karenmarie ROOTs around in 2025 in a world gone mad, part I

It’s a shock, but 2025’s here. Welcome to my first thread, and may the Universe protect us from the chaos demon and his minions.

Eight ways to describe me and books: bibliolater, bibliomaniac, bibliophile, lectiophiliac, bookworm, Book Dragon, biblioflâneuse, and librocubicularist.

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The Good: Family, friends, kitties, books, and soccer in constantly-rotating order. Smut, of course, book sort team/Friends of the Library. Jenna got married in November to her girlfriend Hwan and they live about 35 minutes from us. Bio Daughter and Bonus Daughter.

The Bad: The 2024 election results. And today, January 6th, will be the official confirmation of the election results. Gag. The world seems to be imploding, and my pessimism has me believing that it’s going to be much, much worse before it gets better. The next four years will be dangerous, embarrassing for our country, and damaging to our federal institutions.

From the Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists Doomsday Clock. This information was published in January of last year when the clock was set to 90 seconds before midnight, apocalypse. It will be reset on January 28, 2025. 90 seconds is the shortest time to apocalypse since the clock was created in 1945.

A moment of historic danger: It is still 90 seconds to midnight

Ominous trends continue to point the world toward global catastrophe. The war in Ukraine and the widespread and growing reliance on nuclear weapons increase the risk of nuclear escalation. China, Russia, and the United States are all spending huge sums to expand or modernize their nuclear arsenals, adding to the ever-present danger of nuclear war through mistake or miscalculation.

In 2023, Earth experienced its hottest year on record, and massive floods, wildfires, and other climate-related disasters affected millions of people around the world. Meanwhile, rapid and worrisome developments in the life sciences and other disruptive technologies accelerated, while governments made only feeble efforts to control them.

The Ugly: What’s going to happen in the world given the instability in countries one would consider stable - France, Germany, Canada, South Korea. The Israelis are committing genocide against the Palestinians. The polarization within the US.

I read and am a charter member of the Redbud and Beyond Book Club, started in 1997. Our 2024-2025 Book Club Year.
Aug – The End of the Affair by Graham Greene – started, abandoned.
Sep – Remarkably Bright Creatures by Shelby Van Pelt – finished. Loved.
Oct – Huckleberry Finn by Mark Twain – after 3 attempts to start it in September, finally devoured it in time for my RL book club meeting.
Nov – Knife: Meditations After an Attempted Murder by Salman Rushdie. Was stunned by this book.
Dec – Foster by Claire Keegan – Started, abandoned. Memo to self: Listen to an audiobook before acquiring it. A very strong Irish accent just didn’t work for me.
Jan – James by Percival Everett - started
Feb – Hamnet by Maggie O’Farrell
Mar - The Mitford Affair by Marie Benedict
Apr – The Good Lord Bird by James McBride
May – Dinosaurs by Linda Millet
Jun 8 - book selection

I have been married to Bill for 33 years and am mother to Jenna, who turned 31 this year and is married to Hwan, 29.

Jenna and Hwan in traditional clothing at one of the five palaces in Seoul, Korea, December 2024. Hwan prefers that her face not be on social media, so I must respect that.


Inara died, age 17, in August of 2024. This is a picture of her taken the month she died, in August 2024. Such a sweet and intelligent kitty.



We’re down to the two gingers, a good number. Zoe Rose (6) on the left, Washburne Ryder (5) on the right. Mother and son.


My goal last year was 10 ROOTs. I only ended up reading 6, so 10 is a good goal for this year again.


2025. I’m posting my New Year’s Resolutions as a message in this thread. They include health, reading, house, inter-personal, and general goals.

News avoidance about 85-90% of the time, but I am occasionally dipping my toe in when I need my dose of schadenfreude, aka epicaricacy, and continue to revel in any and everything that politically or legally injures Trump. Not in line with what Peggy said, above, but I admit to not being perfect and reserving the right to be inconsistent.

And, finally, express gratitude for what I have - family, friends, intangibles and tangibles - every day.

