TBR@57 Robertgreaves's challenge for 2014/5 part 2

Part 1 was here.

I have 64 books on the physical TBR shelves and 41 books on the virtual TBR shelves.

I am currently reading:

Ghost on the Throne by James Romm
The Steampunk Megapack

My challenge is to read at least 60 ROOTs in 2015. Anything bought before 14 January 2015 counts. They can be ebooks or physical books and from any shelf, not just from the TBR shelves. Books count towards the target when I start them.

Good luck this year!

Good luck with Part 2!

Thank you avanders and rabbit.

And my first ROOT for 2014 is my No. 41, The Great Book of Amber by Roger Zelazny. This takes the TBR pile down to 63.

My review of Ghost on the Throne:

When Alexander the Great died in 323 BC, he left no obvious heir. This is the story of the multiple struggles for power in Macedon and Greece and across the Middle East from present day Turkey to Pakistan that followed.

Unlike most accounts, but like Mary Renault's fictional "Funeral Games", it at least gives me the illusion that I have some idea of what happened.

Hi Robert, found and starred you! Good luck on ROOTing!

Good to see you, Connie. I suspect this is going to be the year of BIG books, so I'm beginning to think even 60 ROOTs is ambitious.

I am interested in your Steampunk Megapack. I was reading several steampunk books for a while, but then I guess I ran out of titles. I like those books quite a bit. Best of luck with your challenge.

I'm enjoying the stories but it's leaving me more and more confused about what steampunk actually is.

>9 Robertgreaves: ha! I think that's a common problem ;)
I often think of this... (excuse the "french" ;))

>10 avanders: LOL, very funny!

That is pretty funny. I am not good at definitions myself. I just get titles from others and find that I generally like those books.

Welcome to 2015 rooting, Robert! I have heard a lot about steampunk lately. I even read a Stephen King book in 2014 where a group of them are part of the story. I'm confused about exactly who/what they are also!

My impression was that steampunk meant science fiction based on extrapolations of 19th century technology but most of the stories that I've read so far in this book seem to be mild horror.

Then that would be why King included it in his book. It was mild horror mixed with futuristic technology.

Starting my No. 42, Me Before You by Jojo Moyes. This is my second ROOT for 2015 and is an ebook and so does not affect the TBR pile. However, I have added one book to the TBR pile, T. Rex and the Crater of Doom by Walter Alvarez to read later, so it is back to 64.

Hi Robert, one down, one up! At least the TBR pile is not growing.

This is what comes from reading too many threads on LT. Quite a few people seem to be reading T. Rex, so I decided to give it a re-read. I think I read it about 10 years ago.

It are those book bullets that hit you hard sometimes. I know.

>11 connie53: and >12 billiejean: hee hee ;)

>14 Robertgreaves: weird that most of your steampunk experiences have been mild horror.... I think of steampunk as pretty much what you said. :)

So, this is going to be the year of the ticker:

I like the design - adventurous!

>21 Robertgreaves: hee hee, nice one :)

I really like the ticker, too. It is funny, but I was off LT so long, that I cannot remember how to do a ticker. I definitely want to figure out how to update the group ticker, so others won't have to add my books.

If you want to do your own, just click on his ticker and then select the "create your own" option and go from there :)
Updating the group ticker -- just click on the ticker, enter the password (ROOT), and add however many you need to add... i.e., if the count is at 268 and you read 2, you just enter 270 instead. Or you can click on the "+" button, but I think that's more trouble than it's worth :) Just make sure you do both tickers -- i.e., if you update the count ticker to 270, update the % ticker to 270 also (it's also just a number that you enter, it does the math for you ;))

Thanks, Avander.

Starting my No. 43, The Reach of Rome by Alberto Angela. This is my third ROOT for 2015. It's an ebook and so does not affect the TBR pile. However, I've added two books to re-read, Original Sin by P. D. James after some friends were discussing it on FB and I realised I didn't remember it enough to follow the discussion, and The First Man in Rome to commemorate Colleen McCullough's death last week. So that take the TBR pile to 66.

My review of Me Before You:

After the cafe where she's working closes, Louisa Clarke is looking for a job and takes one as companion to a quadriplegic.

