MissWatson digs up her ROOTs in 2024

I'm Birgit and I have too many books on my shelves. This year is my first in retirement, and everyone tells me that pensioners don't have time. Well, I plan to make time for my ROOTs.
Happy ROOTing everyone!

I am editing this post to keep a master list of my 2024 ROOTs. Totally forgot to do this when I set up my thread! I won't add touchstones so the thread will load quickly.

January
1. Yukon Ho! by Bill Watterson
2. Little Novels by Wilkie Collins
3. Flash for Freedom! by George MacDonald Fraser
4. Atemschaukel by Herta Müller
5. Sommerfreuden by Herman Bang
6. After Dark by Wilkie Collins
7. Flashman and the Redskins by George MacDonald Fraser
8. Miss Marple: The Complete Short Stories by Agatha Christie
9. Eldest by Christopher Paolini
10. Der große Ausverkauf by Vicki Baum
11. Stalking the angel by Robert Crais

February
12. Nina Balatka by Anthony Trollope
13. Geschichte Tschechiens by Joachim Bahlcke
14. Das Feuerschiff by Siegfried Lenz
15. Die Purpurlinie by Wolfram Fleischhauer
16. Katzenberge by Sabrina Janesch
17. Emil und die drei Zwillinge by Erich Kästner
18. Der kleine Mann by Erich Kästner
19. Meisternovellen by Stefan Zweig
20. La femme de trente ans by Honoré de Balzac

March
21. Die rätselhaften Honjin-Morde by Seishi Yokomizo
22. After the ice by Steven Mithen
23. Goethes Leichen by Paul Kohl
24. Die Reise unserer Gene by Johannes Krause and Thomas Trappe
25. Schönbrunner Finale by Gerhard Loibelsberger
26. Watership Down by Richard Adams
27. Am Weg by Herman Bang
28. Guy Mannering by Walter Scott
29. Die Henkerstochter by Oliver Pötzsch

April
30. My Lady's Money by Wilkie Collins
31. Le rêve by Émile Zola
32. La disparue du Père-Lachaise by Claude Izner
33. L. A. Requiem by Robert Crais
34. Watery Grave by Bruce Alexander
35. Der letzte Satz by Robert Seethaler
36. L'ombre du Vétéran by Jean Failler
37. Rapscallion by James McGee
38. Les adieux à la Reine by Chantal Thomas
39. Undine und andere Erzählungen by Friedrich de La Motte-Fouqué
40. Der grüne Fürst by Heinz Ohff
41. The two destinies by Wilkie Collins

May
42. Merlin's Keep by Madeleine Brent
43. La place des bonnes by Anne Martin-Fugier
44. Mörder mögen keine Matjes by Krischan Koch
45. Die Erlebnisse des Polizeiagenten Schipow bei der Verfolgung des Schriftstellers Tolstoj by Bulat Okudschawa
46. Les empires normands d'Orient by Pierre Aubé
47. Murder Underground by Mavis Doriel Hay
48. The curious incident of the dog in the night-time by Mark Haddon
49. Wolfszeit by Harald Jähner
50. A practical guide to conquering the world by KJ Parker
51. L'énigme des Blancs-Manteaux by Jean-François Parot
52. Aller Tage Abend by Jenny Erpenbeck
53. Versailles Château de la France et orgueil des rois by Claire Constans
54. Die Zauberin von Ravenna by Klaus Herrmann

June
55. Das Geheimnis der Porzellanmalerin by Birgit Jasmund
56. Babel by Kenah Cusanit
57. Im Lande Ur by Hans Baumann
58. Das Geheimnis von Salem by Birgit Rückert
59. Kaisergestalten des Mittelalters, edited by Helmut Beumann
60. Der arme Awrosimow by Bulat Okudschawa
61. Meurtre dans le boudoir by Frédéric Lenormand
62. The handmaid's tale by Margaret Atwood
63. Von Gibbon zu Rostovtzeff by Karl Christ
64. Verwandlung am Bodensee by Alberta Rommel
65. Der Zwölfte by Gertrud von Brockdorff
66. In tiefen Schluchten by Anne Chaplet
67. Alexander in Babylon by Jakob Wassermann

Welcome back, Birgit. Happy New Year and Happy ROOTing. Glad you had a nice time with your sister and managed to read as well.

It's good to see you back again! I'm glad you had a good break. It'll be good to see how you find retirement now that it's actually here!

Welcome back Birgit!! Happy Retirement! I am sure you will have plenty of time to read!

Congratulations on your retirement and good luck with your ROOT goal. As retirement progresses you'll find that your time will fill up quickly.

Happy new year, Birgit!

Welcome back, Birgit! Congratulations on the retirement!

Welcome back, Birgit! Enjoy your retirement reading! My mum's reading really took off after she retired. At one point last year she'd read more than I had and was mildly horrified :D

Happy New Year, Birgit! Congratulations on your retirement! I'm sure you will enjoy it. I've enjoyed the 1.5 years of my retirement, and it has been very nice to have more time to read.

Thank you ladies! It takes a while to catch up with the threads after a week-long absence, but being retired surely helps with that!

Welcome back and congratulations on your retirement!

>13 detailmuse: Thank you! It still feels like the usual Christmas holidays, but tommorrow it's for real. That's the day I would have gone back to work, normally.

ROOT #1 is Yukon Ho! by Bill Watterson

I couldn't sleep last night so I pulled a favourite from the shelf which always makes me smile. But I wonder if little boys still grow up like this, now that smartphones are ubiquitous even for elementary school kids.

Good to see you again, Birgit. Enjoy your retirement.

>16 Robertgreaves: Thanks, Robert!

>15 MissWatson: My very favourite! I used to cut out the daily strip from the newspaper, colour it in and tape it to my wall. When my parents redid my room, my Dad kept all the strips. I now have an original Calvin&Hobbes binder as a keepsake! It's as wonderful now as it was then.

>18 Cecilturtle: That sounds like what I used to do with Peanuts strips when I was a kid, except I glued them to notebook paper instead of taping them to my wall. Same activity for a different generation, I guess.

