CurrerBell's ROOTs for 2025

Books owned or already on mail order as of December 31, 2024. Does not include Kindle (unless book also owned in treeware and Kindle edition was used as a convenient reading format). Goal of 48, which will set me at a target of 4 per month.

Was way off my goal for 2024, with 34/50 for 68%, but this was due to serious injury (broken hip) that required hospitalization and in-patient rehab, leaving me only with "cotton candy" Kindle reads for close to two months.

Rereads – some of which can go back as much as half-a-century or more – are included.



Jan (5), Feb (3), Mar (4), Apr (4), May (3), Jun (1),
Jul (2), Aug (4), Sep (2), Oct (3), Nov (7), Dec (10) ... Total (48)

Hi Mike, starred your thread! Good to see you back. I hope you've completely recovered from your injury. It sounds very painful. I hope you have a healthy and peaceful 2025.

Happy ROOTing, Mike!

Glad you have returned! Happy 2025 reading.

Hoping your recovery and rehab has been successful and all of your books are available to read now. I also count re-reads and have been eyeing two books for a third-time read this year.

January:

4 ... Chuck Wendig, The Book of Accidents 4****
7 ... Mikhail Bulgakov, Diaboliad (Ardis Russian Literature) 3½*** {review}
14 ... Patricia Briggs, Winter Lost 4****
21 ... Best of the Grapevine, volume 1 5*****
29 ... Alexandre Dumas père, La Reine Margot (Oxford World's Classics) 4****

I'm glad to see you here, Mike. I hope you are well on your way to recovery from the broken hip, and that you can catch up on your reading. Wishing you a great year!

So happy to see you’re back. I hope the recovery is well on its way?

>8 MissWatson: Getting around with just a cane and even at times doing it free-style, but my left leg still hurts. And I am a prostate cancer survivor, so I've had testosterone blockage therapy (but it's now been 3½ years since that ended) and the testosterone hasn't much come back, which is leading (along with my 73 years) to osteoperosis, which of course can leave me vulnerable to fractures.

Hoping I can get back out hiking this spring. I'll just have to wait and see. But at least it's a good chance to get ahead on ROOTing during the winter months.

>9 CurrerBell: Taking care of oneself becomes ever more time-intensive, I find, as one grows older.

You're so right, Birgit. I'm 71 (will be 72 at the end of March) and noticing all kinds of little aches and pains.

Talking about aches and pains is no fun! only books or grandchildren or other hobbies, travels, okay just not aches and pains! I could write a book!

February:

7 ... James Cone, My Soul Looks Back 3½***
19 ... Russell Kirk, Eliot and His Age: T. S. Eliot’s Moral Imagination in the Twentieth Century 4½****
28 ... Stendhal, Red and Black (Norton Critical Edition) 2**

March:

4 ... Cornelia Funke, Inkheart 5*****
10 ... Cornelia Funke, Inkspell 4****
15 ... Corneila Funke, Inkdeath 4½****
26 ... Emila Zola, The Kill (Oxford World's Classics) 4****

April:

6 ... Alexandre Dumas père, Chicot the Jester 3½***
11 ... Carlos Ruiz Zafón, The Shadow of the Wind 4****
23 ... Tulsi Gabbard, For Love of Country 4****
30 ... Margery Williams, The Velveteen Rabbit 5*****

May:

11 ... Alexandre Dumas père, The Black Tulip (Penguin) 3***
17 ... Mary McMyne, The Book of Gothel 4½****
22 ... Alexandre Dumas père, The Forty-Five Guardsmen 3***

June:

2 ... Alexandre Dumas pere, The Three Musketeers (trans Richard Pevear) 5*****

Hi Mike, hope you are doing okay. Just popping in to see what you are reading.

July:

21 ... Harriette Arnow, The Dollmaker 5*****
27 ... Best of the Grapevine: Volume II 5*****

I've read in the progress thread about all your medical problems, Mike. That was a lot you had to deal with. I hope you doing better now and you will continue to do so.

August:

11 ... Ian Davidson, Voltaire: A Life 3***
13 ... Best of the Grapevine: Volume III 5*****
18 ... Martin Gardner, Lewis Carroll, The Annotated Alice: The Definitive Edition 4½****
31 ... Edgar Rice Burroughs, John Carter of Mars: The First Five Novels 3½***

Just popping in to say, Hi!

September:

15 ... Kamilla Benko, Unicorn Quest 5*****
29 ... William Jasper Nicolls, Brunhilda of Orr's Island 1*

October:

10 ... John Connolly, The Gates 4****
24 ... John Connolly, Hell's Bells (aka The Infernals) 3***
30 ... Katherine Paterson, Bridge to Terabithia 5*****

Bridge to Terabithia is perhaps a bit of a cheat. I read it years ago and still had my Kindle copy, but I just bought a hc edition and reread for a church reading group. Gonna throw it in as a ROOT even though I didn't own the hardcover before 1/1/25.

November:

3 ... John Connolly, The Book of Lost Things 4½****

REREAD in prep for The Rose Field:
17 ... Philip Pullman, The Golden Compass 5*****
19 ... Philip Pullman, The Subtle Knife 5*****
21 ... Philip Pullman, The Amber Spyglass 5*****

22 ... Elizabeth Strout, Amy and Isabelle 4****

REREAD in prep for The Rose Field:
27 ... Philip Pullman, La Bella Sauvage 4****
29 ... Philip Pullman, The Secret Commonwealth 5*****

December:

1 ... Rudyard Kipling, Captains Courageous 2½**
6 ... Andrew Bacevich and Daniel Sjursen, Paths of Dissent: Soldiers Speak Out Against America's Misguided Wars 4****
7 ... Louise Fitzhugh, Harriet the Spy 4****
15 ... Philip Pullman, The Rose Field 4*****
24 ... J.A. White, The Thickety: A Path Begins 4****

25 ... A.F. Steadman, Skandar and the Unicorn Thief 3½***
28 ... Kathi Appelt, The True Blue Scouts of Sugar Man Swamp 4****
29 ... Wesley McNair, Maine in Four Seasons 3½***
31 ... Stendhal, The Charterhouse of Parma 3***
31 ... Abbé Prévost, Manon Lescaut 3½***

Added The Rose Field to satisfy my 2025 goal of 48. Strictly speaking, not satisfying my definition of a 2025 ROOT since only purchased this year, but it's been a long-awaited completion to the Book of Dust trilogy and an absolutely must-read. I plan on changing my ROOTs definition for 2026 to allow inclusion of books in certain lengthy series (for example, an ongoing Zola group read) in which all volumes have not yet been purchased.

And here I am again, cheering you on!

>27 connie53: Thank you! I need it. Still got ten to go for December.

ETA: Oh, yeah, and for a Napoleonic read in the Reading Through Time group I'm looking possibly at The Count of Monte Cristo. (Or maybe, as a time-saver, a reread of Jeanette Winterson's The Passion? I don't at all remember it from a dozen or so years ago but I see I gave it 4****.)

>28 CurrerBell: Oeps, that is a big pile to take on, Mike. Go get them!