detailmuse’s ROOTings

Welcome! My ROOT goal is to read 30 TBRs that I acquired prior to 2014 ... and my final tally is: 34!

Join me over here for 2015 ROOTing!

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Accompanying goals are to get to some older books and those I've had the longest, and to decrease my total number of TBRs whether by reading or (gasp!) culling.

I’ll maintain a list of books finished in this post and add a sentence or two about each in posts below. To see longer reviews (and all of my 2014 reading), visit my Club Read thread.

Fiction
34. The Sweetness at the Bottom of the Pie by Alan Bradley (3.5)
33. Regeneration by Pat Barker (3.5)
26. Brokeback Mountain: Story to Screenplay by Annie Proulx, Larry McMurtry and Diana Ossana (5)
25. The Hours by Michael Cunningham (4.5)
24. Mrs. Dalloway by Virginia Woolf (4)
22. Dream When You're Feeling Blue by Elizabeth Berg (3)
21. The Patron Saint of Liars by Ann Patchett (4) (See review)
20. The Postmistress by Sarah Blake (2.5)
14. The Street of Crocodiles by Bruno Schulz (4)
13. Where’d You Go, Bernadette by Maria Semple (2)
12. Wake by Anna Hope (3.5) (See review)
11. Machine of Death: A Collection of Stories About People Who Know How They Will Die (3.5)
8. All Quiet on the Western Front by Erich Maria Remarque (4.5) (See review)
2. Survival Skills: Stories by Jean Ryan (4) (See review)

Nonfiction
32. Columbine by Dave Cullen (5)
29. Daring Greatly by Brene Brown (4)
23. Born on a Blue Day by Daniel Tammet (3.5)
19. Life by Keith Richards (4)
18. The Girls Who Went Away by Ann Fessler (5) (See review)
16. The White Album by Joan Didion (3.5)
15. You Were Never in Chicago by Neil Steinberg (4)
9. Still Foolin' 'Em by Billy Crystal (Audio) (3.5)
7. The Last of the Doughboys: The Forgotten Generation and Their Forgotten World War by Richard Rubin (Audio) (4.5) (See review)
6. The Great Influenza by John M. Barry (5)
4. My Age of Anxiety by Scott Stossel (4) (See review)
3. The Reason I Jump: The Inner Voice of a Thirteen-Year-Old Boy with Autism by Naoki Higashida (3.5) (See review)

Other
31. 50 Success Classics by Tom Butler-Bowdon (3.5)
30. Bellevue Literary Review (Vol 13 No 1; Spring 2013) (3)
28. 50 Self-help Classics by Tom Butler-Bowdon (4)
27. xkcd: volume 0 by Randall Munroe (4)
17. Granta 108: Chicago (3.5)
10. The Science of Good Cooking by America’s Test Kitchen (5) (See review)
5. Great Estimations by Bruce Goldstone (4) (See review)
1. Bellevue Literary Review (Vol 12 No 1; Spring 2012) (3)

Welcome back and good luck! :)

Glad to see you back. Good luck with your challenge.

Hi muse. I am here to wish you luck with your challenge.
later,

w00t and thanks to the great starting-line cheer squad! Happy reading everyone!

1. Bellevue Literary Review (Vol 12 No 1; Spring 2012), ©2012, acquired 2012

My favorite literary journal -- short stories, essays and poems about illness or coping in some way, often very peripherally -- though not my favorite issue of it. That said, I have several more issues in my ROOTS and am looking forward to them.

2. Survival Skills: Stories by Jean Ryan, ©2013, acquired 2013

A collection of 13 short stories (their titles comprise the cover’s design) about characters trying to meet their own and others' needs in poignant interactions and failed relationships, mostly lesbian. I'll look for more by Ryan.

Great start, DM!!

>Thanks connie! Rollin' rollin' rollin'...