>18 Cecilturtle: That was a great gift!
>19 atozgrl: I used to cut the Peanuts strip from our copy of the International Herald Tribune, when I worked at a press clipping archive, to send them to my best friend who's an avid Snoopy fan. She's still keeping them in a box.

ROOT #2 is Little Novels by Wilkie Collins

This contains fourteen stories, structured like miniature novels with parts and chapters, and ranges across Collins' main interests: ghosts, marriage law, family secrets, police detecting. And he also offers up some surprising endings here. There's a reason why he is one of my favourite authors, and this collection confirms it.

>21 MissWatson: I loved The Moonstone but haven't read any of his other books. Looks like I need to do something about that! Is there one in particular you would recommend?

Great start! Welcome back!

>22 atozgrl: My own favourite (for sentimental reasons, i.e. a German TV version) is Armadale, but it has some elements regarding slavery in the West Indies that may upset people nowadays. The Woman in White has a great female character in Marian Halcombe and two wonderful villains, the heroine is a bit of a wet blanket in my opinion. No Name is a bit too long, but has an unusual theme: two sisters find out their parents were not married, so they are disinherited, and one of them plots revenge. The one to avoid is Antonina or the Fall of Rome, that is simply execrable.

>23 cyderry: Thanks, Chèli!

Ah, yes. The three Rs: retirement, reading and relaxation.

I've only read The Moonstone but enjoyed it despite having the ending spoiled for me before reading it. I'd like to get to The Woman in White at some point!

I've read The Woman in White and The Moonstone and also Who Killed Zebedee? plus one other pre-LT which I've forgotten the title of. I enjoyed them all.

>24 MissWatson: Thanks for the recommendations! I've certainly heard of The Woman in White, but haven't gotten to it yet. I'll check out the others, but I'll keep in mind to avoid Antonina or the Fall of Rome. Much appreciated!

>25 rocketjk: And watching documentaries on TV! I could stay up late for a fabulous trip to the Arctic last night.
>26 curioussquared: Enjoy!
>27 Robertgreaves: I think I'll re-read TWIW next, it's been decades and I'm sure my appreciation of it will have changed.
>28 atozgrl: Antonina is an attempt at historical fiction, and he simply didn't know enough.

>29 MissWatson: I could stay up late
Yes lol and that program sounds wonderful!

In retirement I've confirmed I'm truly a morning person, waking very early no matter when I go to bed. And since I'm on a mission to get better sleep, I now go to bed early. So many times lately, I've caught my thoughts grumbling that I haven't had a bedtime this early since 'tween-age!

>30 detailmuse: I find I'm more of a night person. I love getting up later now, and staying awake past midnight. It's quiet then, and I can concentrate on more demanding books.

ROOT #3 is Flash for Freedom! by George MacDonald Fraser

Where Victorian coward and scoundrel Harry Flashman gets embroiled in slave trading by his father-in-law. The details are taken from contemporary accounts and horrifying, and the way the author tells his story will be offensive to most readers today.

>31 MissWatson: Retirement has been beneficial for my sleep. I find that I am also more of a night person, though I wouldn't call myself a night owl, staying up into the wee hours of the morning. But going to sleep at midnight and getting up at 8:00 feels natural. Unfortunately, my husband would like to get to sleep a good hour earlier, and get up earlier also. We try to be considerate of each other's preferences.

I'm one that can easily function with 6 -6,5 hours a night. Vera, the friend I spend some days this week, needs 9 to 10 hours. She stays up late (one night we went to bed at 04.00 am. She came out of bed at 11.30 am and I was up at 09,15 am.
So when I came home yesterday I napped on the couch and went to bed around 23.00. Still feeling sleepy today.

>34 connie53: Sounds like synchronising your sleep cycles is a bit tricky! The same happens when I visit my sister, she needs little sleep, too, and we often stay up until the wee hours when I'm at her place.

>35 MissWatson: Yes, that was the case here too. I decided I can sleep on the couch whenever I feel like it. So I did this morning from 11.30 till 12.30.

ROOT #4 is Atemschaukel by Herta Müller

This is basically about the time Oskar Pastior spent as a forced labourer in the Soviet Union when members of the German minority in Romania were shipped off to work camps. The author intended to write this together with Pastior, but he died before they got to the writing stage, and so she decided to work from the notes, but fictionalised it. It is a challenging read, because of all the surreal imagery. A book that will stay with me a long time.

ROOT #5 is Sommerfreuden by Herman Bang

A former colleague who spoke Danish always recommended this author, and I'm glad I found this short novel. It tells the story of a single day in summer in a small town in Northern Jutland, where the wife of the innkeeper worries because they invested heavily in setting up accommodation for tourists, but nobody has shown up. And then she learns that a boatload is on its way, they all arrive together and everything must be improvised. A wonderful picture of life in Denmark at the beginning of the 20th century.

ROOT #6 is After dark by Wilkie Collins

A selection of seven stories loosley linked by the portrait-painter who heard them from his sitters. A mixed bag, some of them familiar because I once owned them in paper. This one was an ebook from Gutenberg.

ROOT #7 is Flashman and the Redskins by George MacDonald Fraser

Picks up immediately after Flash for Freedom! and sees our scoundrel hero on a trek West where he runs into Apaches. Twenty-five years later he's back in the USA only to find himself at Custer's Last Stand. Not quite as much fun as earlier books in the series, and I think it's because he's a bit like a fish out of water here.

ROOT #8 is Miss Marple – The Complete Short Stories by Agatha Christie

There are only twenty stories about Miss Marple, all told, which is sad, because these were all wonderful. However, the book was badly made (blank pages, glued pages), so I'm ditching it. They are easy to find should I want a re-read.

You are moving fast through those ROOTs, Birgit.

>43 MissWatson: Yes, now that I have all day for reading (and other hobbies) I'm getting ahead nicely. Of course, the cold weather helps.
And train strikes. I had planned to go to Hamburg later this week, to spend one of my gift vouchers, and the engine drivers announced they will go on strike from Wednesday to Monday. Public transport is becoming so unreliable.

