letters (Not Personal Essay Collections by Comedians)
1. She Come By It Natural: Dolly Parton and the Women Who Lived Her Songs - Sarah Smarsh (new, 6/28)
2. Boy - Roald Dahl (ROOT, 6/30)
3. My Life in Middlemarch - Rebecca Mead (ROOT, 11/23)
4. Run Towards the Danger - Sarah Polley (borrowed, 12/21)
5.

Nonfiction That Isn't in Either of the Two Categories Above (And Still Isn't Comedian Essays)
1. Cool Gray City of Love - Gary Kamiya
2. Chesapeake Requiem: A Year with the Watermen of Vanishing Tangier Island - Earl Swift
3. The Wordy Shipmates - Sarah Vowell (ROOT, 5/8)
4. Bad Feminist - Roxane Gay (ROOT, 11/10)
5.

Humorous Essays/Memoirs (Because I'm Going to Read Them Anyway)
1. Girl Walks Into a Bar - Rachel Dratch (borrowed, 6/20)
2. Yearbook - Seth Rogen (borrowed, 6/24)
3. Sicker in the Head - Judd Apatow (borrowed, 7/25)
4. Please Don't Sit on My Bed in Your Outside Clothes - Phoebe Robinson (ROOT 10/10)
5. Happy Go Lucky - David Sedaris (borrowed, 8/4)

Use It or Lose It: Unread Books That I Already Owned When I Joined LT in 2009
1. Caramelo - Sandra Cisneros
2. College Girls: Bluestockings, Sex Kittens and Co-Eds - Lynn Peril
3. We Were the Mulvaneys - Joyce Carol Oates
4. Back When We Were Grownups - Anne Tyler ROOT, 10/17)
5.

At Least I Wasn't Watching Yet Another Chopped Marathon: Books That Don't Count Toward My Category Totals
1. Leave the World Behind - Rumaan Alam (ROOT, 1/2)
2. Apartment - Teddy Wayne (ROOT, 2/22)
3. The Minpins - Roald Dahl (borrowed, 8/3)
4. The Magic Finger - Roald Dahl (borrowed, 8/3)
5. A Spindle Splintered - Alix Harrow (ROOT, 8/10)
6. No Exit - Taylor Adams (new, 8/19)
7. A Mirror Mended - Alix Harrow (borrowed, 8/26)
8. I'm Thinking of Ending Things - Iain Reid (ROOT, 8/10)
9. And Then There Were None - Agatha Christie (ROOT, 10/12)
10. Dietland - Sarai Walker (ROOT, 11/18)
11. Luster - Raven Leilani (borrowed, 11/29)

1. Normal People (British Book Award - Book of the Year)
2. Sicker in the Head
3. A Spindle Splintered
4. Leave the World Behind
8. Patricia Highsmith
9. The Ink Black Heart (1024pp)
10. The Return of the Soldier
13. Red Bones (Jan. Mystery Cat)
14. The Wordy Shipmates
17. Jane and Prudence
18. Tales from the Cafe
19. Dreyer's English
20. The Colorado Kid (David)
21. Nemesis (Oslo)
22. Mistress Pat
23. Faithful Place (Ireland)
24. David Sedaris
25. Pat of Silver Bush

Hi, Shauna!

I love you last category title - too funny! But also, I can completely relate...

Welcome back and have a great reading year! I just read Because Internet for the second time last year (this time on audio) and it was great. Wordslut is on my TBR.

Good luck with your 2022 reading. You have some great CATS!

Have some good reading in 2022.

Good luck with your 2022 Challenge!

Best wishes on your 2022 reads! I follow many of those mystery series too, so I'm anxious to see what you think of them.

Good luck with your 2022 reading!

Enjoy your reading and good luck this year!

     

I didn't get many books read in JANUARY, but all of them were on my shelves, four of them are now off my shelves, and I didn't bring in anything new. So there's that.
Leave the World Behind was not the story I was expecting, but was one of those books I stayed up too late reading. That used to happen a lot, but it's rarer now and always appreciated.
Red Bones and Homesick for Another World were exactly what I expected: 1) a cozy, engrossing mystery that would make me want to jump on a plane to Scotland but whose reveal would be a little frustrating, and 2) a collection of variously unsettling, startlingly hilarious and strangely touching short stories.
Jane & Prudence was funny and perceptive and delightful as Barbara Pym always is.
Pat of Silver Bush ... L.M. Montgomery's heroines' rapturous descriptions of P.E.I. and clinical obsession with nature first make me want to visit, and then make me want to drown those heroines in a vat of treacle. But then L.M. will toss out an 8-year-old gossiping about a man slitting his throat, or a woman whose family was worried she'd eloped and was relieved she'd only drowned, and you remember how dark she can get.

Hoping February will make more of a dent in my TBR piles!

>12 madhatter22: great job of reading from shelves and not bringing anything else in--ad admirable feat!

>12 madhatter22: Had to laugh at your description of L.M. Montgomery! I'm a fan, but I don't think the Pat books are her strongest.

I haven't been hitting many reading goals this year, so I felt the need to post that I made it until MARCH 21ST this year without buying any new books. I'm pretty sure that hasn't happened since before I had paper route money.

I'm trying to read from my shelves as much as possible, but I had added Arbitrary Stupid Goal to my wishlist just yesterday after learning about it from a friend's review, and then I popped into a bookstore today - just to buy a present! - and there it was, on the remainders table.
Under those circumstances I think I was morally and/or legally obligated to buy it.

>15 madhatter22: Totally agree!

Congratulations on your willpower, I have trouble going a day without adding to my library!

>15 madhatter22: Congratulations on your lengthy streak of not buying books, and I think you made a good decision with Arbitrary Stupid Goal!