3. The Reason I Jump: The Inner Voice of a Thirteen-Year-Old Boy with Autism by Naoki Higashida, translated from the Japanese by David Mitchell and KA Yoshida, orig ©2007, acquired 2013

A series of questions posed to a nonverbal Japanese boy and the answers he gave by typing into a sort of keyboard, those answers then transcribed by his mother and now, six years later, translated to English by novelist David Mitchell and his wife KA Yoshida (themselves parents of an autistic 3-year-old).

It’s enlightening and surely comforting to parents of autistic children, but I felt conflicted -- I had some doubts about the objectivity of the mother’s transcription and/or Mitchell/Yoshida’s translation.

4. My Age of Anxiety by Scott Stossel, ©2014, arc acquired 2013

This book had been catching my eye but I had been looking away, thinking (per the title) it was a memoir of one guy’s experience with anxiety. But when I discovered that the “guy” is editor of The Atlantic magazine, I figured it might be a substantive memoir. And, not too far into it, I realized not only is it substantive but it’s broader than a memoir -- it’s a biography of anxiety. Interesting and accessible to the general reader.

The Age of Anxiety does indeed sound interesting! Adding to the TBR.

My Age of Anxiety sounds like it might be interesting, as someone who sometimes suffers from annoying levels of anxiety, myself.

I've been wondering about The Reason I Jump, about which I have heard a lot of good things. Did the kid actually write it by typing on the keyboard device himself, or is this one of those "facilitated communication" things, where someone "guides" the child's hand? Because if the former, I'm really interested to hear what he has to say. If the latter... Well, it's been pretty conclusively proved that that method of communication tells you more about what the person "helping" thinks the kid wants to say...

>rabbitprincess Adding to the TBR
oops that's not supposed to happen... :) Hope you enjoy!

>bragan, I posted a longer review of the book on the book page, but bottom line is I’m conflicted -- it’s excellent material but I’m just not sure about the typing, assisted vs. non-assisted, and especially the translation.

If you do a “Look Inside” on the book’s page on Amazon and page forward to the first question, “How are you writing these sentences?” it sounds like he’s non-assisted. But either way, if he can do it why isn’t more of his writing published and/or all over the Internet? (It's been seven years since he wrote this.) Also, his eloquence is remarkable; I don’t think he’s (high-functioning) Asperger’s, yet his communication far exceeds Temple Grandin’s and others’...

5. Great Estimations by Bruce Goldstone, ©2006, acquired 2013

A children’s picture book offering three methods (and lots of examples) to estimate large quantities of items. Fun and helpful.

I went over to Amazon and looked Great Estimations up. I agree; it does look like a fun book! I was tickled to see that there's a sequel...did not expect that, but it looks pretty good also.

Hi Merryann, I might look up the sequel!

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January
Beginning total TBRs: 306
TBRs* read: 5
Other books read: 0
Books acquired: 5
Ending total TBRs: 306
YTD TBRs* read: 5 (year-end goal: 30)

*acquired before 2014

6. The Great Influenza by John M. Barry, ©2004, acquired 2010

A 360-degree look at the emergence, spread, and consequences of the 1918 influenza pandemic and its aftermath, including lessons for today. It’s hugely informative and interesting -- just plain excellent.

7. The Last of the Doughboys: The Forgotten Generation and Their Forgotten World War by Richard Rubin, audio read by Grover Gardner, ©2013, acquired 2013

Short biographies (oral histories) of the last living (now all deceased) American veterans of WWI, aged 101 to 113. The bios are interspersed with some light history of the war, which does give context; but it's very light history that distracts from the biographies and makes the book overly long.

8. All Quiet on the Western Front by Erich Maria Remarque, translated from the German by A.W. Wheen, ©1928, acquired 2013

Outstanding classic (anti-)war novel of 19-year-old Paul Baumer, a German soldier serving near the front during WWI. It reminded me in parts of WWII’s Catch-22 and Vietnam’s The Things They Carried and should be required reading.