>43 MissWatson: Here too. Strikes and a shortage of people are the main reasons for terrible train services and weather conditions (Snow, frost, leaves upon the train tracks)

You are doing great!

>44 connie53: And a very heavy storm today. I'm so glad to be indoors!
>45 cyderry: It's a bit like making hay while the sun shines, so I can tackle some really big ones later.

>46 MissWatson: Heavy storm here too, but it's dying down a bit.

ROOT #9 is Eldest by Christiopher Paolini

This was a re-read, because I want to refresh my memory before finally tackling Inheritance.

I need to get to those books too. Thanks for the reminder, Birgit.

>49 connie53: I was surprised how quickly I finished them.

ROOT #10 is Der große Ausverkauf by Vicki Baum

I fell for the gorgeous cover, but the contents didn't quite live up to it. The publishers should have stated somewhere that they adapted the original text to the most recent spelling reform, which looks very odd in a book first published in 1937. And I couldn't shake my impression that the author was no longer at home in her native German, after moving to the US, for the phrasing is awkward and often reads like a too literal translation from English. Not a keeper.

That's a pity, Birgit. The cover is gorgeous indeed and gives one hope for the story.

So we both read books that did not do it for us.

>52 connie53: Yes, that happens. Let's hope there won't be too many disappointments along the reading journey.

Right now I'm reading a thick non-fiction hardcover with copious endnotes in tiny print, so I probably won't add another ROOT this month.

>53 MissWatson: As long as it is entertaining or interesting that's fine.

>54 connie53: Unfortunately, it's not going to be entertaining. The author uses a device that I find highly problematic: sending an imaginary character into the past who can see what the world looked like at the time. It detracts from the factual bits, but those are at least interesting, so it's not a complete washout. I think this will take a while, and I will happily interrupt for other books.

ROOT #11 is Stalking the angel by Robert Crais

Such as this one. The series has been sitting on my shelves for ages, and it's been thirty years since I read this instalment. I had absolutely no memory of the plot, so I couldn't put it in the bin immediately. On re-reading, I know why I stopped buying them, so after verifying that they have been read, they can also go to the recycling bin. These mass market paperbacks don't age well and tend to fall apart.

>55 MissWatson: Well, interesting is also nice.

>57 connie53: I'm learning quite a few things from it, so that's good.

In other news, I'm spending a long weekend with my best friend and will be offline until Monday. That's a very nice thing about retirement, you can travel spontaneously!

Have fun, Birgit.

>59 connie53: Thanks, Connie, we had a great time.
I didn't read much during my absence, so it's taken me a while to finish The woman in white which I read as a memorial to Julia, so I am not counting it for my own goal.

Glad you had a great time, Birgit. It would be strange if you'd spend the whole time you are with your friend reading. When I'm with my friend I only read in the morning when she is still sleeping. I'm an early riser and she definitely isn't.

Congratulations on your retirement Birgit. It looks like you're really pulling out those ROOTs :0)

>61 connie53: We're the other way around: she rises early, I love to sleep in.

>62 humouress: Thanks, nice to see you here!

ROOT #12 is Nina Balatka by Anthony Trollope

This has been sitting on my Kobo for eleven years, ever since I bought it, I think. It's quite different from the other novels that I have read, and to me it was overly preachy. It is set in Prague, and it may send me down another rabbithole if I don't watch out.

>38 MissWatson: A bit late for this comment, perhaps, but I'm so happy you enjoyed Herman Bang. He is one of my favorite Danish authors.

>65 Henrik_Madsen: You're welcome. I'm sorry it took me so long to discover him, and right now I am waiting for "Am Weg" to arrive which I found on my bookmooching site.

ROOT #13 is Geschichte Tschechiens by Joachim Bahlcke

This was a re-read, in parallel with Nina Balatka, because I didn't really remember most of it. I wish they would also publish a similar book about Slovakia...

ROOT #14 is Das Feuerschiff by Siegfried Lenz

This is a pretty little hardback which only contains a single story, set on a lightship in the Baltic which will soon be decommissioned, as the minefield which it marked has been cleared. On their last watch the crew save three men who turn out to be gangsters. There are questions of violence and resistance, which is why it is still used in schools. Very impressive, and I loved how he describes the sea and the sky, and that he always uses the precise nautical terms for everything within the ship.
And now I want to replace this with a complete collection of the stories that were first published under this title...

ROOT #15 is Die Purpurlinie by Wolfram Fleischhauer

This is an odd book. The author became fascinated with the history and meaning of a famous French picture of Gabrielle d'Estrées and her sister (?), now in the Louvre: https://collections.louvre.fr/en/ark:/53355/cl010065402
In the course of his search he ran into an amazing number of related pictures and got also drawn into the story of Gabrielle who almost became queen of France – or was Henri IV stringing her along while secretly negotiating a marriage with Maria de Medici? He turns this into a novel where the narrator goes on a similar journey, but with the help of a manuscript found in the family papers of a friend. Yes, it's a convoluted plot, and he spends quite some time telling us the history of Henri's fight for the throne, and his affair with Gabrielle. Most of this was familiar from Heinrich Mann's epic two-volume novel, not least because they used the same sources. And he was kind enough to tell us what was fact and what fiction in his book.

ROOT #16 is Katzenberge by Sabrina Janesch

This is a debut novel where the author explores her own German-Polish family history since the end of WWII, when the Germans fled or were expelled from Silesia and Polish families moved into their farms who had in turn been pushed out of Galicia which was annexed to the Ukraine/USSR in the great mass upheaval of people and frontiers. Great writing.

ROOT #17 is Emil und die drei Zwillinge by Erich Kästner

It's a re-read, because yesterday was his 125th birthday and I needed a break from my very dry non-fiction book.

>71 MissWatson: I remember we read Emil and the Detectives in primary school and I enjoyed it a lot, I've always meant to revisit it. I hadn't realised it was the first in a series.