Although it's packaged as a chicklit romance, it's actually quite a profound consideration of questions of how much control we have over our lives, whether the control comes from our relationships with members of our families or from economic and physical circumstances. I will be adding other books by this author to my wish list.

My review of The Great Book of Amber:

A man wakes up in a private asylum in New York state with no memory of who he is. Tracing his sister from the hospital records he learns that he is Corwin, a prince of Amber, the one true world of which all others are shadows.

Although this is an omnibus of 10 novels, it actually falls into two parts, novels 1-5 telling the story of Corwin's struggle for survival in the politics of his very dysfunctional family, and novels 6-10, which take the story into the next generation with Corwin's son, Merlin, who has to cope with a dual heritage from Amber and the Courts of Chaos.

Each of the first four novels in the two parts ends with a cliffhanger, despite which if I hadn't had them in an omnibus volume and been determined to finish, I doubt I'd have made it much past the first two novels. I simply got irritated by the way earlier events in Corwin's adventures got interpreted and re-interpreted as yet another character popped up and basically said, "Ah, but what was really going on was this malevolent plot by X, Y, or Z."

I've added The First Man in Rome to my "request from the library" list for the same reason. The series sounds interesting.

It is a great series. I've read the earlier books two or three times.

Thanks for the review of Me Before You. I added it to my WL.

And thanks, Avanders, for the ticker help. It is embarrassing to forget something so simple. :)

>30 billiejean: no worries at all! I refused to even try for my first year ;)
>27 Robertgreaves: Hmm the Amber book sounds really interesting... until you got to that part where the new characters keep reinterpreting history.... :P

Starting my No. 44, I Am John I Am Paul: A Story of Two Soldiers in Ancient Rome by Mark Tedesco. This is my fourth ROOT for 2015 and brings the TBR pile down to 65.

My review of The Reach of Rome:

The author uses the imaginary travels of a single coin around the Roman Empire and beyond in the last years of Trajan to show the social diversity in the Empire from slaves to the Emperor himself from Southern Scotland to Mesopotamia (briefly part of the Empire) and Southern India, one of the Empire's trading partners.

In the very short first few chapters I found the premise itself and the author's 'you are there' style rather annoying despite the occasional nuggets of interesting information, but once he got into his stride in the chapter where the army launches a punitive raid across the Rhine, it became less frenetic and more enjoyable. The description of a chariot race in the Circus Maximus was very exciting.

Well, that was a disappointment, 40 pages are missing. Amazon UK have promised to send me a replacement copy to Jakarta so it's just on hold. In the meantime, starting my No. 45, The Bhagavad Gita. This is my fifth ROOT for 2015 and brings the TBR pile down to 64.

>33 Robertgreaves: That's terrible! At least you'll get a replacement....

40 pages is a lot to be missing. I bought a used copy of Schindler's Ark and it was missing about 8 pages, but I was able to check it out of the library and read the missing pages. Still, I was annoyed.

It's not a long book, only 170 pages, so that's nearly a quarter of the book missing!

It is with some trepidation that I'm starting my no. 46, the book that has been sitting on the TBR shelf the longest, The Faerie Queene by Edmund Spenser. It is my sixth ROOT for 2015, and will probably take the rest of the year to get through in the background.

I can't wait to hear what you think of that one. My girls and I have been wanting to read that. But, amazingly, that is a book we do not have yet.

I'm afraid you will have a long wait. It's supposed to be the longest poem in the English language and clocks in at around 1000 pages.

That looks like a reading marathon!

>36 Robertgreaves: >38 Robertgreaves: wow. I am also looking forward to how this one plays out... regardless of how long it takes ;)

I've finished Book I (out of VI) of The Faerie Queene. Time for a break with my No. 47, Indonesia Etc.: Exploring The Improbable Nation by Elizabeth Pisani, the seventh ROOT for 2015, which I am reading as an ebook for my RL book club.

I'm not sure what I make of FQ. I find I understand most of the vocabulary, with just the odd word here and there I have to look up in the glossary or the notes. Sometimes I get what the allegory is referring to, but it feels like playing spot the reference a lot of the time. Is a sense of achievement enough to keep me going or is it a big enough justification to spend that much time on it?

I don't know. You are really good with language, and I bet as you go along, it gets better. And breaking it up in books is a good idea. But I guess you would want to enjoy it some at least if reading such a long book.