9. Still Foolin' 'Em by Billy Crystal, audio read by Billy Crystal, ©2013, acquired 2013

Interesting-enough, entertaining-ish memoir of Crystal’s work and his aging. I listened on audio, which he reads well; he even performs some sections, stand-up style in front of an audience, which oddly worked less well for me.

10. The Science of Good Cooking by America’s Test Kitchen, ©2012, acquired 2012

Another outstanding book! I used to read “Cook’s Illustrated” magazine cover to cover, enjoying every bit of deconstructing a recipe or technique and evaluating commercial foods and cookery tools. And I read every word of this big volume on the science behind 50 of the basic concepts essential to good cooking/baking.

11. Machine of Death: A Collection of Stories About People Who Know How They Will Die, ©2010, acquired 2011

An anthology of short stories that share the central premise of a machine that tests one’s blood and predicts the person’s eventual manner of death -- with complete accuracy, albeit often with a twist, usually ironic. You can listen here to the stories, or listen via iTunes podcasts.

12. Wake by Anna Hope, ©2014, Early Reviewers arc acquired 2013

The stories of three grief-stricken London women making their way in the post-traumatic aftermath of WWI, told in alternating narratives over the four days leading up to the second anniversary of the Armistice.

Ooh - Machine of Death sounds very creepy, but like something I would pick up (I like ironic twists on "prophecies"). Did you like it?

Hi Caramellunacy, I did like it, especially the first half or so. Sci-fi premise and surprisingly sociological/philosophical. I first sampled a few on audio and liked them so well I bought the book but didn't get to it till a couple years later. By the end they grew a little tiresome and I listened to the final 6 or 8 on audio. Listen to some in that link in msg#22 -- I thought "Flaming Marshmallow" (#13) was a good one to start with.

Wow, you are almost halfway with your challenge! I'm impressed.

(whispers to connie so “fate” won’t hear: at the beginning of the year it’s hard to not read books already in my TBRs ... six weeks in now, the new acquisitions are already starting to get pushy :) I’ve come short of my goal the past few years and I'd love to meet/exceed it this year!)

**whispers back**, I know. I have the same experience with the New and Shiny Ones!

The Last of the Doughboys looks good to me. I'd probably need the light history for context. :)

>lol Merryann, I needed it too and it did help, the general WWI knowledge. But that was hard to keep in mind when it meant diverting from the men's bios ... and loading 17 CDs onto my player...

February
Beginning total TBRs: 306
TBRs* read: 7
Other books read: 4
Other: 1 (returned to library unread, deleted from LT/TBRs)
Books acquired: 6
Ending total TBRs: 299 (I know the math says it should be 300 but I can’t find my error and my TBR collection and tags both say 299, so be it)
YTD TBRs* read: 12 (year-end goal: 30)

*acquired before 2014

Almost halfway to your goal already! Congratulations!

>32 Merryann: recently I'm thinking: Whew for having built up a cushion!!



13. Where’d You Go, Bernadette by Maria Semple, ©2012, acquired 2013

Premise: a wife/mom disappears and her teen daughter searches for her. Narrative format: emails, journal entries, documents. My reaction: I enjoyed the first third or so -- funny, sharp satire about Seattle, the tech industry, private schools. In the rest, I was bored and/or surprised by how young-YA it seemed.

14. The Street of Crocodiles by Bruno Schulz, translated from the Polish by Celina Wieniewska, ©1934, acquired 2013

A collection of (autobiographical?) short stories, mostly about the mental decline of the narrator’s father. They’re dreamy, imaginative, labyrinthine ... I kept imagining them as literary versions of some of the music and animation of Walt Disney’s Fantasia. Wonderful; need to be unpacked over muuullltiple re-readings.

