mstrust's experiment in self-control

I'm Jennifer, I live in Phoenix and this will be my 11th year on LT.
With a house filled with hundreds of unread books, I decided this would be the year I read what I already have instead of continuing to buy more like a greedy monkey.
In this thread, I'll track the reads I actually pull from my shelves, and if I can remember, I'll give an approximation for how long I've owned the book.
My goal is to read 75 books that I've owned for a minimum of 6 months. I'll record all my reads in my 75ers thread: https://www.librarything.com/topic/301120
My ROOT thread will be for recording just my reads that have taken up long-term residence.

Welcome, and thanks for dropping in!

ROOT READS

1. Around the World in 80 Days
2. My Family and Other Animals
3. Blood on the Boards
4. 20,000 Leagues Under the Sea
5. Nothing More Than Murder
6. John Dies at the End
7. Soulless
8. The Twisted Ones
9. Hollywood Said No!
10. The Widow Clicquot
11. A Year in the Merde
12. The Murder of Helen Jewett
13. The Red House Mystery
14. The Friends of Eddie Coyle
15. Home from the Vinyl Cafe
16. Robert Kirkman's Descent
17. Al Capone Does My Shirts
18. A Short History of Tractors in Ukrainian
19. Under the Glacier
20. My Life in Heavy Metal
21. The Book of Lists: London
22. Thirsty
23. Goosebumps Most Wanted: Planet of the Lawn Gnomes
24. Go, Mutants!
25. Fever: A Nameless Detective Novel
26. The Sharper Your Knife, The Less You Cry
27. AA Gill is Away
28. The Wounded and the Slain
29. Lemmy: The Definitive Biography
30. Junky
31. A Stab in the Dark
32. Johnny Cash at Folsom Prison: The Making of a Masterpiece
33. Contagious: Why Things Catch On
34. Fear Street Nights: Midnight Games
35. The Valancourt Book of Horror Stories: Volume Two
36. The Stand- 5 stars
37. Poe-Land- 5 stars
38. The Squared Circle
39. Emma
40. Three Bedrooms in Manhattan
41. Mr. Mercedes
42. The Nimrod Flipout
43. The Best of Mrs Beeton's Cakes & Baking
44. Rogue Male
45. You Better Not Cry
46. The Life and Opinions of Maf the Dog, and of His Friend Marilyn Monroe

Welcome to the group! I've found the structure of having a target to aim for really helpful in getting to those unread books.

Thanks, Jackie! I'm hoping that having a ROOT thread will encourage me to get to those books that have been on my shelves for years.

Yay, Jennifer's here! Welcome and good luck :)

Welcome, and happy ROOTing

Good to see you here, Jennifer. Good luck with your ROOTing.

Welcome to the ROOTers. This group definitely works because we are all cheering for everyone.

Good luck and happy reading.

>4 rabbitprincess: Thank you, princess! I'll be following along with your ROOTS too.
>5 LoraShouse: Thank you, Lora!
>6 Familyhistorian: Thanks, Meg! And good luck with yours!
>7 connie53: Thanks, Connie! With a group like this, it'll be a reminder to look through all the great stuff I already have. Like telling people when you're dieting is supposed to be more motivating ;-D
>8 majkia: Thank you, Jean! And you have a couple of gorgeous dogs.

Welcome! I have found the company and the sharing quite motivating for reducing the unread books. I hope it works for you, too. Of course, there are also those books I would never have known about if they hadn't been mentioned here...

Thanks, Birgit! This group is a great idea, as so many of us keep accumulating books we have every intention of reading, someday. And LT is a great place to find out about more books we want.

My reading so far-

1. Around the World in 80 Days- I believe I picked this up from my library shift, so I've owned it no more than seven months.
2. Hemingway & Bailey's Bartending Guide to Great American Writers- a Christmas gift from my sister.

Welcome, it looks like you're having a fun start!

Thanks, MJ, I am!

I've finished My Family and Other Animals by Gerald Durrell. Really funny memoir when he discusses his family, and it's been on my shelf for over a year, maybe two.

I read The Death and Resurrection of Elvis Presley, which had been on my shelf for only about a month. It's a look at everything Elvis from the time after he died: the finances, the inheritance to his daughter that had to be rebuilt, his rise again in popularity, the huge numbers of impersonators.

>15 mstrust: I've really been looking forward to this one, too. I started it last spring but think it was too close to my having read David Sedaris's latest, I kept thinking of Sedaris's family :) Glad you liked it!

Durrell's family is as chaotic as Sedaris', so they have that in common. His eldest brother was especially loud. :-D

Boy did I fall off the wagon today at my library shift. I brought home:
The Redbreast
Leather Maiden
Not In The Flesh
You Make Me Feel So Dead
The Girl Next Door
The Vintage Caper
The Devil's Necktie
Unholy Night

In addition, my Christmas last hurrah purchases are trickling in and Mental Floss presents...Be Amazing was in the mailbox when I got home. I'm slapping my hands.

I read Around the World in 80 Days last year and it was one of the rare Classics I enjoyed. Hope you do too.

Don't forget to join the group officially and set a goal to add to the group.

Welcome!!

Thanks, Cheli! I did enjoy Around the World in 80 Days and gave it a rating of 4.5. Lots of fun!
Thanks for pointing out that I wasn't an official group member! Never done that before, but I've joined now.

I've done a bit of tinkering with my topper message to add a goal for my ROOT reads. In all the years I've been on LT I've never used a ticker, preferring to just number my reads. I usually read somewhere around 100 books a year, so I made my goal to read 75 books that have been on my shelf 6 months or more.