Also starting The Lost World by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle. This and A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur's Court, which I read earlier this year, are both found in The Steampunk Megapack.

After discussion on another thread (I forget which one) I have decided that where an ebook collection of novels doesn't have a physical edition, I will count each of the novels in the ebook separately as books read and ROOTs.

So that brings the running total between birthdays up to 49 and the number of ROOTs for 2015 to nine.

>41 Robertgreaves: What kind of references are they? To older literature that is no longer familiar or topical events of the writer's time? I noticed something like this in Trollope's The warden, where the ecclesiastical allusions were incomprehensible to me.

ETC

Basically references to Greek and Roman and Renaissance Italian poetry. There is a lot of assumed knowledge of Greek and Roman mythology and literature. I can pick up most of the mythology and some of the Greek and Roman literature but the Renaissance stuff is mostly beyond me. Though if there weren't notes I probably wouldn't even notice there were allusions being made.

Ah, thanks!

It's Ash Wednesday here, so for my Lenten reading I am starting Lent for Everyone: Mark by N. T. Wright. This is book No. 50 and my tenth ROOT for 2015.

>41 Robertgreaves: that's a good question! I think for me, if all I were getting out of it were a sense of achievement... probably wouldn't be enough ;)

And congrats on your progress!

You are really doing great with your challenge!

For Lent, in addition to always giving up candy, I am cutting my caffeine intake in half. (I can't go cold turkey because I am already sleeping too much!) And I am reading a book by Fr. Mitch Pacwa called Winning the Battle Against Sin: Hope-Filled Lessons from the Bible. I have a couple of daily readers, too.

Remember when we read the book about Julian of Norwich? I am reading a book that calls her Juliana of Norwich. I had never seen that before. It is an older book, so maybe that is why.

In Latin her name would be Juliana, so I suppose pre-Vatican II Roman Catholics would be more likely to know her as Juliana, plus there's always the fact that nowadays Julian is more thought of as a male name.

Starting The Faerie Queene book 2, The Legend of Sir Guyon or Of Temperaunce.

I'm also continuing with The Steampunk Megapack and the next novel in it is A Princess of Mars by Edgar Rice Burroughs, which by my new rules counts as my No. 51 and my eleventh ROOT for 2015.

My review of The Lost World:

When the woman he loves demands he do something extraordinary, journalist Edward Malone joins an exhibition to verify Professor Challenger's claims that on an isolated plateau deep in the Amazon jungles dinosaurs have survived into the 20th century.

An enjoyable yarn. It wasn't really gripping, just pleasantly entertaining when I wasn't in the mood for anything too demanding.

My review of Indonesia Etc.:

Elizabeth Pisani, who had worked in Indonesia as a Reuters journalist and then later as an HIV/AIDS prevention worker, returns to Indonesia to spend time travelling around the archipelago.

More interesting as she reflects on the country, how it has and hasn't changed since her previous visits, and what commonalities exist among the diverse ethnic and religious groups that make up Indonesia than when she adopts a human zoo approach telling us about her travels.

After Book II I'm feeling I've got a better handle on what Edmund Spenser is doing. For the most part I could see the allegories and what his point was, but because the whole poem is so long I'm already having problems because I'm starting to forget what came earlier.

That was my problem with reading Morte d'Arthur in bits, I lost track of things that had happened before. And makes me wary of tackling Quixote in that way.

I really loved Don Quixote, but I did read it in English. I have been wanting to read Morte d'Arthur for many years. And it is sitting on my shelf!

>50 Robertgreaves:: Thanks for explaining the name thing. I thought Julian was a man's name as well, but some religious women do take men's names. I don't know any Latin, which I really regret.

Starting Book III of The Faerie Queene.

My review of A Princess of Mars by Edgar Rice Burroughs:

Trapped in a cave by Apaches, while prospecting in Arizona after the American Civil War, John Carter succumbs to some sort of gas and wakes up on Mars.

Another rip-roaring yarn. Better than I thought it would be, though I was starting to think 'Oh do get on with it' by the time we got to Warhoon.

Hi Robert! Hope you are enjoying your reading.

>52 Robertgreaves: that's so frustrating ... forgetting what came earlier!
Good luck w/ book III!