March/April
Beginning total TBRs: 299
TBRs* read: 2
Other books read: 3
Books acquired: 8
Ending total TBRs: 302
YTD TBRs* read: 14 (year-end goal: 30)

*acquired before 2014

Ooh, almost halfway! Nice! :)

>36 rabbitprincess: your cheers help! I'm close to finishing three roots at the same time but alas I guess not until June...

May
Beginning total TBRs: 302
TBRs* read: 0
Other books read: 4
Books acquired: 6
Ending total TBRs: 304
YTD TBRs* read: 14 (year-end goal: 30)

*acquired before 2014

>37 detailmuse: Excellent job!!

>38 connie53: Thanks connie!



15. You Were Never in Chicago by Neil Steinberg, ©2012, acquired 2013

I discovered this book through kidzdoc’s link to the University of Chicago Press’s monthly free ebook (see the current offering here). It’s a half-memoir, half-historical homage to Chicago written by a Sun-Times newspaper journalist. Though I didn’t encounter much new in terms of personal or civic history, it was a very comforting read.

16. The White Album by Joan Didion, ©1979, acquired 2013

This is another collection of Didion’s previously published articles/essays, here situated in the late-1960s/early-‘70s, largely in California, and populated by people pretending reality was different from reality. Other than the excellent title essay, the collection was, for me, a less-engaging follow-up to Slouching Towards Bethlehem.

Whew! Keeping just barely on track:

June
Beginning total TBRs: 304
TBRs* read: 2
Other books read: 4
Books acquired: 7
Ending total TBRs: 305
YTD TBRs* read: 16 (year-end goal: 30)

*acquired before 2014

17. Granta 108: Chicago, ©2009, acquired 2012

A 2009 issue of the UK literary journal, this one themed on Chicago. There are many good pieces and half a dozen I thought were excellent ... but they’re all on the cliches and downsides of Chicago, never optimism or success.

18. The Girls Who Went Away by Ann Fessler, ©2006, acquired 2012

Subtitled, The Hidden History of Women Who Surrendered Children for Adoption in the Decades Before Roe v. Wade, this is an excellent exploration of the social (and legal) intolerance of teenage unwed pregnancy in 1950s-‘60s USA, and a compelling collection of oral histories of those birth mothers.

19. Life by Keith Richards with James Fox, ©2010, acquired in print 2010; audio version read by Keith Richards, Johnny Depp and Joe Hurley, downloaded from library 2014

Keith Richards’ autobiography is wiser, deeper and more mellow than you could imagine.

>44 detailmuse:, I recently bought this. It's good to hear you found it worthwhile.

Hi Merryann. Not sure when I'll stop being surprised that wild rebels have tender underbellies :)

20. The Postmistress by Sarah Blake, ©2010, acquired 2009

As I’ve done a few times with languishing books, I finished this one by starting over and listening to it on audio. It’s historical fiction set early in WWII (a young wife and a female postmaster in a small Massachusetts town; a female war correspondent based in England) but I never became interested. I would never have finished it, but for the “carrot” of it being a Root!

July
Beginning total TBRs: 305
TBRs* read: 4
Other books read: 0
Books acquired: 2
Ending total TBRs: 303
YTD TBRs* read: 20 (year-end goal: 30)

*acquired before 2014

21. The Patron Saint of Liars by Ann Patchett, ©1992, acquired 2000s

I’ve read almost all of Patchett’s fiction and nonfiction now, and I liked this, her debut novel, second only to her fabulous Bel Canto. The premise here is of a pregnant woman heading to a home for unwed mothers run by nuns, and I pulled it from the TBRs after having read the excellent nonfiction social history of that topic, The Girls Who Went Away (msg #43 above).

That sounds like a really great book! I think I will have to add that (#21) to my TBR pile!

>50 Tess_W: Hi Tess -- Patchett writes quiet stories but she writes so well, and I grow particularly sympathetic to her male characters. Hope you enjoy!