>71 MissWatson: >72 Jackie_K: I have a vague memory of having taken Emil and the Detectives out of the library as a child, but I don't think I had to read it for school.

>73 Robertgreaves: I'm pretty sure it was one of the books that the teacher read to the class (Stig of the Dump was another that I also enjoyed and keep meaning to read it again).

>74 Jackie_K: Another one I remember getting from the library. I suppose the teachers must have read to us but I can't remember any titles

>72 Jackie_K: There are just the two, I wouldn't call that a proper series. Just as The Little Man has a sequel, which was also a one-off.
>73 Robertgreaves: Sadly, having books read to us at school was not part of the curriculum when I went to school.

ROOT #18 is Der kleine Mann by Erich Kästner

For sentimental reasons (and because it was a busy day) I also re-read Der kleine Mann which has always been a favourite.
This morning, there's also been a slew of movies based on Kästner's books on TV, and the 1950s versions are fascinating for their glimpses of half-rebuilt Germany. Not surprisingly, Der kleine Mann has never been filmed. Although it should be easy nowadays with all those special effects...

ROOT #19 is Meisternovellen by Stefan Zweig

A selection of novellas, among them the best-known (because they're on the 1001 list): Der Amokläufer and Schachnovelle. The ones in this book date from 1911 to 1942, and it was interesting to see how his writing style changed. My favourite, though, was Verwirrung der Gefühle, his depiction of the young man and his admiration for his professor was spot on.

edited for touchstone

>69 MissWatson: Birgit, my library doesn't have this book, but Die dritte Frau, which also makes a reference to the picture.
>78 MissWatson: I've enjoyed Schachnovelle.

>79 Ameise1: Oh, I'll keep an eye for that! And Schachnovelle was wonderful, indeed.

ROOT #20 is La femme de trente ans by Honoré de Balzac

This one was odd and strangely disparate until I read the preface and notes to discover that Balzac wrote the six episodes separately and only later turned them into the story of one woman. One of the episodes, where the woman's daughter runs off with a murderer, reads like a penny dreadful, so on the whole it didn't really work for me. And he really has a thing for aristocrats: dukes, marquesses and counts by the barrelful.

Well that gives me nine ROOTs for this month. Nice progress!

ROOT #21 is Die rätselhaften Honjin-Morde by Seishi Yokomizo

This was a very pleasant surprise: a plain, old-fashioned locked-room mystery told in less than 250 pages. it also offers an interesting look at Japan in 1937.

ROOT #22 is After the ice by Steven Mithen

This is a monumental non-fiction history of humankind from the end of the ice age to the beginning of history. Unfortunately, the main narrative device didn't work at all for me: a modern-day John Lubbock reading his Victorian namesake's book while travelling unseen across continents and millenia, watching people. Whenever I checked the endnotes, the scene described belonged to a different site, time or was totally imagined. Why bother?

ROOT #23 is Goethes Leichen by Paul Kohl

This could have been a fun historical mystery, with the husband of Goethe's Charlotte Buff travelling to Weimar in 1783 and visiting his former rival. Alas, the writing is excruciatingly bad, and there are far too many anachronisms. I bailed at 50 pages, but I am counting it because it is a physical item making room on the shelves.

>82 MissWatson: Sounds interesting. My library has got a copy of it.

>84 MissWatson: Sorry that this was a bad one. Hopefully the next one will be better.

What is your favorite book that you would recommend to a first year in high school?

>85 Ameise1: I was a bit wary because books on bestseller lists don't always live up to the hype, but this one was really good. And my current book is fabulous!

>84 MissWatson: what a shame that this didn't turn out as you had hoped. I would have snapped up a fun Goethe historical mystery

>88 Caramellunacy: I haven't yet found one that really worked. Maybe authors are just scared of him.

ROOT #24 is Die Reise unserer Gene by Johannes Krause and Thomas Trappe

This was a really satisfactory read. Comparatively short, but brimful of new and exciting information from the field of archaeogenetics. Johannes Krause is director of Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology where some of these studies have been done, and his collaborator is a journalist who probably helped a lot in making this a pleasant read for lay readers.

ROOT #25 is Schönbrunner Finale by Gerhard Loibelsberger

This is part of a series of historical mysteries set in Vienna. The year is 1918, the people are fed up with the war and starving, unrest is brewing. There are murders happening, and Inspector Nechyba does solve them, but miostly this is about the dying days of the monarchy.

>91 MissWatson: I would love that! It's too bad Loibelsberger doesn't seem to be translated in either French and English. I'm not sure my German is good enough for a novel :(

>93 MissWatson: There's also lots of Viennese dialect in the dialogues, and the author often gives translations in the footnotes for unusual words, so that would be an additional challenge. Especially for a translator, I guess.

ROOT #26 is Watership Down by Richard Adams

I never would have thought that a story about rabbits could be so exciting, but it is. Charming, surprising, and there's a nailbiting assault on their home at the end that had me sitting up late, just to know how it ends. Fabulous.

>94 MissWatson: I was unfortunately given this as a child (maybe 8?) by a librarian who thought bunnies meant kid story. I may need to try again as an adult as many have described it as charming - all I remember was fairly traumatizing...

>95 Caramellunacy: Not For children, but so delightful, once you are ready for it. I didn't enjoy the theme, in high school; but, I had no interest, at that time in politics or anything bordering on social justice. A decade later, those topics were of primary interest to me.

>94 MissWatson: That's a favorite of my older sister. I read it for my classics book group as an adult and really enjoyed it.

>96 EGBERTINA: As someone who wrote anti-Reagan poetry in high school, I probably would've enjoyed it at that age, too.

>95 Caramellunacy: I can't imagine what an eight-year old would make of this. I was struck very much by how closely and lovingly he describes the landscape, flora and fauna, which would have bored me as a kid.

>96 EGBERTINA: As a teenager, I would have entirely missed that aspect completely if a teacher didn't point it out.

>97 ReneeMarie: I am glad I waited to read this because now I could truly appreciate it.

