WonkyBloke putting down ROOTs

Hi, new to the site, and just finding my way around.

I've had a significant refresh of the library in recent months, starting with a 60% (or more) purge a couple of years ago, and then the hunt for new fodder. In the last 12 months, I've added 150+ fiction books, and 60+ non-fiction. Volume wise, that puts me back roughly where I started, but with a whole raft of new material, focusing predominantly on series starters and standalone novels (mostly second-hand). Mid-series random grabs are fine if you want to just read that one, but I hate reading earlier books afterwards, and suffering the spoilers.

I can now consider the library "reset", put away the wallet, and settle down under the lamp.

The target is 7500 pages, between June and December. I'm counting pages, as I have many "complete works of", "best of", or other compilations, which might not all be read in one go. I'm only tallying completed reads though, be that whole books or complete stories within a larger tome. Not works in progress, or abandonments.

Some of those new acquisitions have already left the building. I tend to release read books back into the wild, unless I'm pretty certain that I'll want to read a book again. I'm also not a particularly quick reader. I can read quickly, but find it more enjoyable to take my time. As such, I only aim to read (in full) two or three books per month. I'm currently ahead of the curve though, having read twenty one books in the first five months of the year, plus abandoned another three. The books from Jan to May this year are as follows.

Collated by author (not chronological). Books marked *** have left the house

Robert Harris
The Ghost***

Robert Ludlum
The Scorpio Illusion

Pamela Stephenson
Billy***

Kathy Reichs (abandoned the Temperance Brennan series after book 3)
De Ja Dead***
Death De Jour***
Deadly Decisions***

M.W.Craven (Keeping this series for rereading)
The Puppet Show
Black Summer
The Curator
Dead Ground
The Cutting Season

Colin Dexter (Keeping for rereading)
The Dead Of Jericho
The Riddle Of The Third Mile
The Secret Of Annexe 3

Lee Child (Keeping for future consideration)
Make Me
Night School
Killing Floor

Ian Flemming
Casino Royale
Live and Let Die

Ethan Cross
The Shepherd***

Clive Cussler
Sea Of Greed***

Hanif Kureishi
Midnight All Day (abandoned)***

David Gibbons
Gods Of Atlantis (abandoned)***

John McLaren
Black Cabs (abandoned)***

Welcome to LT and the ROOTers. Enjoy your reading!

>3 MissWatson: Thank you, MissWatson

Welcome to the ROOTers, WB and welcome to Librarything. I hope you enjoy your membership.

>5 connie53: Thank you. I certainly am so far.

June ROOTS:

Actually, these are 2026 purchases, but all part of the big planned refresh.

Steven Dunne's The Reaper and The Disciple from his DI Damen Brook series were completed this month. There is a third book in the Reaper sub-series (The Russurection), but I think I'm done with that run and won't be getting that one. They weighed a little too heavily on the antagonists, and dwarfed the protaganist. I also grew a little weary of the flashbacks. I do have The Deity on the bookcase, which sticks with Inspector Brook on a new case, but I will come back to that another time. If that one feels more balanced, I may pursue the series further, but if I hadn't already got that on the shelf, I'd have been happy to walk away.

As a much needed change of scenery, I've started Tolstoy's War and Peace. That will see me through this month and well into July, I'd imagine.

I didn't get far into War and Peace, before I started to lose track of who was who. I found a spoiler-free character list somewhere, which I printed off and tucked under the front cover. Then the weather got too hot to think. Simple modern dialogue needed, methinks. So Tolstoy is on hold a while, and I'm going back to Lee Child. Four of his novels are supposedly a sub-series, so I'm going to rattle through those before trying War and Peace again

61 hours
Worth dying for
A wanted man
Never go back

>8 WonkyBloke: Yes, Tolstoy is far too heavy going for a heatwave. Enjoy your thrillers.

I attempted to have a go at making one of the ticker trackers. It took a couple of goes to figure out, but I got there. I decided to target pages rather than books, as aside from book size varying, many of my books are "complete works of", "best of", or other compilations, which might not all be read in one go.

Currently 940 pages of 7500, (13%) only counting the books I have completed, not those in progress or aborted.

61 hours finished, in well under 61 hours. Unsurprising for me with a Jack Reacher Novel. The time and pages fly by. With five days left of month one, that puts me at 19% complete of a 7 month target. If I was being ambitious, I might be tempted to increase the page target to 10k. I'm happy with 7.5k though, and I don't wish to risk making this reading target a chore. I also know that life gets busy sometimes, so while I'm ahead now, I might not be in a couple of months.

I'll continue on with this run of four Lee Child Novels. I specifically want to read them as one group - or one continuous story, almost. No doubt that'll put me further in front, for when I revisit War and Peace at a significantly slower pace.

I hadn't realised that this group has a collective goal for the year, which my page count target ant tracker doesn't help with. Maybe I need a second tracker, with the book tally? Or maybe I need to count individual stories within omnibus editions as separate books? I'll mull it over.

>12 WonkyBloke: I have done individual counters for pages and books - it's a bit harder to keep track but it works well.

>13 Cecilturtle: Good to know, thank you, I'll give it a try. Even if it doesn't work as hoped, I should start my 2027 ROOT journey off on the right foot.

Another ROOT finished this evening, page tracker updated, and a book tracker started in the first post. Although I finished 21 books in the first 5 months of the year, I typically like to average 2 or 3 per month, and so I set the new tracker target as 20 books for the balance of 2026.

(Currently 1944 pages out of 7500, and 4 books out of 20 ... just in case there's a hiccup with the trackers at the next update)

That was worth dying for I just finished, and I'm moving straight on to a wanted man. The third of the little four book cluster. I really enjoy reading the Reacher novels as standalones, but it is nice to see a light garnish of continuity across these few novels.