si: reading in 2024

Hello, I'm Simon. Welcome to another year of my half-hearted attempts to control the piles of books around my home!

Happy New Year everyone. Hope you all have a great reading & ROOTing year. I am setting a target of 25 books. Anything on my shelves including rereads plus DNFs ( where I have given the book a reasonable shot) will count.

Summary (Non-roots marked with *)

01 The Fellowship of the Ring - JRR Tolkien
02 The Two Towers - JRR Tolkien
03 The Return of the King - JRR Tolkien
04 The Reason I Jump - Naoki Higashida*
05 Crooked House - Agatha Christie *
06 New Maps of Hell - Kingsley Amis *
07 Small Things Like These - Claire Keegan *
DNF Blonde - Joyce Carol Oates
08 By River And Sea - Mary Entwistle
09 No Way To Treat A Lady - William Goldman
10 Mimi's Tales of Terror - Junji Ito*
11 Mr Pye - Mervyn Peake
12 True Grit - Charles Portis*
13 The Big Jump - Leigh Brackett
14 Supernatural Horror in Literature - HP Lovecraft*
15 A Month In The Country - J L Carr
16 Francis Firth's West Midlands - Clive Hardy
17 Study For Obedience - Sarah Bernstein*
18 Antarctica - Claire Keegan*
19 Checkpoint - Nicholson Baker
20 Lincoln's Dreams - Connie Willis
21 The Watchmaker of Filigree Street - Natasha Pulley*
22 Dying Fall - Elly Griffiths
23 The Exorcist (screenplay) - William Peter Blatty
24 New Cardiff - Charles Webb
25 To Your Scattered Bodies Go - Philip Jose Farmer
26 The Last Sherlock Holmes Story - Michael Dibdin*
27 Holmes of the Movies - David Stuart Davies
28 Total Eclipse - John Brunner
29 The First Men In The Moon - HG Wells
30 A Rich Full Life - Michael Dibdin
31 Catching Fire - Suzanne Collins
32 Summer's Lease - John Mortimer
33 The Ugly Chickens - Howard Waldrop*
34 Pretty Maids All In A Row - Francis Pollini
35 Flights - Olga Tokarczuk*
36 Barnaby Rudge - Charles Dickens
37 Five Little Pigs - Agatha Christie
38 In Search of Lost Time Volume 1 - Marcel Proust
39.In Search of Lost Time Volume 2 - Marcel Proust

Hi Simon, Happy New Year and Happy ROOTing. Get those ROOTs of the shelves.

>3 connie53: Thanks Connie. Hoping to finding the time to sort through everything!

Welcome back and have a great year! I love making reading plans, but I also like reading whatever I want...for me I guess planning my reading and actually reading are two separate hobbies :)

>5 rabbitprincess: So true! I can spend days just rearranging my tree-books and loving every minute.

Happy new year, and good luck with the ROOTing this year!

Welcome back!

Happy new year!

>5 rabbitprincess: >6 connie53: Reading plans and rearranging books, help keep the winter blues away.

>7 mstrust: Thanks Jennifer. Happy reading.

>8 cyderry: Thanks for setting up the group Cheli. Hope you have a better year in 2024.

>9 Jackie_K: Happy new year Jackie.

Happy New Year, Simon, and good luck with the ROOTs.

>12 MissWatson: Thanks Birgit, happy reading!

1/25

The Fellowship of the Ring by J R R Tolkien

This seems like the year to finally read The Lord of the Rings.

Better late than never, Simon. Enjoy!

2/25

The Two Towers by J R R Tolkien
I was considering taking a break before the third book; but reading it straight through may be the way to go.

3/25

The Return of the King by J R R Tolkien
Glad to have finally read this and overall I really enjoyed the experience. The Two Towers is probably my favourite of the three parts - I read three chunky paperbacks I'm owned for about a decade.

Library Paperback -

The Reason I Jump by Naoki Higashida
Translated from Japanese by KA Yoshida & David Mitchell.
Illustrated by Kai and Sunny.
Non-fiction. Memoir in the form of questions and answers about the 13 year-old author's experience of living with autism.

>18 si: I've read that one in 2016 and gave it 3 stars back then.

>19 connie53: I can see it being a 5 star book for families affected directly by autism; as just a curious general reader I rated it 3 stars.

Not counting as a root -

Crooked House by Agatha Christie
A country house murder mystery with no Poirot or Maple to untangle the clues. A very dark ending.