>98 MissWatson: I think even had a teacher pointed it out to me, I still wouldn't have had the appreciation for the depth of it. it all whooshed over my head, then.

>95 Caramellunacy: I had borrowed the movie for my 12 year old. She cried and locked herself in her room. It didn't help that we had a pet bunny.
I remember at the same age being mesmerized by the story. I guess generations (and personalities) don't react the same way ... After this epic Mommy fail, I've been shy about picking up the novel (makes no sense, I know). Now I'm curious :D

>100 Cecilturtle: Storytelling is important in the book, and I think it's a good thing that they do different things for different people.

ROOT #27 is Am Weg by Herman Bang

I love 19th century literature, and this was another great read. Nothing much happens, the author observes a group of people in a small Danish town go about their business, but the way he does it is marvellous. The stationmaster's wife pines away after her admirer leaves the town, with her love unspoken. As a woman, it leaves you glad to live in times where you can be independent.

>94 MissWatson: I picked Watership Down to take to boarding school (on the South Downs) just before I turned 10. I found it very intense and absorbing. Of course (as you can guess) I was a reader even then.

>103 humouress: I'm impressed. At that age I still read Erich Kästner. And Enid Blyton, of course.

>104 MissWatson: I'd have been reading them until I went to boarding and left them at home. We had to take a book with us, and I'd read an article on it in a Readers' Digest so I picked it on the strength of that.

>105 humouress: Yes, newspapers and magazines are a great danger for bookbuyers.

ROOT #28 is Guy Mannering by Walter Scott

This is a very fat book, with 720 pages, including author's and editor's prefaces and notes, and an extensive glossary for the numerous phrases and words in Scots (much appreciated). It's also a delightful romance, has some Gothic elements, but nearly all the characters behave in a sensible way and we get lots of beautiful scenery. My favourite character was the eminent lawyer, Paulus Pleydell, who flirted outrageously with the young ladies.

ROOT #29 is Die Henkerstochter by Oliver Pötzsch

The first in a series of historical mysteries set in 17th century Bavaria, featuring a family of hangmen. The author is actually descended from them, and that's the most interesting thing about the book. As a mystery, it's okay, the historical fiction not quite as convincing, but competently done. It's a popular series in Germany, so I am sure I can pass it on to someone else.

I'm off to Paris tomorrow morning and won't get much reading done there. But if I do, I'll count them for April, when I get back and will be online again.
Happy Easter break!

Enjoy your trip!

Have fun, Birgit. I hope the weather stays nice and you have a great time.

Bon voyage!

>110 humouress: >111 connie53: >112 Jackie_K: Thank you! Thge weather could have been a little warmer, but we got to see a lot!

ROOT #30 is My Lady's Money by Wilkie Collins

This is another short read and features a strange private detective.

>114 MissWatson: I have several Wilkie Collins novels, but I didn't realize until you mentioned it that I have that one. It's bundled with two other titles in an omnibus I bought way back when.

>94 MissWatson: I agree 100%! We were visiting family over the Easter weekend, so I didn't get to read much, but stayed up late to finish it!

>115 ReneeMarie: These omnibus editions are dangerous because there's usually one story in it that I already have got elsewhere.
>116 LisaMorr: It is truly lovely, isn't it?

ROOT #31 is Le rêve by Émile Zola

This is an odd one, where a young girl grows up isolated from the world in a small house in the shadow of a cathedral, and her only reading (from her own choice, mostly) is an ancient book of legends of the saints. Only the reader gets to know how she is related to the notorious Rougon-Macquart. She herself dreams of a life like the saints where God and the angels intervene to give her what she dreams of, and in some way it comes true. But I am not altogether sure what Zola's intention here was, and the introduction did not really enlighten me on this point. Is it an example of nurture being stronger than nature?

Hi Birgit, doing my rounds of the threads and I couldn't skip yours of course. I like to see what you have been reading and see what you think about them.

>119 connie53: Hi Connie, I'm still a bit oin holiday mood and haven't been around LT much lately. So nice to see you here!

ROOT #32 is La disparue du Père-Lachaise by Claude Izner

I've owned this for ten years at least, and I took it down from my shelf now to remind myself of Paris. It mentions so many streets I walked along recently! And the fact that the hero owns a bookshop allows the authors to slip in quite a few books new and sensational in 1890, such as Zola's La bête humaine. Plus some authors I'm unfamiliar with, so I'm off to look for them...

>120 MissWatson:. That happens to me too. I'm on LT all the time I'm home, but not always in the discussion threads.

ROOT #33 is L. A. Requiem by Robert Crais

April is shaping up to be a month of mysteries. This is #8 in the Elvis Cole series, and as the final showdown with the killer played out I knew I had read this before, but most of it had completely vanished from my mind. Which is surprising in a way, as we learn a lot about the past of Cole's enigmatic partner Joe Pike here. Well, it would have been nearly twenty-five years ago, and I find that my tolerance for super-hero antics has diminished, so I am going to find a new home for this one.

>123 MissWatson: When I reread this one, I also decided to send it to a new home. I liked Pike's backstory, but Cole mooning about his self-inflicted romantic woes was tiresome... I may have grown too old for immature wise-cracking idiot protagonists who insist on messing up their own lives then cry about the consequences.

>124 Caramellunacy: I still have a few left unread and find it hard to ditch them unopened. But I am determined to DNF them if there's too much cooking and relationship nuisance.

>125 MissWatson: That seems a very reasonable policy - I have a terrible time ditching books without at least trying them, too.

>126 Caramellunacy: Sometime in the nineties I ditched quite a few thriller and mystery series, and I came to regret it later, as they are hard to find now. But there's only so much room in a small apartment...

ROOT #34 is Watery Grave by Bruce Alexander

This is the third in a series of mysteries featuring a real historical person, Sir John Fielding of the Bow Street Court. I found this less engaging than the previous books, the nautical bits were a bit unconvincing to me (a veteran of Hornblower, Delancey and Aubrey, among others), and the end left a bitter taste, as justice is not done in the end.

>121 MissWatson: I've read volumes 1 & 3 of this series and enjoyed them.

