CurrerBell's ROOTs for 2026

Books owned or already on mail order as of December 31, 2025. Does not include Kindle (unless book also owned in treeware and Kindle edition was used as a convenient reading format). Goal of 60, which will set me at a target of 5 per month.

Just barely and at the last minute made my goal for 2024 (48/48), but hospitalizations mainly over the summer cut into some of my reading time so I'm hoping for a better record this year.

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



Jan (5), Feb (4), Mar (2), Apr (3), May (2), Jun (0),
Jul (0), Aug (0), Sep (0), Oct (0), Nov (0), Dec (0), Total (16)

January:

7 ... Katherine Rundell, Impossible Creatures 3½***
14 ... J.A. White, The Thickety (2): The Whispering Trees 5*****
19 ... J.A. White, The Thickety (3): Well of Witches 4****
25 ... Johan Van Overtveldt, The Mystic Hand: How Central Banks Shaped the 21st Century Global Economy 3½***
28 ... C.S. Lewis, Till We Have Faces: A Myth Retold 4****

So happy to see you’re back, Mike. Happy ROOTing!

Welcome back, Mike. Good to see you here again. Happy New Year and Happy ROOTing.

>hi, I like how you put the total at the top, and I like old books so I am intrigued what you'll be reading. Best Wishes and Happy Reading for 2026.

Welcome back and good luck with this year's challenge!

February:

5 ... Emile Zola, The Dream 3½***
13 ... Emile Zola, The Conquest of Plassans 4½****
23 ... T.L. Huchu. The Library of the Dead 5**** (reread in prep for reading rest of series)
28 ... T.L. Huchu, Our Lady of Mysterious Ailments 4½

March:

2 ... Elizabeth Strout, Abide with Me 5*****
18 ... Alexandre Dumas pere, Twenty Years After 3½***

April:

4 ... Robert Henryson, The Testament of Cresseid & Seven Fables (trans Seamus Heaney) 5***** to Henryson but 2** to Heaney's translation
16 ... The Maine Poets (ed Wesley McNair) 4½****
30 ... Sanford Phippen, The Best Maine Stories 5*****

May:

20 ... Lois Lowry, The Giver Quartet Omnibus 4½****
31 ... Miss Read, Thrust Green 3½***

Hi Mike, popping in to see the May ROOTs! Hope you are well.

>11 connie53: Currently reading Lois Lowry's The Giver Quartet Omnibus, which I just bought on Amazon, nice volume at sharp discount. Rereading the first three (I just finished Gathering Blue) and then going on to the fourth, which I've never read. Counting this is as ROOT even though I just bought it since I still have the first and fourth volumes stashed away somewhere and this omnibus volume is just a convenient way to assemble all four together..

Simultaneously reading Nancy Milford's Savage Beauty, her biography of Edna St Vincent Millay. I want to get a good thorough grasp of Millay's bio before I go on to a detailed read of her own work. My interest is derived from Millay's Maine origins, and I'm working over the next couple years on an intensive read of Maine literature.

Thanks for checking in on me. I'm really exhausted these past few months and haven't been getting a lot of ROOTing (or other reading) done. Going to head on up to an Audubon sanctuary in New Hope PA in an hour or so, where they've got a bunch of used book dealers today on some kind of book sale cum fundraiser.