Library Books -

New Maps of Hell A Survey of Science Fiction by Kingsley Amis
This dates from 1960 and is a series of lectures originally delivered at Princeton University in 1959. While covering some interesting points its unfortunately not a great read,

Small Things Like These by Claire Keegan
Novella set in Ireland at Christmas time. Coal Merchant Bill Furlong ruminating on his own past faces a big decision which will affect his young family & business. A quick interesting read.

4/25

Blonde by Joyce Carol Oates
Decided to stop after 225 pages. Probably should have bailed earlier but I dislike DNFing books.

hiya Simon! My names Lily or Owl i dont care which you call me! Its nice to meet ya!

>24 Owltherian: Hi. Welcome to the group.

5/25

By River and Sea Stories of Far-Off Boys and Girls by Mary Entwistle
Short stories aimed at children aged 7 to 10 with Christian themes and messages. Published in 1929. Illustrated by Helen Jacobs. This has been in the family since 1943.

6/25

No Way To Treat A Lady by William Goldman
New York set ironic thriller from 1964.
After a couple of well received novels Goldman wrote this short cynical serial killer book, apparently in two weeks, and published it under a pseudonym. The fact it was a hit and Hollywood snapped up the rights probably was a mixed blessing - what sells winning over what is actually good. And for better or worse (often worse) there are ideas and themes here which reappear in his later bestsellers; particularly Marathon Man & its sequel.

Library Book -

Mimi's Tales of Terror by Junji Ito
This is a Japanese manga adapted from 'Shin Mimibukuro' a collection of real life ghost stories. A quick read with great art work. I can see why Junji Ito is highly regarded in the horror field.

7/25

Mr Pye by Mervyn Peake 'with drawings by the author'
A comedy with fantasy elements 1st published in 1953. Mr Harold Pye arrives on the island of Sark hoping to convert the locals to his personal brand of religious doctrine. After some initial success events (or God, perhaps) conspire against him resulting in his increasingly odd behaviour.
Probably best read with as little knowledge of the plot as possible. But still enjoyable if you already know the ending.

Library Book -

True Grit by Charles Portis
Famous western from 1968 which has been filmed twice.
Mattie Ross tells the story of her father's death and how, at 14 years old, she hired a Federal Marshal to track down his killer.
Fairly short and funnier than I expected - mainly due to Mattie's wonderful dead-pan monologue throughout.

8/25

The Big Jump by Leigh Brackett
SF story from 1950s.
Arch Comyn is determined to discover the fate of friend Paul Rogers who has disappeared during a space mission which successfully trialed a revolutionary form of travel.
First half of book is a hard- boiled mystery story as Comyn fights and bullies his way into the Cochrane family and onto the second test flight. Second half is more flight into the unknown, strange new planet science fiction.

Not counting as a ROOT -

Supernatural Horror in Literature by H P Lovecraft

An extended essay written in 1927, and revised in 1934, by the horror writer HP Lovecraft. Interesting to read his opinions on early horror stories and his particular favourites. The essay doesn't go into great details about any particular work; though it does highlight writers Lovecraft believed particularly talented in writing about his own genre of interest, cosmic horror.

Hi Simon, I'm not that much into horror, so I will skip the books by Lovecraft ;-))

>33 connie53: Probably wise! I discovered Stephen King books and Hammer horror films at an impressionable age and never completely recovered.

>34 si: Thank you for calling me wise ;-))

9/25

A Month In The Country by J L Carr
Tom Birkin looks back at a summer in 1920 when he restored a church mural in northern England.
This is a reread for me. I enjoyed it more than before - not particularly sure why. J L Carr was a very idiosyncratic writer whose novels varied in subject. I own one, maybe two, I still need to get too.

>36 si: This one is on my wishlist. It is the subject of the very first Backlisted podcast (which I highly recommend, I've discovered all sorts of forgotten classics through it, and even if I'm not interested in the book they're discussing, it's still a great listen).

10/25

Francis Frith's West Midlands by Clive Hardy
Collection of photographs from 1890 to around 1968 taken from the Frith Photographic Archive.
Francis Frith (born Chesterfield, England in 1822) was a very successful business man, who after making one fortune in the grocery business started a photographic company which made a major contribution to early picture postcards.

>37 Jackie_K: Thanks for the tip Jackie.

Library books -

Study For Obedience by Sarah Bernstein
Antarctica by Claire Keegan

Antarctica is a collection of 15 stories; it was her first book - published back in 1999. Some of the stories felt a little too on the nose in making their point, but she is very good at quickly setting a scene and delineating characters.

Bernstein's novel is written in the first person so what is actually true is debatable. I found it heavy going in places, but having finished it a few days ago I still find myself thinking it over.