ROOTs on the go:

Hamnet by Maggie O'Farrell 1/19/25 Hardcover 305 pages
Back With the Tide: Memoirs of Ellen Douglas Bellamy trade paperback 49 pages 2002
The Federalist edited by Jacob E. Cooke 5/28/22 656 pages hardcover 1961

ROOTs read

1. James by Percival Everett 12/23/24 1/11/25 303 pages hardcover

New Year’s Resolutions

Health:
Lose a minimum of 10 pounds.
Work out for cardio health 3 times a week when appropriate.
Reduce red meat consumption.
Continue low-sodium lifestyle.
Gradually work to reduce sugared items to 2-3 times a week.

Reading:
Read 5% nonfiction this year if continuing with startling numbers of contemporary fiction - i.e., MM romances, otherwise 10% if the romance trend tapers off.
Finish The Federalist Papers. I’ve read 54 of 86.
Read one book from each shelf in Library, Sunroom, and antique book cases. That’s 102 books. However, this resolution will continue into next year.
Finally read and review the 9 ER books sitting on my shelves, unread.

House:
Get the Parlour back under control by making a decision about each thing in the room and immediately following through properly: keep and store, toss, donate.
Find places for all my boxed books. Bringing in 2 IKEA shelves Jenna's given to me will help somewhat with that.

Inter-personal:
Be in better touch with family and friends. I tend to isolate when stressed.
Acknowledge and reply to text messages and emails promptly.

General:
As Judy says, pay attention.
Express gratitude for what I have - family, friends, intangibles and tangibles - every day.

Welcome, fellow ROOTers.

Welcome! - Gorgeous wedding photos and I'm sorry about Inara. I won't post a link to the 2025 Risk report released today by the Eurasia group, but as a French and Canadian citizen, I share your concern.

Good luck with your ROOTs and resolutions!

Hello Cécile. Thank you. I just went to the 2025 Risk Report, registered, downloaded it, and am now printing it since I do better with paper unless it's on my Kindle.

Welcome Karen. Although I'm on the other side of the ocean I too share you concern about what is happening to the world we know. I'm afraid it will get bad before it gets better. I just hope my family and the family of people I know and the world will be safe and survive.

Happy ROOTing sounds a bit strange with al this words up above, but I hope you will find as much comfort in reading as I do.

Just dropping by to say hi here, Karen. Glad to see you ROOTing again this year.

It's good to see you here again, Karen! I too share your anxiety.

I so love that your family has expanded! (even though you are a kitty down. RIP Inara). I love the picture of Zoe and Wash - Wash's expression is classic!

Hi Karen, sorry to hear about Inara. It seems just yesterday since I first saw her...in the meantime, happy reading!

>7 connie53: Hi Connie, and thank you. Safe and survive are the key goals.

>8 atozgrl: Hi Irene. Thanks re my ROOTing.

>9 Jackie_K: Hello Jackie. Thank you re the family expansion, thanks, too, re Inara. Wash is such a cutie. He never used to talk, but now talks at me when we come downstairs in the morning and occasionally during the day. I have to be right near him, though, because for such a big kitty, he has the teensiest, most high-pitched meow of any kitty we’ve ever had. His mother on the other hand…

>10 MissWatson: Thank you, Bridget. Happy Reading to you, too.

Glad you're back!

I think I need to post my resolutions too! Maybe then I'll stick with them.

Hi Chèli and thank you.

I may not always attain them, but I do like thinking about what I want to accomplish in any given year.

I hope you post yours, too.

I've added James as my first ROOT of the year. I bought it last year and started it last year for this year's first book club discussion. I won't re-post my review here, but if anybody's interested in yet another review of this wonderful book, here's mine on my 75 Book Challenge for 2025 thread:

Review of James by Percival Everett

I've started a small memoir that I've had on my shelves for 10 years, Back With the Tide. It's not for the faint of heart, because she's an unreconstructed Southerner, raised on a plantation 'til the war. Her attitudes and opinions are sad to behold, especially for someone who claimed Christianity.