I've finished Blood on the Boards by William Campbell Gault. Not a physical book on the shelves, but it sat on my Kindle since July of last year, so I'm counting it. It's a good mystery from 1953.

My fourth long-term resident of my shelves:



4. 20,000 Leagues Under the Sea by Jules Verne. I'm inordinately proud of myself for finally finishing this one. It's a fantastical story that gets a little long-winded at times, but I enjoyed it and admire Verne. I'll read more from him.
I started this book almost a year ago, but due to how heavy my edition was, it really slowed me down. I've had this book for about three years.

>23 mstrust: I think I only ever read this in an abridged juvenile version. Time to try the full version? The cover looks great.

I suppose the children's version would delete much of the science talk and ship locations, and maybe even the animal slaughter, which are kind of horrifying. About the cover, I own the Barnes & Noble edition that it a hardcover, illustrated and made of a good quality heavy stock paper, which is why it was so dang heavy to hold.

>23 mstrust: My copy is the specially abridged Puffin Classics edition with that cover. In that form it's one of my favourite books. Someday I might read the original French... but probably not.

It's a very cool cover, and so colorful. which is why I chose it. Yeaaah, I don't think I'll be reading it in French. I'd only understand when I character was hungry.

5. Nothing More Than Murder by Jim Thompson. Early Thompson noir, written in 1949. A movie house owner and his wife, plus his mistress, carry out insurance fraud that will also end the bad marriage and leave him free to be with the homely mistress.
This one sat on my Kindle for nearly two years.

>28 mstrust: Insurance fraud! I wonder how it compares to Double Indemnity.

I've read that too. James M. Cain is a favorite of mine. The writing style and location keeps the the two books from having too much in common. It's been a couple of years since I read Double Indemnity, but I recall Cain's characters are L.A. and polished, they can blend in because the city is so big. Thompson's are people who are just a couple of years past barely surviving, who have to fish around for an extra dollar, and the setting is a small-ish town where everyone knows everyone and notices a stranger.

>30 mstrust: I'll give it a go!

I hope you like it! It has it's flaws, as it was the beginning of his career, but it's definitely a Thompson. Nearly everyone in the book is rotten.

John Dies at the End by David Wong. While attending a party, best friends David and John encounter a guy with a fake Jamaican accent who is doing impossible tricks, like reading David's thoughts. The man has brought a new drug, soy sauce, to the party, something that touches off the deaths of several of the party-goers and changes the lives of David and John forever. Left with the unwanted ability to see the shadows of death and creatures of hell, the two have to learn to survive being under constant attack.
It's a lot more fun than my review would indicate. In fact, this is probably the most imaginative book I'll read all year, and I'm glad I've already got the other two in the series on my shelf. This one sat on my shelf for about three years, so it's a ROOT. 5 stars

>33 mstrust: WOW, a 5 star book, Jennifer. Unfortunately not translated, so I can dodge that BB.

That really surprises me, as it's such a well known book. Sorry, I hope it gets translated soon. 5 star reads should be a priority.

Soulless by Gail Carriger. A sort of steampunk monster romance set in Victorian London. A pretty good adventure with scientists, werewolves and vampires. 3.5 stars
I read this for the February ScaredyKit group, and it's been buried on my shelf for at least a year, maybe two.

>36 mstrust: It looks like you may have posted an incorrect author touchstone (it currently goes to David Wong)?

I read Soulless several years ago and found it very entertaining, glad you enjoyed it!

I did, thanks for that catch! Where was my head?
I know there are at least a few more in this series and I'm sure I'll read more. It is entertaining!

I also really liked the manga they did: Soulless, Vol. 1!

I didn't know about that one either. I actually thought Soulless was going to be a steampunk murder mystery, like a Miss Marple with gadgets, when I started it, so I was surprised by the monster romance and royalty.

>36 mstrust: My Dutch book friends, who read almost everything in English, are very enthusiastic about this series (and the writer)

The series has a loyal following. I think there are something like five in the series, and the author has two or three other series too. So a highly prolific author.

The Twisted Ones by Vin Packer. Written by Marijane Meaker, aka M.E. Kerr. From the 50's, this is a book about three young males told in their own chapters that become more interrelating. There is sixteen year-old Brock who hates rock and roll and the vulgar behavior he sees in his classmates, especially the girl in his class who is too forward. He believes himself to be lawful, except for his thievery, which he can explain. Next is eight year old genius Charles, who has been a minor celebrity by answering questions on a national game show. He's racked up thousands of dollars in potential winnings, yet the stress has caused his parent's already volatile marriage
The third boy is nineteen year old Reggie, who, finally so smothered by his mother and her friend, makes a plan to escape. 4 stars
I've had this on my Kindle for 8 months.

Hollywood Said No! by Bob Odenkirk, David Cross and Brian Posehn. The subtitle is "Orphaned film scripts, bastard scenes, and abandoned darlings from the creators of Mr. Show". It's a big book of sketches of often surreal humor that didn't make it on the show, or maybe were written after the show.
This was on my shelf for exactly 6 months.

The Widow Clicquot by Tilar J. Mazzeo. The story of Barbe-Nicole and her husband Francois, then the widow Clicquot after Francois's early death, not long after they had entered the wine and champagne trade. Though Francois's family was wealthy and her father-in-law supported her efforts, the years of hard work and incredibly bad luck would have stopped most people, but Barbe-Nicole kept getting back up after every disaster. That she ran her business over 200 years ago and is now among the very few grande dames of champagne is remarkable.
I'll admit that this story, with its tragedies followed by failures, with terrible luck piled on top, can be difficult to get through. The problems are a very long string that start to run together, but there's interesting information about the trials of making champagne and Barbe-Nicole was a remarkable troubleshooter. 3 stars

This has been on my shelf for 3 years.

