KWharton will read another 12 books in 2024

Kia ora koutou, hello everyone,

I will stick to my realistic-but-challenging goal of 12 ROOTs for 2024, because I will of course read a lot more books from the library!

Happy reading everyone, and all the best for 2024.

Hi Katherine, good to see you back with the ROOTers. All the best for 2024 for you too.

Happy ROOTing, and thank you for supporting your local library!

Welcome back! I hope this year is a good one for both ROOTs and library books!

Welcome back and have a great reading year!

Thanks everyone!

I'm doing well so far:
So You Want to Talk about Race fantastic, practical book about anti-racism, good for people who haven't read much about it and for those who have.
The Big Questions: What is New Zealand's future? was a good read, especially since it's a few years since it was written, so I could see whether the author was on the right track or not.
I have also started The Stone Sky, finally finishing The Broken Earth trilogy.

Now I shall go and update my ticker.

I finished The Stone Sky. I left quite a bit of time between the books and I think I probably read it a bit too quickly, so I didn't let the story sink in as well as I could have. Some fascinating questions and a very big world. I read a comment somewhere that it's a retelling of Black history and I could see that in some places, but not in others.

I also read Love for the Lost. I thought I could guess where it was going right from the start, but I was wrong. I quite like the way Catherine Fox has characters from her other books pop up again, but it can be easy to miss them. I do wonder if she has written any books with main characters who feel free and comfortable about themselves and about sex! I hope that some of the characters from this book will turn up later having a happier time.

Hi Katherine. About the first book you mentioned here. I loved that book very much.

Thanks for all the encouragement! I have been reading lots of library books, but I just found I hadn't recorded a book from February, Dream: the words and inspiration of Martin Luther King, Jr which was good but rather short, and more of a coffee table book than much of MLK's words. I would like to read more of MLK.

Hi Katherine, glad you are back with us.

I finished two ROOTs!

The Bust Guide to the New Girl Order was very much of the 1990s, and mostly very white, very US-centred. I would not recommend it as an introduction to feminism, but I did learn some things and had a few laughs, and one slightly shocked moment the one about the dogs .

I also read Either/Or by Elif Batuman, which is a sequel to The Idiot which I read and loved a few years ago. I re-read The Idiot first, and didn't love it as much as I did the first time around. I felt that the shine wore off the main character Selin for me. I still had a few laughs and a few moments of recognition, and a few laughs at silly 1990s music or literary/linguistic jokes. I'm sure there were plenty more that I missed. I thought Either/Or was all about Selin having sex, and then having more sex, which wasn't what I was expecting.

I am, as usual, racing to finish my ROOTs in December! I have read Ithaca, The Poet X, and Sex and World Peace. I really enjoyed Ithaca, with its stories of trying to find home or return to a place that has changed. The Poet X was a bookish Secret Santa choice, and Secret Santa Tarshaan did a great job. It was a story about growing up as a first generation American with a very Catholic mother, and discovering your own voice. Sex and World Peace was a bit uneven, but I figured it was trying to strike a balance between being academic and being accessible. The short version is: if women are safe and free, everyone is!

So that's 9 ROOTs out of 12. I am looking for the easy short ones now.

I have now read Crazy Love and Unseen Things Above so there's only one to go! I wanted to read Crazy Love because I devoured the Alice books by Phyllis Reynolds Naylor a few years ago, and I wanted to know more about the author. My edition had a sensationalising (?) cover and cover quote, which didn't reflect the book. It was a compassionate retelling of Ms Reynolds Naylor's marriage to a man who developed paranoid schizophrenia, and how she and he tried to get help for him. I'd like to see the book reissued with a less sensational title and cover.

Unseen Things Above was fun. It's from Catherine Fox's Lindchester Series, which are a bit lighter than her other books, although characters pop in and out of them all. However, I imagine it would be a frustrating read if you weren't familiar with the Church of England. I'm relatively familiar with the Aotearoa New Zealand version, and I still get confused with all the titles.