atozgrl (Irene) Tries ROOTs in 2023

My name is Irene. I'm a recently retired librarian, and am coming back to LT after a long period of inactivity. I found and joined the 75 Books Challenge in January. You'll find most of my commentary over there (https://www.librarything.com/topic/347822#n8067889). I'm also taking part in the 2023 Nonfiction Challenge: Favorite Pastimes in February (https://www.librarything.com/topic/348217#n8063499). A couple of the folks over on that thread told me about the ROOT Challenge and invited me to join, so here I am!

I have collected a lot of books over the years, and I haven't had the time to read them all while I was working, so I'm hoping to start putting a dent in that this year. That's my main reading goal this year, and it fits right in with the ROOT Challenge, so here I am.

Since this is my first year doing this, I have no idea really how many to set as my goal, so I just picked 40. We'll see how I do this year, and adjust next year accordingly.

ROOTs Books Read in 2023

January
1. The Man Who Loved Books Too Much, by Allison Hoover Bartlett.
2. The Double Helix, by James D. Watson.

February
3. Dewey's Nine Lives, by Vicki Myron.
4. The Chicago Cubs: Story of a Curse by Rich Cohen.
5. Fly the W: 2016 World Champions.
6. Seabiscuit: an American Legend by Laura Hillenbrand.

March
7. Sergeant York and His People by Sam K. Cowan.
8. Cleopatra: a Life by Stacy Schiff.

May
9. Raising the Hunley : the remarkable history and recovery of the lost Confederate submarine by Brian Hicks and Schuyler Kropf. (started in April but finished in May)
10. Historic Raleigh by Jennifer A. Kulikowski and Kenneth E. Peters.

June
11. Ancient pioneers : the first Americans by George E. Stuart.

July
12. George Washington's First War: His Early Military Adventures by David A. Clary.
13. Revolutionary Summer: the Birth of American Independence by Joseph J. Ellis.

August
14. Doctor Zhivago by Boris Pasternak.
15. Ribbon of Sand: the amazing convergence of the ocean & the Outer Banks by John Alexander and James Lazell.

September
16. Unbroken : a World War II story of survival, resilience, and redemption by Laura Hillenbrand.
17. The Greatest Generation by Tom Brokaw.

October
18. The Island of Lost Maps: a True Story of Cartographic Crime by Miles Harvey.

November
19. The Cubs way : the Zen of building the best team in baseball and breaking the curse by Tom Verducci.
20. An Indigenous Peoples' History of the United States by Roxanne Dunbar-Ortiz.
21. The language of science and faith : straight answers to genuine questions by Karl W. Giberson and Francis S. Collins.

December
22. The Help by Kathryn Stockett.
23. The death of conservatism: a movement and its consequences by Sam Tanenhaus.

Welcome and good luck with your goal!

Welcome to the ROOTers, Irene. Enjoy your retirement and your books.

40 is a nice goal and leaves room for new books you might buy and you want to read too. Any ROOT you read above your goal counts for the grand total. Also a good thing since some members won't reach their goal.

Welcome to the group! I hope it helps you ROOT out all those unread books!

That makes two of us - librarians who are retiring. I am retiring effective March 1. To that end I am stocking up on books and reading, reading, reading. And of course, there is coffee and tea. While reading. But first, I have to clean my office out. :-)

Welcome aboard and have fun! A goal of 40 books sounds reasonable. You can also reduce your goal later on if you need to :)

>3 MissWatson: >4 connie53: >5 Jackie_K: Thank you all for your encouragement! I'm looking forward to tackling my unread books.

>6 benitastrnad: Your retirement date is coming soon! Congratulations! You will enjoy having more free time.

I had to rush cleaning out my office. We had been working from home for an extended period during the COVID lockdown, and I was still in the office only three days a week as I was preparing to retire. I thought I had cleared out everything, but my boss found some pictures in my filing cabinet a few months later and mailed them to me. Hopefully you'll have better success at cleaning your office out than I did! :-p

>7 rabbitprincess: Thank you! I guess we'll see what kind of progress I make. It's good to know that I can reduce my goal if I need to.

Hello, Irene. Welcome to the group. Happy ROOTing.

>1 atozgrl: Found and starred!

>12 fuzzi: Welcome!

Glad you found us, welcome, Irene!

>14 cyderry: Thanks!

Today I finished The language of science and faith : straight answers to genuine questions by Karl W. Giberson and Francis S. Collins. It's my 21st ROOT for the year. When I joined this group back in February, I had no idea how many ROOTs I might get to this year, and set an ambitious goal of 40. Unfortunately, that has turned out to be unrealistic. I joined a book club and have been reading borrowed books for that group, some of the challenges I have found on LT this year led me to read books I don't own, and most of the ROOTs I did read were nonfiction, which are generally longer and slower to read. Since some have said we can revise the goal, I have gone ahead and changed mine to 25 for the year. I'm hoping I might be able to complete that by the end of December. My book club is taking a break this month, so it might be doable.

>16 atozgrl: For the first time in several years, I'm not going to meet my goal this year. I'll be lowering it next year for sure!

>17 Jackie_K: That makes at least two of us!

>18 atozgrl: >17 Jackie_K: make that three.

I almost always meet or exceed my goal of 100, books read or just ROOT'd off the shelves, but didn't even come close this year. Real Life got in the way.

>19 fuzzi: Real life has been a bear this year! Here's hoping we all do better next year.

Due to an unexpected death in the family, I was unable to meet my amended goal for the year. I did finish one more book while out of town and off wifi, so I will finish this year with 23 ROOTS read. I had hoped to read more, and did have another ROOT started, but too many things to do and people to see kept me from finishing it.

>21 atozgrl: I'm very sorry for your loss. Take good care of yourself.

>21 atozgrl: I'm sorry. (((hugs)))

>22 Jackie_K: >23 fuzzi: Thank you both! My MiL was 94, so she had a long life, and had been in declining health, though her death was unexpected. It was a lovely funeral. I take comfort that she is no longer in pain.