>445 I definitely have this one on my TBR mountain - it may be a good time to pour a glass or two of bubbly and read this one!

Veuve Clicquot is my second favorite champagne, and reading this made me want to go shopping. I liked that the author went into some the various problems of making champagne, which makes the price tags seem downright reasonable.

A Year in the Merde by Stephen Clarke. Young Englishman Paul West is hired by a French food corporation to organize and open their new venture in a chain of English tearooms in Paris. He's contracted to work on this project for one year, and so he enters the world of French business with barely any French language himself and leading a team that mostly doesn't understand him. His boss, suave Jean-Marie, seems the picture of the confident Frenchman, and Paul feels lucky to have such support, until he begins noticing cracks in the image, beginning with the sloppy way Jean-Marie conducts an office fling with an employee.
Paul's own libido often takes precedent over his work as he goes about the city, from work to cafes and bars, looking for just about any woman who will have him. His attempt at being a French country squire goes disastrously when he discovers that his boss has so much influence and power even that far from Paris.
It's fictional, yet it reads as an actual account of the author's experiences in France, as he did work in Paris. It's a fun, fast read with a little intrigue.
I've had this on my shelf for at least 10 years. Hooray!

The Murder of Helen Jewett by Patricia Cline Cohen. In 1836, the mutilated and charred body of a prostitute was found in her brothel bedroom. It became the top story of the New York papers because of the grisly murder, the fact that Jewett was a high priced prostitute with well-to-do clients, and that the murder was committed in a house filled with other people. The author examines the murder and trial, and also laws, society, journalism and New York of this period.

I've had this for 6 years. It's a ROOT.

The Red House Mystery by A.A. Milne. Comfortably off and curious about many career paths, young Antony Gillingham decides to visit his friend Bill, who is a guest at the mansion Red House, owned by wealthy Mark Ablett. As Gillingham approaches the house, he hears a man banging on a door and yelling, with the man explaining that he heard a shot coming from inside the room. This sets off a murder investigation, as there is a dead man inside that locked room. And while the police are the official investigators, who are rarely around, Gillingham and Bill are doing the real investigation.

What a snooze. Gillingham is likable enough, but since we know the murderer almost from the beginning, and since there really is no one else it can be, it's just a matter of how.
This was on my shelf for 4 years, and it's leaving!

The Friends of Eddie Coyle by George V. Higgins. Eddie Coyle has no friends, just other guys who run in the same circle. He's a small time crook who is about to stand trial for stealing a truckload of whiskey. His most usual income is buying hot guns and selling them to acquaintances who need cheap guns fast. In Eddie's world, everyone is moving goods, and concealing and offering up information about the other guys. Eddie just needs to finds a piece of information that is useful enough to the Feds to keep himself out of jail.
This has been on my shelf since July 2017.

Home from the Vinyl Cafe by Stuart McLean. Divided into the seasons, this is a collection of stories about record store owner Dave and his family. His wife Morley goes from being a housewife to a theater manager, where she must deal with an actress who drives her crazy with demands. Teenage daughter Stephanie begins dating and son Sam has a sleepover for his tenth birthday, where the combination of fried Mars bars and a zombie movie make the guests uncontrollable.
Visiting The Vinyl Cafe is always fun.
This has been on the shelf since January 2018.

>52 mstrust: I had the privilege of attending a couple of tapings of the Vinyl Cafe's Christmas shows. So much fun :)

Lucky you! I still haven't listened to any Vinyl Cafe so maybe I should go looking for a podcast. Know if it's available?

>53 rabbitprincess: The podcast doesn't seem to be available in iTunes, but Podtail appears to have a few episodes: https://podtail.com/en/podcast/vinyl-cafe-stories-from-cbc-radio/

And of course there are audiobook versions of some of the story collections. The Christmas album is my favourite, though. "Dave on the Roof" is a classic.

Thank you for finding it! I'll listen on my cycle. Yes, "On the Roof" was included in Home from the Vinyl Cafe but I'll bet hearing McLean reading it makes it even funnier.

>56 mstrust: His delivery is perfect!

Robert Kirkman's Descent by Jay Bonansinga. The fifth in the series, and likely my last. A boring main character who made bad decisions on behalf of her group.
I don't know how long I've had this but I listed it as on my shelf in September last year.

30. Al Capone Does My Shirts by Gennifer Choldenko. 1935 is a life changing year for Moose Flanagan and his family. Twelve year-old Moose's father has found work on Alcatraz Island and that means the family has to move to the island, living in an apartment building just minutes away from the cell block that houses famous criminals like Capone and Machine Gun Kelly. There are a handful of children on the island, including Piper, the spoiled daughter of the warden who gets the other kids in trouble and pushes Moose around. He also resents having to care for his older sister Natalie after school every day as his parents work all the hours they can to raise money for her behavioral treatments. Throughout his problems, Moose looks forward to playing baseball at school.
This is a really well done story of a boy with bigger family problems than most.
I've had this one the shelf for 10 months.