>123 MissWatson: I've only read volume 11

Wishing you a lovely week ahead.

>129 Ameise1: I hope the weather is nice where you are! We're having too much rain here in the North.

I haven't really warmed to Victor Legris yet as a person, but the descriptions of Paris are the big draw here.

ROOT #35 is Der letzte Satz by Robert Seethaler

This was an impulse buy which I read instantly because it is so short. Too short, actually, it leaves you wanting to know so much more about Gustav Mahler. Beautifully written, but strangely insubstantial. Or maybe I missed the subtleties...

>131 MissWatson: This book makes me very curious. I've put it on my library list.

>132 Ameise1: I have more of his books on the TBR, I started this right away because it is so short. I'll need to unearth the others now.

I have finished a re-read of Post Captain, which is one of my all-time favourite books about the Napoleonic Wars. This is on Julia's TBR, so I'm adding it to her memorial, and won't coiunt it for my ROOTs.

ROOT #36 is L'ombre du Vétéran by Jean Failler

A bit of local history from Concarneau, when it was a small fishing port. In 1806, the French navy ship Vétéran seeks refuge under the city walls from a Royal Navy squadron and is stuck there for years. A local youngster helps identify Royalist plotters who want to blow up the ship. This had a certain sentimental value for me, because the action is mostly set in the ville close of Concarneau which we have visited several times.

ROOT #37 is Rapscallion by James McGee

Failler's mention of the prison hulks sent me instantly to Rapscallion where Officer Matthew Hawkswood is sent to one undercover. French POWs have been escaping in growing numbers, and it turns out that the English smuggling fraternity is involved. There's lots of mayhem in the book, close escapes, conflicting loyalties and a last-second rescue. And I learned something about England's secret trade with France during that time that I now want to read up on...

ROOT #38 is Les adieux à la Reine by Chantal Thomas

It's 1810 in Vienna, and French emigrée Agathe Laborde celebrates her 65th birthday with friends. And after the party, she decides to remeinisce about her last days at Versailles, the fateful days of 14th July 1789, when her world as reader to the Queen collapses. The author is a historian of the period and gives an amazing picture of the court as a world completely set apart from the rest of the country.

And this means I have reached the halfway point of my challenge. Although I often think that I don't spend nearly as much time reading as I thought I would, I have nevertheless read more than in previous years.

ROOT #39 is Undine und andere Erzählungen by Friedrich de La Motte-Fouqué

The additional material here was more interesting than the actual stories, which are typical for the German Romantic period (all knights in shining armour): it has the review EA Poe wrote of Undine, and I learned that Walter Scott used her as an inspiration for The Monastery.
Since two of the stories are contained in other books I have, this one is making room on the shelf.

ROOT #40 is Der grüne Fürst by Heinz Ohff

This is a non-fiction biography of Prince Hermann Pückler-Muskau, who lived in truly interesting times. He travelled widely and wrote bestselling books about it, and he is most famous for creating two English landscape gardens at his castles Muskau and Branitz. And it was fascinating to see so many famous names here: he was a drinking companion of ETA Hoffmann (see above), was immortalised in The Pickwick Papers and lesser-known books by German authors, and and and. The reading list provided at the end of the book should keep me busy for years to come.

ROOT #41 is The two destinies by Wilkie Collins

This is a very sloppily produced edition, and for the third time I have run into a paragraph where several lines are missing. It ruins the story and I have decided to quit. It's going into the bin, and because it's one off the shelf, I'm counting it.

>140 MissWatson: That's a disappointment! Would a proper edition be worth reading?

>141 LisaMorr: I hope so, although I probably need to be in a forgiving mood, because the hero treats his lady rather badly. Unless he learns some humility later, he's far too disagreeable.

ROOT #42 is Merlin's Keep by Madeleine Brent

This is another re-read. The visions that the lovers in The two destinies have of each other put me in mind of this, where a prophecy plays an important role and a thoroughly evil bad guy ensnares a young woman as his medium. I loved this as a teenager, and while some of the "God is an Englishman" attitudes haven't aged well, it's still a ripping yarn.

Hi Birgit. How are you? Read a lot, I see.

We had a terrible thunderstorm last evening and last night. I was really scared on my own. Now it is still raining. I think you might have had the same weather. Or are you to far up north?

Hi Connie! We had a small thunderstorm last night, but most of the front must have passed us by. I have noticed that we are usually very lucky here in Kiel while the rest of Schleswig-Holstein gets most of the rain or snow. Today it's lovely and sunny and I'll be reading on the balcony (after a little housework). Being retired is really working well for me!

>144 connie53: I hope the thunderstorms have eased, Connie. Here in the UK they apparently had very bad storms in southern England and Wales, but here in Scotland we missed them completely (I am not complaining!).

Well, today we caught a full load of rain, which is a pity because it ruined the open air fleamarket. I went anyway, but there were few people who turned up trying to sell things. Vastly outnumbered by the browsers.

ROOT #43 is La place des bonnes by Anne Martin-Fugier

This is a non-fiction book about female servants, and in particular the poor maids of all work. Lots of interesting facts and some analysis of the relationship between masters and servants, mostly drawn from French 19th century fiction. Lots of Balzac, Zola, Flaubert, Maupassant, and I'll be reading their books with a different eye now, I think. I didn't take much notice of the maids until now, but armed with this knowledge I'll be looking out for them.

ROOT #44 is Mörder mögen keine Matjes by Krischan Koch

Some comic relief after my serious history book. A piece of lightweight fluff, but fun, about a village policeman and his friends who take a trip to Hamburg to solve the case of a dead man found in a container that washed up on their beach. The mystery plot was shamelessly lifted from The Big Sleep but cleverly translated to a crusty upperclass Hamburg family. Fish eaten in a bun (an ubiquitous snack on North German beaches) plays a big role here, the author even includes some recipes.

I'll be away for a few days, my sister has concert tickets. I do hope the weather will be nice so we can enjoy the public holiday on Thursday...
See you all next Monday. Happy ROOTing!