22. Dream When You're Feeling Blue by Elizabeth Berg, ©2007, acquired 2007

Berg writes carefully observed stories about women who gently shed the behaviors and roles expected of them. She used to be my go-to for comfort reading, then grew to feel like a too-soft mattress. I’d acquired this one to give to my mom, who would have been about the age of these young women on the home front in Chicago near the end of WWII. But though she still desired to read, she was beginning to have problems with attention and retention. So I finally now read it myself (actually, listened on audio from the library) and it was a little better than I’d anticipated.

Hi, just passing and waving!

>53 connie53: a very belated *wave* back!



23. Born on a Blue Day by Daniel Tammet, ©2006, acquired 2012

Memoir by a man with Asperger’s, savant syndrome and -- most interesting to me and least-written about in other books -- synesthesia.

24. Mrs. Dalloway by Virginia Woolf, ©1925, acquired 2002

An omniscient, stream-of-conscious narrative that blends and weaves the emotional struggles of several people on a beautiful June day in post-WWI London.

25. The Hours by Michael Cunningham, ©1998, acquired 2011

A riff on Mrs. Dalloway, where characters and events are shuffled and reimagined in storylines involving the participants to a novel: the author (1923 Virginia Woolf outside London); the main character (late-20th-century Clarissa in New York City); and the reader (a woman in 1949 Los Angeles). Especially meaningful after having read Mrs. Dalloway. I loved the film and now want to see it again.

26. Brokeback Mountain: Story to Screenplay by Annie Proulx, Larry McMurtry and Diana Ossana, ©2005, acquired 2012

Includes Proulx's 1997 short story, “Brokeback Mountain,” McMurtry/Ossana's 2005 adapted screenplay, plus essays about the writing/process from each of the three. I loved the exercise of comparing the story and screenplay and want to watch this film again too. Heartbreaking, though.

August/September
Beginning total TBRs: 303
TBRs* read: 6
Other books read: 3
Books acquired: 7
Ending total TBRs: 301
YTD TBRs* read: 26 (year-end goal: 30)

*acquired before 2014

27. xkcd: volume 0 by Randall Munroe, ©2009, acquired 2013

Collection of intelligent and amusing nerd comics on math, science and romance from Munroe’s xkcd webcomic.

28. 50 Self-help Classics by Tom Butler-Bowdon, ©2003, acquired 2006

Four- to six-page summaries of each of 50 seminal books and their authors (listed in the image, below). An appendix lists 50 more with one- or two-sentence summaries. I’ve been interested to read perhaps a third of them, and have Flow, Man's Search for Meaning and Learned Optimism in my “soon” TBRs.

synesthesia!!!

I had to google that one. I did not even know this existed!

>61 connie53: fascinating, yes? I'm looking forward to more on the science of it in another Root-to-come, The Man Who Tasted Shapes.

>62 detailmuse: wow that book sounds really interesting! I read Oliver Sacks' "The Man who Mistook his Wife for a Hat" this year and found it fascinating - there's something about neurological case studies that makes them a good read, I guess!

>63 Jackie_K: Hi Jackie, haha now that it's on my radar it's climbing over others toward the top of the TBRs.

29. Daring Greatly by Brene Brown, ©2012, acquired 2013

Along the lines of Kathryn Schulz's Being Wrong (that there’s incredible learning value in making mistakes), this discusses Brown's research into the emotional value of vulnerability.

On a totally unrelated note: my hardcover edition has that wonderful “book smell” that I’ve heard so many mention on LT but that I’d totally forgotten since grade school. Seriously wonderful!

30. Bellevue Literary Review (Vol 13 No 1; Spring 2013), ©2013, acquired 2013

A handful of terrific pieces among the dozens here, but this is not my favorite issue of what is my favorite literary journal. Interesting: the Spring issues always have the winners of the journal’s annual prizes in fiction, nonfiction and poetry ... and I always like them less than the Fall issues. (That’s good news because I have several Fall issues still in my TBRs.)