A Short History of Tractors in Ukrainian by Marina Lewycka. When their eighty-five year old father announces his plans to marry a woman 50 years his junior whom he barely knows, Nadia and Vera are worried. Valentina has been clear about her desire to marry old Nikolai because her visa is about to expire, yet she throws about declarations of love to really rope him. He's been a citizen of England for decades, and the new couple hope this would allow Valentina to stay permanently too, but his daughters are hoping she is deported as she's already draining their father of his pension.Though his daughters haven't spoken to each other in two years, they know they must work together to save their father from a woman who is bigger, abusive and out to take every penny from Nikolai, who is both frightened by his wife yet afraid she'll leave.

This was on my shelf for just over three years.

Under the Glacier by Halldor Laxness. The Glacier is a small village at the foot of a glacier, which has gotten the Bishop of Iceland's attention for the strange behavior of the parson stationed there. Parson Jon is rumored to have boarded up the church, to be making his living instead working with horses, and to even refuse to bury the dead. The Bishop sends a young and unenthusiastic emissary out to the village to find answers.
Strange and at times absurd, the young emissary meets with old stories and rumors, and a hostess who insists on feeding him nothing but coffee and sweets, claiming him to be too important to eat fish.

I've had this for 14 months.

My Life in Heavy Metal by Steve Almond. A collection of short stories about couples, whether they are a couple for just a few hours or for decades. The title is the story of a young man who graduates college in the East, detaches from his girlfriend with a sense of relief, and takes a job at an El Paso newspaper. He's quickly promoted to music reviewer and is required to attend the big concerts that come to town, which are mostly heavy metal bands, and he begins seeing a local woman when his former girlfriend suddenly appears and decides they are still a couple.
The stories are sometimes despairing, other times comedic, and the couples, or potential couples, range in age from teens to widowers. I liked "Geek Player, Love Slayer" about a reporter in her 30's who is disgusted by her attraction to the immature company computer guy.

I don't know exactly when I acquired this, but I'm going to say I've had it for about 3 years. That seems right.

The Book of Lists: London by Nick Rennison. Published in 2006, this is a book for people who love The People's Almanac and others that are full of history and historic trivia. In this book are lists such as "4 Mummified Londoners", "6 Memorable London Fires", "8 London Highwaymen", and "15 Classic London Murders". Even if you've studied the city's history extensively, you'll probably find some new bits of information here.

I've had this on the shelf for 2 years, 2 months.

Hi Jennifer, lots of books read! Very nice job.

Hi Connie, and thanks for stopping by. I've been pretty happy pulling books off the shelf that I already own, but the other day I went to the library to get one particular book for the May ScaredyKit group, A Head Full of Ghosts, and came home with an additional five books.

>65 mstrust: That's exactly why I avoid going to library's. I have my own library at home.

It's a bit like going to the candy store when you're on a diet.

>67 mstrust: That's so true.

I almost didn't count this as a ROOT, but I found that I've had it on my shelf for 9 months, so...


Thirsty by M.T. Anderson. Chris and his friends begin drifting apart in high school, with good-looking Tom hanging out with the cool kids and nerdy Jerk is embarrassing. And Chris has begun to feel strange ever since they saw a captured vampiress being led to her execution, when she stopped and locked eyes with Chris for some reason. Now he is thirsty all the time, can't eat or sleep and walks around school exhausted. Also, the mentor who has appeared to help Chris, Chet the Celestial Being, has promised that he can keep Chris from turning into a vampire if the boy helps destroy the vampire lord who wants to take over the world. Chris really hates that he's becoming a vampire, as he'd rather just be able to talk to the girl he likes.
An alternate world of humans going about their normal lives, yet protecting themselves from vampires with ancient rituals preformed at carnivals and chasing down witches. Published in 1997, this must pre-date YA, as it was a winner of a children's book award, which doesn't seem too accurate. I liked this "coming of age gone wrong" story a lot and I'll keep an eye out for more from this author.

Interesting review of My Life in Heavy Metal. I just finished Almond's recent collection of political essays, Bad Stories: What the Hell Just Happened to Our Country, which I found very well written, and was looking forward to checking out some of his fiction.

I'm sorry to hear Almond has gotten political, I had no idea. Before My Life in Heavy Metal the only thing I'd read from him was the non-fiction Candyfreak, which was a lot of fun.

Goosebumps Most Wanted: Planet of the Lawn Gnomes by R.L. Stine.
Twelve year-old Jay and his family have just moved to a new neighborhood. He notices the neighbors all share the same quirk of having their yards filled with ugly little garden gnome statues, including Mr. McClatchy, the grumpy old man across the street who Jay decides to needle. As the reader learns more about Jay he becomes less sympathetic, and his problems keep getting bigger and bigger. It's a good one with a clever ending.
I've had this on the shelf for at least 8 months.
I've spent much of this month reading for the May ScaredyKit- Horror for Children/ Horrifying Children: https://www.librarything.com/topic/305976

Go, Mutants! by Larry Doyle. Teen J!M Anderson has always felt like an outsider. Aliens and mutants are treated well for the most part on their adopted home of Earth, but J!M's blue, oil covered skin and giant brain-shaped head make him a particular target, and his sullenness doesn't help. His best friend Johnny is also taunted by the human teens in their small town of Manhattan, NY, but as he's half radioactive ape, at least he's amazingly strong. The bullies make J!M's life bad enough, but he also sees Marie, the human girl he secretly loves, pulling away and becoming harder to relate to.
An alternative universe "Rebel Without A Cause", with cameos by a fat, unsuccessful JFK, an unappreciated Jimi Hendrix, Marilyn Monroe as the Governor of California, Ronald Reagan trying to dodge questions of Nancy's alien heritage, and a giant praying mantis who teaches Sex Ed. It's fun and clever.
This was on my shelf for seven months.