Thanks for dropping by, Tess. It's been a so-so year for reading. The only 'wow' book has been Me Before You.

I am slightly struggling with the fact that long as The Faerie Queene is, it was planned to be twice as long with an equally long sequel.

So far, I have had no desire to read The Faerie Queene, although I am an avid Tudor Historian!

Hi Robert, just dropping in to see what you are reading. I hope the year will bring more 'wow' books your way!

>58 Robertgreaves: !! That is crazy that it was supposed to be twice as long!!

I've finished Book III of The Faerie Queene. Putting it aside for the moment to read my online book club's choice, Curses and Smoke: A Novel of Pompeii by Vicky Alvear Shecter. This is my No. 52 but is a new ebook purchase and so does not count as a ROOT or affect the TBR pile.

As I am travelling tomorrow I don't want to lug The Faerie Queene around with me, so am starting The Sister Fidelma 20th Anniversary Collection, a virtual boxed set of 3 novels about Sister Fidelma by Peter Tremayne. The first in the set Absolution by Murder counts as my No. 53, and my twelfth ROOT for 2015.

>62 Robertgreaves: wow I'm impressed.

The first Sister Fidelma book was a very quick read, and I have already moved on to the second in the (virtual) boxed set, A Shroud for the Archbishop. This is my no. 54 and my thirteenth ROOT for 2015.

My review of Absolution by Murder:

Sister Fidelma is not only a religieuse but also a high ranking dalaigh (advocate) in the 7th century Irish legal system with a reputation for solving knotty problems. When Abbess Etain, one of the chief speakers among Celtic delegates to the Synod of Whitby, is murdered, Fidelma is asked to investigate together with Brother Eadulf, a Saxon magistrate turned monk from the Catholic delegation.

Although I found the historical background interesting, I got tired of the insistence on the superiority of the Irish culture over the barbaric Anglo-Saxons. I will see how this plays out before deciding whether to continue with the series after finishing the boxed set.

Starting Book IV of The Faerie Queene

My review of A Shroud for the Archbishop:

Delivering the Rule of her Order to the Pope for blessing, Sister Fidelma re-encounters some of the people she'd met at the Synod of Whitby. One of them, Wighard, is the archbishop-elect of Canterbury whose election has to be confirmed by the Pope. Unfortunately he is killed in what seems to be a straight forward case of murder during a robbery gone wrong and an Irish monk is arrested. Sister Fidelma and Brother Eadulf are asked to investigate to prove that there is no anti-Celtic collusion by the Catholic authorities.

Again an excellent mystery against a well drawn historical background but marred by the insistence that the 7th century Irish were just like us (accepting of female equality, not too harsh with criminals, into martial arts, accepting of sex as one of God's gifts) as opposed to the barbaric Anglo-Saxons and Romans.

An author friend on FB posted about the thrill he got from seeing one of his books for sale in Rome. It got me thinking. Is somebody working on an author proximity app for phones to alert us when an author from our catalogue is within a couple of hundred yards?

RIP Terry Pratchett.

Starting my No. 55 Suffer Little Children by Peter Tremayne. This is my fourteenth ROOT for 2015.

Book IV of The Faerie Queene completed. Although the individual stories and digressions are interesting (except for the catalogue of rivers and sea nymphs -- I have to admit I skipped a lot here), I still don't have much grasp of the work as a whole despite being 2/3 of the way through it.

I also finished I Am John I Am Paul after a hiatus waiting for a replacement copy from Amazon UK. My review:

The story of the friendship between two Roman soldiers who become Christian martyrs in the 4th century AD.

The story is narrated by John. The author has given him a good, strong, plain voice which makes the reader feel they know him and keep turning the pages to hear more of his story.
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However, I found the story of the actual martyrdom unconvincing, and despite the author's endnoe on his sources, have my doubts about it as a historical event since we usually get the impression that there was no active persecution of Christians under Julian beyond the withdrawal of privileges the clergy had been given under Constantine and his sons and the prohibition on Christians teaching the study of pagan authors.

While I was away I finished Suffer Little Children, read the next one in the Sister Fidelma series The Subtle Serpent (my No. 55), and started another one The Spider's Web (my No. 56). They were both new ebooks and so were not ROOTS and did not affect the physical TBR shelf).