There are also some comments in this issue about staff experiences and the damage to Bellevue Hospital by Superstorm Sandy in November 2012. I’d just read about the devastation of Hurricane Katrina in Five Days at Memorial, so these comments seemed especially thin.

Gooooooooal!!!




First time for me, and I have 2+ months to move that dragonfly into bonus territory!

Congratulations!!

WoW! Well done!

>68 rabbitprincess: and >69 MissWatson: Thanks! Fourth time's the charm! I finished just short of goal for the past 3 years, but this group's influence must be building in me -- this year I'm reading waaay more from my TBRs.

Hooray! Well done! :)

Congrats!

>71 Jackie_K: and >72 Tess_W: thanks so much!



31. 50 Success Classics by Tom Butler-Bowdon, ©2004, acquired 2006

Four- to six-page summaries of each of 50 seminal success stories ranging from the 4th-century BCE to 2003 -- books that suggest how to succeed and/or biographies of people who did succeed greatly (see list in the image, below).

October
Beginning total TBRs: 301
TBRs* read: 5
Other books read: 3
Books acquired: 3
Ending total TBRs: 296
YTD TBRs* read: 31 (w00t! reached my year-end goal of 30!)

*acquired before 2014

Congratulations on reaching your goal!

>74 detailmuse: Yes, congratulations!

Way to go!

>75 rabbitprincess:, >76 ipsoivan:, >77 Tess_W: Thanks!! I'm hoping to keep extending that right-hand margin of my ticker!



32. Columbine by Dave Cullen, read by Don Leslie, ©2009, acquired 2011

Riveting (yet gentle) account of the 1999 Columbine school shooting -- the lead-up, the incident, the aftermath. I originally acquired the paperback and now downloaded the audio; I reached for one or the other in every spare moment I had!

Congrats!!

>79 connie53: woot! thanks Connie!



33. Regeneration by Pat Barker, ©1991, acquired 2013

This first of three novels in Barker’s WWI trilogy blends historical fact and fiction when a war hero’s anti-war manifesto brands him as mentally unsound and he’s sent to a psychiatric hospital in lieu of court-martial. Interesting exploration of various manifestations of “shell shock,” which became “battle fatigue” in WWII and is now PTSD.

>33 detailmuse: That's such a great book. I've been intending to reread it.

>81 ipsoivan: did you read the others in the series? I'm undecided...

November
Beginning total TBRs: 296
TBRs* read: 2
Other books read: 2
Books acquired: 3
Ending total TBRs: 295

YTD TBRs* read: 33 (year-end goal: 30)

>82 detailmuse: I read the second, but not the last, as I recall. I intend to read the whole group at some point--maybe soon.

It sounds as if you are not exactly enthusiastic.

>84 ipsoivan: enthusiastic for the first half then my engagement just dropped. I pushed to finish but should have just set it aside and come back ... which is probably what I'll do at some point, re-read the second half and then think about the trilogy.

>85 detailmuse: These days if my engagement drops, I usually put the book aside too--but permanently. Kudos for sticking it out. I hope it works better for me.

A Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year!

>87 connie53: to you, too! See you in Roots 2015?

34. The Sweetness at the Bottom of the Pie by Alan Bradley, ©2009, acquired 2009

Charming cozy murder mystery narrated by 11-year-old Flavia de Luce, an aspiring chemist, sleuth ... and youngest sister in a 1950s English mansion. I probably won’t read more in this children's series (Bradley says there’ll be ten), but this is one of my favorite child protagonists.

>90 connie53: Definitely! I will start my own thread soon(ish)

December
Beginning total TBRs: 295
TBRs* read: 1
Other books read: 5
Books acquired: 18 (!)
Ending total TBRs: 307
YTD TBRs* read: 34! (year-end goal: 30)

*acquired before 2014

Happy reading in the new year! Join me over here for 2015 ROOTing!