That are some very interesting covers! I chuckled at the one with the gnomes.

Ha, I didn't even notice that I had three somewhat ghoulish ones in a row! All long-time residents on my shelves too.

Fever: A Nameless Detective Novel by Bill Pronzini. The nameless detective works for a San Francisco agency that has two cases that looked simple and turned out to be more complex. One is a wealthy husband who wants his estranged wife with a gambling addiction found, just to make sure she's safe. Once Nameless starts digging he uncovers the lengths the wife has gone to in order to keep gambling.
The other case involves a straight-laced, religious young man whose whole personality changes suddenly, causing his mother to ask the agency for help in finding out why.

This has been on my shelf for over 5 years. I feel like I'm making some progress on my ROOTs.

Wow, it's been a while since I read a ROOT.


The Sharper The Knife, The Less You Cry by Kathleen Flinn. Flinn was living in London, working for a software company when she was suddenly terminated from the job she didn't like but hadn't worked up the courage to quit. Her initial thought was to return to Seattle but instead it became her chance to do what she'd always wanted, attend Le Cordon Bleu in Paris. With just her savings and a year of college French, Flinn enrolls and pursues a diploma, re-creating classic French dishes that are all about stuffing meat with other meats, making friends and rivals at school, getting engaged and planning a wedding from another country, and having an almost constant flow of houseguests. She discusses the difficulties of getting a dish right for the chefs who taste each, and the personalities of the chefs themselves. Each chapter ends with a recipe.

I've had this one on the shelf for about 3 years.

>77 mstrust:
That sounds really interesting. I generally like these sorts of stories. Did you enjoy it?

I did enjoy it and gave it four stars. I think it was a good look at the difficulties of going through the school and figuring out a life in Paris. I'd recommend it for anyone interested in either cooking or the city.

AA Gill is Away. A collection of travel articles by critic Gill that ran in The Sunday Times of London between 1998-2001. Gill was something of a misanthrope, but one with empathy. His articles describe traveling to Hiroshima and ending up in an argument with a Japanese activist about who was to blame for the bombing, or a drive up the California coast sneering at the wealth, only to turn his cynicism on himself. He attends the Royal Agricultural Show, Fashion Week in Milan, goes to highly dangerous locations such as the war-torn Sudan and Uganda, and puts a lot of effort into reaching what the Guinness Book of Records named "The Biggest Ecological Disaster in the World", the city of Nukus in Uzbekistan.
Traveling with Gill isn't to everyone's taste. He's got a razor sharp tongue, but he's so funny and often surprising.

This has been on my shelf for five years!

28. The Wounded and the Slain by David Goodis.
James and Cora Bevan's nine year marriage is spiraling round the drain. In what they both know is a parting gesture, James takes a month off work and they fly to a resort in Kingston, Jamaica. While James gets embarrassingly drunk every day, he ruminates on why his marriage fell apart, the drinking, and his affair with his prostitute girlfriend that Cora finally caught onto. Cora thinks about her frigidness that drove her husband away and she finds a fellow guest who falls for her.
James' drinking leads him to the bad part of town where he is the intended victim of a mugging, and it throws him into a web of problems with the city's criminals.
I liked the story as it focused on the crumbling marriage and James' reliance on huge, huge amounts of alcohol, as it was almost noir. But the focus shifts midway into the Blevans being blackmailed too easily over a crime James didn't commit. Gritty but not overly realistic.

I believe this has been on my shelves for about two years, but maybe a little more.

Hi Jennifer, just popping in to say Hi and see what you have been reading.

Hi Connie! I'm juggling too many books at the moment, while doing other things like researching our upcoming vacation. I've made it past 800 pages in The Stand!

>83 mstrust: Researching for a vacation sounds good.

29. Lemmy: The Definitive Biography by Mick Wall. Wall, a rock journalist who knew him for decades, published this soon after Lemmy's death. Part researcher and critic, but much of the material here comes from years of one on one interviews with Lemmy, bass player, singer and main songwriter of Motorhead. Wall has been around long enough that he often has the two or three sides to infamous events, such as the departures of band members or management changes. He does something which few biographers or interviewers do, which is to write about Lemmy as a real person with real character flaws, who could be arrogant and even a bit tyrannical when he believed his position was threatened. Wall and Lemmy spoke of money, drugs, and declining record sales, things that most would shy from. It's warts and all, and the best bio on the man, and the band, that I've read so far.

I've had this on the shelf since January.

66. Junky by William S. Burroughs. The autobiographical story of Lee, (the author's original pen name), a young man who begins shooting junk mainly out of boredom. The time is right around WWII. As a university graduate and with a monthly allowance from his family, Lee chose to hang out in dives and make the acquaintance of people who had access to a variety of hard drugs. Lee takes part in muggings and other ways to get money for heroin, morphine or whatever can be had. It's a bleak yet compelling story by an author who describes an awful existence of crimes, highs, withdrawals and constant running from police, and it's obvious that it's more non-fiction than fiction.

This is a ROOT, on my shelf for two and a half years.

>86 mstrust: It's been a long while since I read any William Burroughs. I've always loved those dark roller coaster rides he writes, though.

He's a really good writer, isn't he? In the hands of a less skilled writer, it would be easy to chuck such a grim story, but he made it fascinating.

>88 mstrust: Agreed! By the way, the David Cronenberg movie version of Naked Lunch is a hoot, as well. Knowing he could never make a decent movie of the narrative of the book, Cronenberg instead made a hallucinatory movie about the writing of the book.