11/25

Checkpoint by Nicholson Baker
Just a curiosity perhaps. This is a 2004 novel where two old college friends debate the idea of political assassinations. Told in dialogue it reads like a one-act play spit out in frustration at the Iraq war.
I picked this up more from a general interest in the writer. The book isn't terrible, as some of the LT reviews suggest and unfortunately the arguments it makes haven't dated.

12/25

Lincoln's Dreams by Connie Willis
Early novel by Connie Willis 1st published in 1987; with a foreword from 1992 in which the author explains a little about her interest in dreams.

Complicated story to summarize so i'll just say it involves Annie, who is suffering from vivid dreams about the American civil war, and a researcher for a novelist who is obsessed with the dreams of Abraham Lincoln. Annie's dreams seem to be about Robert E Lee and that duality, Lincoln/Lee, is a motif repeated with both characters and situations throughout the book - past, present and fictional (the plot of the novelist's latest book).

Hi Simon, just trying to get up to date with all threads. You are doing fine on your reading. Almost at the half way point with two months to go. Good Job.

Library book -

The Watchmaker of Filigree Street by Natasha Pulley

An intriguing if not entirely successful mix of Victorian mystery, clairvoyance, steampunk, nationalism, romance and Gilbert & Sullivan; that is unless Natasha Pulley wanted to make all her main characters unlikeable by the end.

>42 connie53: Hi Connie. Thanks for the encouragement. Its felt like a very uneven reading year so far; I have been trying lots of writers new to me - with mixed results.

>45 Ann_R: Hi Ann. I was thinking of donating my paperbacks after reading them. But all three books seem to have reclaimed their home on my bookshelves!

13/25

Dying Fall by Elly Griffiths
The death of an old friend takes a forensic archaeologist to Blackpool to examine the possible remains of King Arthur.

Fifth Ruth Galloway mystery first published in 2013. I enjoyed this a lot more than the previous book in the series, A Room Full of Bones. I found the central mystery more engaging and the ongoing relationship story lines, while still prominent, less meandering.

14/25

The Exorcist (Screenplay) by William Peter Blatty
This was free with a monthly magazine, back in 1998. I read the original novel a long time ago, but not the sequel which I also have. Will have to look it out.

15/25

New Cardiff by Charles Webb
Romantic comedy from the author of The Graduate.
Englishman Colin Ware flees to the USA after a painful break-up and finds himself in the small town of New Cardiff. Colin is an artist and via his pencil sketches he meets a gallery of local characters, including Mandy a care home assistant. A brighter future beckons until his ex reappears.

Slight story with familiar themes but quite funny at times.

16/25

To Your Scattered Bodies Go by Philip Jose Farmer

Science fiction with a fantasy adventure tone. Although disjointed in structure and unevenly written the story held my interest and I may continue the series at some time.

Library Ebook -

The Last Sherlock Holmes Story by Michael Dibdin
Pastiche novel with Sherlock Holmes asked to find Jack the Ripper in 1888 London.
I found this a little overlong, even at only 188 pages, and wasn't convinced by Dibdin's version of Holmes.

17/25

Holmes of the Movies The Screen career of Sherlock Holmes by David Stuart Davies

Non-fiction account of how Sherlock Holmes has been depicted on screen from 'Sherlock Holmes Baffled' - a silent film from 1900, which runs less than a minute - to 1976's The Seven Per Cent Solution.

18/25

Total Eclipse by John Brunner
A group of scientists on a distant planet investigate an alien civilization which died out thousands of years ago.

I thought the middle section of this novel was really good. While not action-packed I found the archaeological discoveries and discussions interesting. The ending is brief and almost matter of fact. And there is a cartoon villain briefly in the opening chapters. But overall an enjoyable read.

19/25

The First Men In The Moon by H G Wells

Bankrupt businessman Bedford takes a coastal cottage to write a play but is distracted by Cavor, an inventor living next door.

This starts as a lighthearted adventure in the vein of Jules Verne, but becomes increasingly serious and ends on a warning regarding mankind's violent and colonising instincts.

20/25

A Rich Full Death by Michael Dibdin

Florence, Italy 1855. The murder of Isabel Eakin gives Robert Booth the opportunity to make the acquaintance of the poet Robert Browning and together they investigate what becomes a series of deaths related to Dante's Inferno.
Told in a series of overly erudite letters by Booth to a friend (who never seems to reply), this is a clever mix of mystery novel and Henry James pastiche. Lots to admire if little to love.