A Perspective and Forward both explain the importance of this book. Accurate historical events are given a personal viewpoint. Otherwise, ugh.

>14 karenmarie: I'd like to read this at some point. Somehow I suspect I'd find it more satisfying than Huckleberry Finn, which just made me grumpy.
>15 karenmarie: Ugh indeed. I know it's important to know about historical attitudes etc, but it's still not great having them take up space in your head, however temporary. At least it's short, I guess.

Hi Jackie! I hope that James will be a better experience for you than The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn. I devoured it.

I was only going to write about Back With the Tide in my Lightning Round, posted each month that includes all books without individual reviews and also all books abandoned. I started writing about it there, and realized that it needed it's own review.

Back With the Tide: Memoirs of Ellen Douglas Bellamy
1/23/25 1/30/25





From Amazon:

Wealthy white daughter of a plantation owner writes her memoirs of her time during the Civil War.

Why I wanted to read it: I was perusing one of my shelves in the Sunroom, saw it, and decided to finally read it as part of my ROOTs challenge and reading one book from each of my shelves, a multi-year project. It was on S03.

First impressions? Richly detailed. An un-Reconstructed Southerner at the end of her life, with the most important event of her life influencing her her entire life.

Not for the faint of heart, even at only 54 pages. This memoir was written in the late 1930s, finished ~1940. She lived from 1852 to 1946 and was 9 when the Civil War broke out. She was the 5th child of 10 of a rich MD and slave owner. The family had a plantation, Grovely, a turpentine operation, and a home in Wilmington on Market Street. She believed in white entitlement and slavery, and she bemoaned the Confederates losing her entire life. This edition was published by the Bellamy Mansion Museum of History and Design Arts in 2002.

Miss Bellamy, who never married and died in the house she lived in for most of her life, recounts her family’s and state’s travails during and after the war. She uses the n-word with nary a blush, although to be fair, many people still used it in the South at that time and didn’t think twice about it. She talks about slaves matter of factly, what their tasks were, what they were called, how they served the family. She also talks about Union soldiers in extremely derogatory terms as to their physical characteristics and how they behaved towards the families of Confederate supporters/soldiers and how they took over the mansion and destroyed possessions. If you take out the animus and prejudice, there is so much detail about Wilmington. The perceptions of a 9-year old child are vivid.

Not for the faint of heart, this slender volume is a testament to a particular belief system that was unsustainable in the long run. She lived as only the privileged child of a plantation and slave owner and physician could live. She details the overtaking of eastern NC by Union soldiers, the fleeing to various places of refuge, eventually returning to Wilmington. She recounts family members and neighbors lost in the war and later to yellow fever and other maladies, hardships faced after the war, taking over of the family mansion by Union soldiers during the war. Her father had to get parole after the war before the family could even return. She never had a good word for Union soldiers or the Union itself, never a good word for freed slaves or free Negroes, never a good word for the carpetbaggers and Reconstructionists. And, why should she, actually? Her way of life was destroyed, her family life drastically changed, things never the same as what she experienced before 1861.

Am I sympathetic to her? Not particularly. Do I care that a child was traumatized and exposed to extreme physical danger in the 4 years of the war because men seem to need to fight for power, land, possessions? Yes.

The Civil War leaves heartbreak and polarization to this day. How much more so in the late 1930s and 1940s when Confederate and Union soldiers were still alive, civilians alive who were very young during that time, as was Ellen. Even my husband’s G-Grandfather, Jefferson Davis Cranford, born in 1861, is a testament to the hopes of the Southern sympathizers in the choice of his name.

The publication itself is fascinating. It has a the photo of Ellen as a child on the front cover and as an old woman, very blurry, on the back cover. There is a photo of the Bellamy Mansion ~1873. There is a floor plan, landscaping plan, map with the locations of the family's mansion, plantation, turpentine operation, and where they fled to at the beginning of the war. There is a list of birth/death dates of her parents and all 10 children of that marriage.

Six word review: Confederate Southern child remembers Civil War.