I haven't seen that one. I've steered away from Cronenberg's work after seeing Videodrome, but I'd try Naked Lunch. I recall Burroughs being a character in Kill Your Darlings starring Daniel Radcliffe.

A Stab in the Dark by Lawrence Block. Matt Scudder is a former NY cop whose life has fallen apart. After quitting the force, separating from his wife and moving into a hotel, he spends his days in bars "maintenance drinking". That's where his detective buddy sends a man named London to find Scudder. London's daughter was murdered by The Icepick Slasher nine years before, but the recent arrest of the slasher, and his admission to all the murders except London's daughter, sends the father to Scudder, a drunk who isn't in any business now, but whose tenacity and financial need makes him take the offer.
I've yet to be disappointed by Block. This is a good hardboiled, with murder, dames and lots of drinking.

This has been on my shelf exactly six months.

Johnny Cash at Folsom Prison: The Making of a Masterpiece by Michael Streissguth. In 1968 it had been ten years since Cash had such huge success with "Ring of Fire" and "I Walk the Line". He was now a performer with a drug habit and the reputation for often no-showing at appearances, or playing when he was too high to remember the lyrics. His band had become his babysitters.
His appearance for two shows at Folsom was a big deal for the prison and inmates, but not much for Cash's label, Columbia Records. They barely participated, never thinking they'd end up with anything marketable, especially with an audience of inmates who might misbehave. Cash and his band, which included June Carter and guitarist Carl Perkins, did two shows on January 13, 1968. Included in their set was a song written by a Folsom inmate, and when the album became so big and was a career changer for Cash, it also changed the inmates life, securing him an early release from prison and a job with Cash's company, though the man ultimately couldn't adapt.
The author takes the reader in unexpected directions. You probably wouldn't expect a book about the recording of a famous album, even one recorded in a prison, to spend time explaining how prison prostitution works, or how race gangs pick their victims, but that information is here. There's a discussion of the record company's lack of interest in the recording until it became a hit, and of Cash's admiration and friendship with Bob Dylan, which may have played a part in the record's success. There are plenty of photos of the day and performance included.

This has been on my shelf for 6 months.

Contagious: Why Things Catch On by Jonah Berger. Using examples such as successful candy bar ad, viral videos and college health campaigns, the author explains the many reasons, including something called "social currency", why certain things catch on with millions of people. He looks at what made a science article about the human cough be shared thousands of times, while a commercial for pain relievers geared towards new moms received such a negative response, and why something such as a teenager's awful song about the weekend could be viewed millions of times. This book is listed as Business and Economics, but it should also be listed under Sociology because it's about why people will value one thing over another.

I've had this on the shelf for seven months.

>93 mstrust: That sounds interesting!

It was! The author does a very good job at coming up with relatable examples.

You've read some interesting books, Jennifer.

Thanks, Connie. I've abandoned a couple over the year, but for the most part I've had a year of high ratings.

Fear Street Nights: Midnight Games by R.L. Stine.
It's her senior year of high school and Dana Fear has no choice but to move in with her aunt, uncle and cousin Jamie. The girls are the same age but Dana is dreading the year, remembering Jamie's demeaning treatment when they were kids because Dana's family was poor. Surprisingly, Jamie is welcoming now and brings Dana into her circle of friends. Nate's attention to Dana makes his girlfriend furious, but Dana can't help her flirting, even when weird things start happening, like Jamie's friend dying from an ice skate to the forehead.
I've had this for almost a year.

The Valancourt Book of Horror Stories: Volume Two. A volume of short stories that includes Thomas De Quincey's "The Dice" and Nevil Shute's "Tudor Windows". Many of the stories have never been reprinted since their first publication. The creepiest of the lot is definitely "Halley's Passing" by Michael McDowell, about a highly organized serial killer. I also liked "Samhain" by Bernard Taylor, a story about an unhappy suburban wife and her upcoming Satanic soiree, R. Chetwynd Hayes's "The Elemental" is about an snobby commuter who picks up a curse in the tube and employs a down-market professional to rid him of it, and Isabel Colegate's "The Nice Boys" has such a sense of foreboding that really delivers an unforgettable ending. About the only story that disappointed me was "Herself" by M.E. Braddon, as it showed it's age, going into such melodrama and fizzled to an ending.
I've had this for two or three years, as it came in the Nocturnal Reader's Box.

The Stand by Stephen King.
A superflu, nicknamed Captain Trips, wipes out what seems to be almost the entire population of the U.S., maybe the world. In just a matter of weeks the cities have just a handful of survivors, the roads are blocked with cars and the electricity if off. While trying to figure out where to go, the survivors begin having dreams that are impossibly similar, of an elderly woman calling them to her, while an evil man torments them in the nightmares they have just as often.
We travel a post-Apocalyptic America with Stu, and unemployed Texan; Larry, who had a big hit song just before the flu began; Fran, who had just discovered she was pregnant; Harold, the arrogant little brother of Fran's best friend; insane Trash Can Man: Nick, a deaf-mute transient, and Nadine, who is too mysterious to get close to anyone but the angry little boy she found.
Truly epic. Over 1439 pages the reader witnesses the germ warfare that destroys nearly everything. King introduces characters that last just a single paragraph or 1000 pages. My favorite character was Larry, my least favorite was Fran with her crying and wails of "Stu!" But even then, there wasn't a boring page in the whole thing.

I read this for 10 months, dipping in for a chapter or two inbetween other books.