21/25 + a library book -

Catching Fire by Suzanne Collins

The Instant by Amy Liptrot
Second memoir which follows on directly from The Outrun. This has a similar mix of personal stories and sections about nature, craft skills and general musings about modern life. Mostly focusing on the year she lived in Berlin, 2014-15, and a failed relationship.
There is less nature writing this time and the book lacks a strong central theme - living with heartache & loneliness in your thirties, while important does not have the emotional punch on the page as the issues raised in 'The Outrun'. Worth reading, particularly if you enjoyed the non-nature parts of the first book.

Almost reached your goal, Simon. Great job.

>57 connie53: Hi Connie, thanks for dropping by.

22/25
Summer's Lease by John Mortimer
A family holiday in a Tuscan villa sends Molly Pargeter into detective mode, while her husband tries to repair a marital slip, their elder daughters assert their independence and her disreputable father tries to plot a favourable marriage. Funny and engaging. I liked this more and more is it went along.

Ebook -

The Ugly Chickens by Howard Waldrop
A short story, around twenty pages, which won a Nebula Award for Best Novelette in 1980. This an alt-history tale in which a chance encounter sends a ornithology grad. student / teaching assistant on a quest to trace an American branch of the Dodo family - apparently still living in rural Mississippi in the early 20th Century.

ETA: included in the collection Howard Who?

23/25

Pretty Maids All In A Row by Francis Pollini
A murder mystery, of sorts. Probably fair to say this is more a satire on American small town life in the late 1960s, particularly focused around 'Tiger' McDrew, Sawyerville High School's magnetic football coach/ guidance counselor.

Library book -

Flights by Olga Tokarczuk
A collection of short pieces, some only a paragraph long, and self-contained short stories which spark off from a couple of general themes - travel & human anatomy. We have a first person narrator who pops up between stories about Philip Verheyen's discover of the Achilles tendon or Chopin's two funerals to relate antidotes about modern day travel and travelers.
I found it well written and often fascinating. Reading it now, it was first published in 2007, you do notice how much has changed.

>60 si: Am I correct in thinking that 23/25 means you have almost reached you goal? I think is does. Very good job, Simon.

>62 connie53: Yes two to go!

24/25

Barnaby Rudge by Charles Dickens
5th novel by Dickens and his first historical book; written in 1841, set in 1775 & 1780 respectively.
The full title is Barnaby Rudge A Tale Of The Riots Of 'Eighty.
The Gordon Riots in London, June 1780, were real events which lasts over several days. Hundreds died. Many houses were burnt to the ground. After order was restored around 25 rioters were publicly hanged.
The section of the novel focusing on the riots is brilliant. Earlier parts which introduce all the characters are, in truth, fairly uninteresting, but all that build-up is worth the effect.

25/25

Five Little Pigs by Agatha Christie
Poirot investigates a cold case. Interviewing the surviving witnesses and the people involved in Caroline Crale's arrest and conviction for the murder of her husband.
Beautifully thought through mystery.

With that I have reached my ROOT target for the year.

>65 si: Congratulations, Simon!

>65 si: Congrats on reaching your goal, and a great book to reach it with! I read that one recently as well.

>66 Cecilturtle: >67 rabbitprincess: Thanks.

Congratulations on reaching your goal, Simon.

>69 connie53: Thanks Connie.

Congratulations on reaching your goal!

>71 MissWatson: Hi Birgit, thanks for stopping by. Looks like you are having a good reading year!

>72 si:, Yes, retirement has turned out to be great for reading!

ROOT - 26

In Search of Lost Time Volume 1 Swann's Way Within A Budding Grove (Part One) by Marcel Proust

Volume 1 of this 4 book set of Everyman's Library's In Search of Lost Time includes Swann's Way & Madame Swann At Home (the first section of Within A Budding Grove).
Beautiful edition with notes, addendum, a synopsis and so on- if I can find the right touchstone i will add it!

>74 si: Did you like it? I've just finished Book 3 of the 7-book series, The Guermantes Way. I think they're fun to read, sort of, if you're willing to slow your reading way down.

>75 rocketjk: Hi Jerry. I noticed you had started the series. I did enjoy Swann's Way. Hoping to finish volume 2 this year!
I can't image reading these books quickly, if I hit 10-20 pages a day I'm happy.

>76 si: 10-20 pages a day was just about my pace, too, most of the time.

ROOT - 27

In Search of Lost Time Volume 2 Within A Budding Grove (Part Two) The Guermantes Way by Marcel Proust

Volumne 2 includes part two of Within A Budding Grove & The Guermantes Way.
The translation, which I failed to note for volume 1, is by C K Scott Moncrieff, Terence Kilmartin; revised by D J Enright