ROOT #45 is Die Erlebnisse des Polizeiagenten Schipow bei der Verfolgung des Schriftstellers Tolstoj by Bulat Okudschawa

The author had his 100th birthday in May, so I took it from the shelf after fifty years (well, almost). The Soviet Union is long gone, and the world that he is satirising here under cover of historical fiction has also vanished, so much of it was lost on me. But bureaucracy has survived, and those bits are still worth a chuckle.

>150 MissWatson: I hope you spend some lovely days with your sister, Birgit. And you enjoyed the concert.

>152 connie53: Hi Connie, and thanks! It was a lovely time, and we managed to read a few children's books she bought for her library. Johanna im Zug was the best, because of the gorgeous illustrations. But they aren't ROOTs, of course.
The first concert was brilliant, the second less so, the soprano wasn't quite at her best. But it's always nice to have live music.

ROOT #46 is Les empires normands d'Orient by Pierre Aubé

A non-fiction book about the Norman kings of Sicily, which was disappointing. No endnotes, not proper citation of quotes, and the history events was presented very confusingly. Of course, it doesn't help if the men are all named Richard, Roger and Guillaume, but still...
Not a keeper.

ROOT #47 is Murder Underground by Mavis Doriel Hay

A Golden Age mystery with an interesting set-up: we follow the comments of the victim's relatives and co-lodgers at the boarding-house and their actions as the case is slowly investigated by the police, off-scene. However, one of the characters is so annoyingly nitwitted that I almost gave up on this. So it's not a keeper.

ROOT #48 is The curious incident of the dog in the night-time by Mark Haddon

I am glad I finally got around to this. A very pleasant surprise in many ways.

ROOT #49 is Wolfszeit by Harald Jähner

A social history of Germany from 1945-1955, but the focus here is clearly on the years before currency reform, when nobody really knew what the future would be like.

ROOT #50 is A practical guide to conquering the world by KJ Parker

This is the third in a series, and here we meet Felix, a translator at the court of the Echmen emperor and now an unwanted exile, because his home city (and empire) has been destroyed. How can you not love a book where the hero spends so much time in the library reading books? Good fun.

ROOT #51 is L'énigme des Blancs-Manteaux by Jean-François Parot

This was a re-read because we walked along the street many times during our stay in Paris and I wanted to re-acquaint myself with the series before I continue with it. I think I didn't really appreciate the first time how very young our hero still is in this. And now I'm eager to get to the one with the Samaritaine, having just visited the newly renovated department store of the same name...

>159 MissWatson: Oh! This looks like a really fun series! I'd heard of Le Floch as a character and the fact that you can walk the streets of Paris in a historical setting sounds decidedly interesting!

>159 MissWatson: the Samaritaine, having just visited the newly renovated department store of the same name
That makes me eager to get to Zola's The Ladies' Paradise.

>160 Cecilturtle: I wish the French books included a map of Paris at that time. The German edition was treated muchz more handsomely in that regard, but reading it in the original gets me closer to the times. And I've got the next book lying ready at hand.

>161 detailmuse: Yes, that's one I would like to read soon, too.

ROOT #52 is Aller Tage Abend by Jenny Erpenbeck

The author has just been awarded the International Booker Prize for Kairos (a fact that I almost missed), so I took down a previous book of hers. She is trully an amazing author.l Here we follow three women, grandmother, mother and daughter, from the Eastern border of the Austrian Empire at the beginning of the 20th century to Berlin at the end of it, and she plays on variations here. It's difficult to describe, but it reads wonderfully.

ROOT #53 is Versailles Château de la France et orgueil des rois by Claire Constans

It's a brief history of the palace from its construction to its use today, lavishly illustrated. So the small format is a pity, as it doesn't do justice to the images.

ROOT #54 is Die Zauberin von Ravenna by Klaus Herrmann

This has been on my shelves for ages and I took it down because I thought it might fit for the Reading Through Time quarterly theme. But I just couldn't get into this, it's too boring. So off it goes.

>157 MissWatson: How did you like Wolfszeit?

>159 MissWatson: I only bought this book recently.

>163 MissWatson: BB, I love Erpenbeck's books.

>166 Ameise1: I am thinking still about this, there was a lot in here which is simply depressing (as the constant denial of guilt), and also the disturbing parallels with the present. But there are many things in here which I didn't know and found very interesting, such as the establishment of a free press funded by the allies. I didn't know that Erich Kästner ran the arts pages for one of them, the Deutsche Zeitung.

I have one more Erpenbeck on my TBR, and am now looking for the rest. I really like how she writes.

ROOT #55 is Das Geheimnis der Porzellanmalerin by Birgit Jasmund

This was a disappointment. A search for her unknown father leads a young woman from Santo Domingo to Meissen in Saxony where she hopes to work for the china manufacture. Instead she gets involved with counterfeiters. There's an insipid love story mixed up with the other plots, and some threads dangling at the end. I can easily part with this.

Note to self: update the ticker as soon as Chèli is done with the numbers.

ROOT #56 is Babel by Kenah Cusanit

This is abook about the archaeologist Robert Koldewey, as he sits in his study on the digsite in Babylon and reflects on his work, his team, his foreign competitors, his troubles with his funders in Berlin and many things more. There's much in here to learn and to think about, but I never really warmed to the author's complicated writing style.

ROOT #57 is Im Lande Ur by Hans Baumann

This was a re-read from my youth, one of the first books I owned which got me interested in history and archaeology. Kind of a comfort read after the intellectual gymnastics of the previous book.

ROOT #58 is Das Geheimnis von Salem by Birgit Rückert

There hasn't been much on TV lately to distract me, so I finished another book. It's a historical mystery, of sorts, where the local history of Salem monastery is more important than solving a mystery. I bought this four years ago in the museum shop, not expecting much, because these local history efforts vary much in quality. But it is very well-written, well-researched and quite entertaining.