>100 mstrust: WOW, that's a real big book and it sounds very interesting. I've a lot of digital books (paper-books too) by King so maybe it's there somewhere.

I hope you have it! I hate to gush, but it's such an engrossing story.

Yes, I did find it. Now I need to find time to read it.

:-D Yes, finding time for such a behemoth is the hard part!

Poe-land by J.W. OcKER. Ocker researched and organized Poe's life state by state, visiting homes and more often, the sites of former homes, along with the graves of Poe and those close to him, libraries with Poe collections and the former hospital where Poe died. He also interviews librarians, curators and more than a few Poe impersonators and actors. It's a thick, heavy book full of Poe's travels as he moved all over New England, giving the picture of a man who was always chasing work, always having to find cheaper lodging. And as Ocker spent over a year gathering interviews and visiting sights, there's a lot of more obscure information than you'd normally find, even in a book about someone as well-known as Poe. For instance, Ocker visits a street corner in Baltimore where Poe got into a fight with a newspaper editor who had cheated him out of a cash prize in a poetry contest.
In Rhode Island, Ocker is present for the unveiling of a library bust of H.P. Lovecraft, who himself was such a Poe fan that he undertook his own Poe tour in the 30's. Ocker is able to see Poe artifacts held in various library rare collections, including a lock of Poe's hair, and travel to Great Britain, where Poe spent five years of his childhood.

I can't find the date I bought this, but I'm almost positive I bought it in Dec. 18- Jan. 2019. with a Christmas gift card.

The Squared Circle: Life, Death, and Professional Wrestling by David Shoemaker. With the beginnings of what would be modern professional wrestling, as apposed to Greco-Roman Olympic-style, the author gives the history of sideshow wrestling and it's first headliners, then goes into the top acts, mostly from the 1940's to present day. But this isn't about wrestlers who were just famous, this is a book of dead wrestlers. The focus is on their lives and often too early deaths, often with a connection to their profession. Bruiser Brody was stabbed to death in the locker room, Owen Hart fell to his death while making an entrance to the ring, several wrestlers were found dead from a combination of painkillers and other drugs meant to mask the pain from years of ring work. The author also delves into the topics of misogyny and race in professional wrestling, and the constant fight between the various territories, which Vince McMahon pretty much wiped away.
Fond memories of the Wrestlemania era? You might like this, but it certainly delivers the surprising and often harsh reality of the business backstage.

I've had this on the shelf for 11 months.

ROOT 39. Emma by Jane Austen. Miss Emma Woodhouse has recently lost her best friend, her governess, to marriage, and so she turns her attention to a local poor girl named Harriet and determines to see this girl married and happy. Her first step is to talk the girl into breaking up with the young man she had an attachment to, as Emma says he isn't good enough for Harriet now. Emma proceeds to attempt various manipulations of her social circle in order to selflessly help her poor friend, but she has overestimated her ability to read people.
A humorous story of heartbreak. The funniest parts, to me, were watching Emma silently boil over the even-pushier-than-her Mrs. Elton.

I've had this on my Fire since January, and the physical book sat on my shelf for a few years before that, so it's a ROOT.

Three Bedrooms in Manhattan by Georges Simenon. Francois Combe flees his cheap apartment to get away from his neighbors' noise and ends up at a diner. He sits down at the counter and is immediately in conversation with Kay, who is also French. Conversation through their meal leads to a walk around the city and visits to many of the dive bars. Kay knows them all. The next few days see the two behave in ways that usually take months to reveal, but Kay is an incessant talker, and Francois demands to know everything. They stay the first few nights at a hourly hotel and spend hours walking the city and drinking. Francois quickly becomes insanely jealous, then abusive, even while noting that he doesn't find Kay attractive. It's clear that both have lived much better lives before they met and that the biggest reason they are clinging so tightly together is from fear. The reader has no idea where the story is going because the characters don't know where they stand themselves.
I bought this nine years ago, so a ROOT, and probably my oldest ROOT this year.

>108 mstrust: That would be a puzzling book for me with the story going nowhere, Jennifer.

It's a strange little book, with the slim bit of plot being Francois' jealousy over this woman he just met, which borders on madness. It's an interesting read, I suppose because the reader can't even guess what Francois and Kay will do next, other than drink. Supposedly this is the semi-autobiographical account of Simenon's meeting with his second wife. God help her.

ROOT 41. Mr. Mercedes by Stephen King. Former detective Bill Hodges has been retired from the police for six months and has sunk into a deep depression of afternoon tv and holding his .38. Then he receives a letter from "Mr. Mercedes", the perpetrator in an unsolved case from the previous year in which someone stole a Mercedes and drove it into a crowd of people waiting in the cold parking lot for a job fair to open. The taunting letter is intended to make Hodges feel guilty for not catching the killer but instead it gets Hodges out of his funk and back to detecting. With the help of a teen who's good with computers and a victim's fearless sister and cousin, Hodges tries to catch Mr. Mercedes before his next massacre.

This has been on my shelf for over a year.

107> It's been a long time since I read Emma, and I'm more than a little embarrassed to say that it's the only Austen novel I've read, but I clearly remember how much I enjoyed Emma and how funny I thought it was.

Emma was the only Austen I hadn't read yet. I started with Northanger Abbey, and that's a funny story too. So now I've read them all and will have to be satisfied with re-reads.