ROOT #59 is Kaisergestalten des Mittelalters

This was a leftover I meant to have finished in May, but somehow I couldn't sit down to read more than one mini-biography at a time, they were so densely packed with names and information. Some of these emperors were household names, others barely mentioned in history class, so I learned quite a lot. Not sure I will remember all of it.

ROOT #60 is Der arme Awrosimow by Bulat Okudschawa

This has been on my shelves since university days, and not the pages are brown and the back is broken, so it will leave the house. It's a very odd story set during the interrogations of the army officers who tried to revolt in December 1825. Our hero is a young country bumpkin serving as clerk to the interrogation committee, trying to find his feet in the capital and the bureaucracy. There are too many dream sequences for my taste who obscure the point the author is trying to make, but I guess, his Soviet readership back in the day would have picked up on them more easily.

Hi Birgit. it has been too long since I visited your thread and others. Today I will try to visit some. It's an awful day here with lots of rain and I can spend some time on the threads here.

Good to hear your trip was nice. And you've read a lot of books too.

>174 connie53: Hi Connie! The weather is very rainy, too, so I'm staying at home reading. And I'm planning another trip to my sister's. Normally we'd be able to go swimming in a nearby lake, but if this cold snap continues, that's off.

How far do you have to travel to meet up with your sister?
I really hope the weather is clearing up the coming months. Let's say until the end of September. I'm really getting depressed by the endless rain. Yesterday I canceled all of my plans for reading in the garden, because it was really nice and sunny outside. Just payed Peet a visit and did some groceries shopping. Now it's pouring again.

>176 connie53: It's four and a half hour by train, now that the construction work on the lines is finished. On most days I can read on the train, so the time flies quickly.
And I hear you about the rain! There's been much flooding in the south of Germany, and I really hope there won't be any of that in our part.

ROOT #61 is Meurtre dans le boudoir by Frédéric Lenormand

I suppose one shouldn't expect a properly conducted murder investigation in 1733 Paris, especially when the investigator is Voltaire. The main feature here is the literary world, and censorship, and there's lots of that. Most of the characters are real persons, which is why I found the modern language inappropriate. And the author's attempt at humour is rather heavy-handed, not what I would imagine French esprit to be like. So this is not a book I'll keep or a series to continue.

ROOT #62 is The handmaid's tale by Margaret Atwood

Reading this almost forty years after its first publication, it didn't quite live up to expectations. I found the world-building unconvincing, there was too much left vague or unexplained. But the writing is first class.

>179 MissWatson: While, I normally, adore a good dystopian fiction, Handmaid's Tale gives me the shivers. Therefore, I have never read it. I understand that it is shorter than the tv production, but, I couldn't even finish the show. I think the idea that women's bodies are utilized for a male societal purpose (regardless of the world building) hits too close to home for me. I hadn't realised that it was written that long ago.

>180 EGBERTINA: There is much in it that is disturbing or downright creepy, and the fact that many women elsewhere live in conditions much like the ones described here, is more harrowing still. But I couldn't see this happening on a large scale in the US. There's a war going on in the background which the women don't know about, you get no idea of who the opposing forces are, and it's this lack of context that I find utterly frustrating.

ROOT #63 is Von Gibbon zu Rostovtzeff by Karl Christ

The life and work of fifteen eminent scholars of ancient history, most of them no longer househeold names. The author is a noted ancient historian himself and knew at least one of them personally, and it was fascinating to follow the evolution of the discipline through the work of these men (of course they were all men). He also provides a bibliography, and I'm keeping the book for this reason, because I might just try to find some of them that sound interesting.

ROOT #64 is Verwandlung am Bodensee by Alberta Rommel

We're going to Lake Constance later this year, and it is a good reason to take this off the shelf. A story for young girls first published in 1960, and set in Lindau, which we love to visit. The surprising thing here is how self-reliant and level-headed sixteen-year-old orphan Sonja is. She plans to walk around Lake Constance in emulation of her dead father who wrote a book about it, but finding a large sum of money changes everything. She goes on a shopping spree, meets a woman who knew her father (and conveniently rents rooms to vacationers), and learns some lessons before returning the money to its owner (with some help from her new friend). And she also finds a new family.
The book is firmly set in its time, with families broken by the war and most people eager to enjoy the newly-emerging prosperity. There's also a young woman who wants to go to university and have a career of her own, which I didn't meet often in other books from this period (which I read in my pre-teens).
I'm parting with this, reluctantly, but it's not something I'm going to re-read.

ROOT #65 is Der Zwölfte by Gertrud von Brockdorff

This stood next to Rommel's book on the shelf, and because it matched two prompts for the Category Challenge, I started it. It's historical fiction about an event I didn't know before: a group of Prussian, Hessian and Westfalian soldiers started a revolt against the occupation of French troops in 1809. It was put down quickly, of course. It stands at the beginning of ambition for German unity, and because I knew nothing about it, I looked up the leader on Wikipedia. Turns out that the author didn't stick much to facts, and since the writing was also pretty awful, I'm not going to look for anything else by her.

edited for touchstone

ROOT #66 is In tiefen Schluchten by Anne Chaplet

This was recommended to me by my sister. It's billed as a mystery, but there's little done in the way of sleuthing. Mostly it's about a German woman living on her own in a village in the Ardèche after her husband died, grieving and exploring the countryside. She decides to finally tackle her husband's project of finding out more about his Huguenot ancestors, who emigrated from the region in the 18th century. And suddenly things are happening: a Dutch tourist goes missing, an old man is killed falling down some stairs, his nephew is shot dead, the local pharmacist kills herself. Is there a connection?
It's not so much about the mystery, more about how the past, even the distant past, still works its influence with the lives of people in a closed rural community. Great writing, too.

ROOT #67 is Alexander in Babylon by Jakob Wassermann

This is one of the author's early books, and I found it accidentally on the shelf. He retells the last days of Alexander, after conquering half the world, and it was wordy in the extreme. Not really my thing. I gather his later works are contemporary...

It has been a very successful year for ROOTing so far, but the thread is getting a bit long. Come on over to my new digs! https://www.librarything.com/topic/361752#n8568897