The Nimrod Flipout by Etgar Keret. A collection of short stories, many with the thinnest of set-ups and most involving some kind of magical realism. The title story is about a group of four friends, one of whom kills himself at the age of eighteen. Over the years, the remaining three take turns, like on a rota, losing their minds, then recovering in time for the next guy to lose it. Some of the stories are just a page or two, but my favorite was a longer one, "For Only 9.99 (Inc. Tax and Postage)" about a young man who's father is enraged to find that his son is dumb enough to send off for a booklet from an ad in the back of the paper that promises to reveal the meaning of life.
Keret's style is unique, taking mundane characters into surrealism, often using raunchy language, and endings that leave the reader with no resolution. The stories here were translated from the Hebrew by two different translators.

I've had this on the shelf for 5 years.

ROOT #43
The Best of Mrs Beeton's Cakes & Baking
A reprint by Marks & Spencer of Mrs Beeton's most popular recipes. This is a really pretty book with thick pages and glossy gold on the cover.
The recipes have been re-worked for the modern baker and include a few that Mrs Beeton likely didn't create at all, such as "Southern Pecan Pie" and "Texas Cornbread", but this book is full of traditional English and French desserts, biscuits and breads. There were many I'd never heard of, such as "Moggy" and "Anzacs", but the majority sound pretty great. And my first tryout is "Wine Biscuits", made with cloves, cinnamon, nuts, and a little white wine.
Mrs. Beeton was a 19th Century English journalist and cook who became famous with her 1861 book, Mrs. Beeton's Book of Household Management. This book would have benefited from a brief bio, but as it was meant for the British market, I suppose the publishers expected the reader to be familiar with Mrs Beeton in the way an American reader would know the names Fannie Farmer of Julia Child.

ROOT #44
Rogue Male by Geoffrey Household.
The story begins with our unnamed narrator seemingly ready to assassinate the leader of an unnamed European country, but he's discovered, beaten and expected to die. He doesn't. Severely injured, he manages to escape the country even with every government agent on his tail. Once back in England, he's suspicious that he's still a wanted man, which proves to be true.
Action-packed and suspenseful, and even though it was published in 1939 it retains a modern, and at times, frantic pace.
This has been on my shelf for 18 months.

ROOT #44

Rogue Male by Geoffrey Household.
The story begins with our unnamed narrator seemingly ready to assassinate the leader of an unnamed European country, but he's discovered, beaten and expected to die. He doesn't. Severely injured, he manages to escape the country even with every government agent on his tail. Once back in England, he's suspicious that he's still a wanted man, which proves to be true.
Action-packed and suspenseful, and even though it was published in 1939 it retains a modern, and at times, frantic pace.
This has been on the shelf 18 months.

You Better Not Cry by Augusten Burroughs. A collection of personal essays about memorable Christmases. Some are humorous, such as when a very young Burroughs was gifted a life-sized Santa doll that had a wax face, which he chewed off. Other essays are bleak, featuring disease, death and betrayal. I don't know how much of these stories are true and how much is fiction, as "Why Do You Reward Me Thus?" reads like a made for tv movie, with the author getting blackout drunk for two days, then waking up on Christmas day to find himself among lucid, caring people who happen to be the group of homeless people who camp on the street near his NYC apartment. That one of these people studied opera and sings an aria to him while doling out profound advice about life made me roll my eyes. Still, an interesting holiday-themed collection.
I've had this on the shelf for seven months. It's my 45th ROOT.

>114 mstrust: I love reading Etgar Keret! I've wanted to read Nimrod next -- you had it on your shelves for 5 years and it's been in my wishlist about as long :)

His style is quite unique, often weird, and you can't tell where he's going because he'll do something really unexpected. The only other book I've read from him is The Girl on the Fridge.

The Life and Opinions of Maf the Dog, and of His Friend Marilyn Monroe by Andrew O' Hagan.Narrated by Mafia Honey, the white Maltese owned by Monroe in the last years of her life. The dog explains his own grand lineage, and the various owners whose homes he shared, including Natalie Wood's mother and Frank Sinatra. He explains that dog's can not only read human emotions, but they also have a sort of psychic ability to know what a human is thinking. Dogs can read, which allows Maf to explain philosophy, art, history and psychiatry, while proving himself more self-aware than the majority of humans he lives with.
A reader might expect this to be a quick, rather cute read, but I found it somewhat annoying, as the point of the story seems to be more about the author showing off his knowledge of Maf's interests, such as philosophy, which makes the little dog into something of a know-it-all, and throwing in every famous person of 1960. Maf encounters Sammy Davis Jr, Lee Strasberg, Carson McCullers, Peter Lawford and Lillian Hellman. It's a Who's Who of the era that comes off as too long and the human characters are all surface.
This has been on my shelf for five years and is my 46th ROOT of 2019. And my last of the year.

>121 mstrust: Good ROOTing. Will you be back ROOTing next year?

Absolutely! This group has been so great for getting me to read books that had sort of become invisible on my shelves. I'm really happy with reading 46 ROOTs this year, as my overall total for 2019 is 100, so nearly half my books.
Do we know when the 2020 group will start?

>123 mstrust: I think the last couple of years it's been after Christmas, or just before new year.

Ok, thanks! The 75 group waits until then too, so I'll be hurrying to get it done when I get back from Christmas.

Cyderry has announced in the December thread she will set up the 2020 thread after Christmas.

Thanks, Connie, I'm looking forward to ROOTing in 2020!

So that's it for my 2019 reads. I made it to 100 books for the year, 46 of them ROOTs.



Merry Christmas, ROOTers!

Happy holidays, Jennifer

Thank you, Connie, and a happy one to you too!