My review of Suffer Little Children:

Sister Fidelma is back on her home territory of 7th century Ireland. The king of Cashel is dying and Fidelma's brother, Colgu, the tanaist or heir-apparent, sends her on a mission to investigate the murder of The Venerable Dacan, a monk from Laigin, in a Cashel monastery. The king of Laigin and Abbot Noe, Dacan's brother, are demanding the ceding of the territory of Osraige in compensation. Are they entitled to do so and what is the connection with a massacre of a village near the monastery that Fidelma witnesses on her journey?

Thoroughly enjoyable mystery even if the flood of Irish names was a bit overwhelming at first. Fidelma's musings about how much she misses Eadulf were a bit repetitive.

My review of The Subtle Serpent:

When a naked, headless body is found in a female religious sisterhood's well, Sister Fidelma is called in to investigate. On the way a deserted, drifting ship is found with a few bloodstains on board and a book belonging to Sister Fidelma's friend Brother Eadulf.

Another intriguing mystery set against a fascinating picture of 7th century Ireland.

Starting Seneca's Letters From A Stoic. This is my No. 57 and the fifteenth ROOT for 2015. It's a physical book but I've lost track of how many books there are on the TBR shelves after some recent purchases. I'll have to check when I get home.

My review of The Spider's Web:

After adjudicating a land case, Sister Fidelma is asked to go to Araglin, where the disputants came from, to ensure proper procedure is followed in the investigation of the murder of the local chieftain. The locals are convinced that the victim's sister's adopted son is the culprit, but he is blind, deaf, and mute. Could he really have committed the crime?

Another intriguing mystery. Fidelma is forced into awareness of her feelings for Eadulf when he eats some poisonous mushrooms. I still find the author's attitude to Catholicism dubious.

The TBR pile currently stands at 66 books. Recent purchases:

The Countess of Pembroke's Arcadia by Sir Philip Sidney
After Many A Summer Dies the Swan by Aldous Huxley
The Classics Magpie by Jane Hood
The Three-Body Problem by Cixin Liu

Looks like some great reading!

You are doing really well, Robert!

Also reading my No. 58, Valley of the Shadow by Peter Tremayne. This is a new ebook, so isn't a ROOT and doesn't affect the TBR pile.

>68 Robertgreaves: yeah :(

And wow, congrats on all your reading AND on finishing Book IV of the Faerie Queene!

Thanks, avanders. I'm hoping to read Book V next week, but first I'm starting my No. 59, Into the Abyss by Carol Shaben, my RL book club's choice for April. It is a true story of survival in the Canadian wilderness after a plane crash, written by a friend of a friend. The author's father was one of the survivors and she may be joining us for our club meeting by Skype. This is a new ebook so doesn't affect the TBR pile and is not a ROOT.

My review of Valley of the Shadow:

When Sister Fidelma is sent as delegate for her brother and the Bishop of Imleach to negotiate the establishment of a church and school in the pagan-controlled valley of Gleann Geis, she and Brother Eadulf stumble across what appears to be a pagan human sacrifice with thirty-three victims. Her efforts to investigate and her main mission pull her in different directions until another visiting cleric is murdered and Fidelma herself is accused of killing him.

Another very enjoyable investigation into murders with political and religious ramifications in 7th century AD Ireland.

Congrats on finishing the Faerie Queen Book IV! I see you are tackling another tough one, Seneca's Letters. I try to read one "tough" one amidst 1-2 other pleasurable ones. Currently I'm trying to get through an anthology of Henry Wadsworth Longfellow. I love Longfellow, however the very first (and longest) is titled Christus: A Mystery. It is written in King James language and is about an angel carrying the Jewish prophet Habakkuk through the air. I'm a bit lost now, but hopefully by the time I get to chapter 2, I will be on top of things! Good luck with letters to Seneca!

Seneca's letters weren't as daunting as I thought they might be. It helped that it was only a selection: about 40 out of 124. They were unexpectedly interesting and thought-provoking. I'm about to start Book V of Faerie Queene and am thinking about what to read when I need something lighter (physically or mentally!).

My lighter read is The Man Who Was Thursday by G. K. Chesterton. This is contained in The Steampunk Megapack but as a physically existing work counts as my sixteenth ROOT for 2015.

I look forward to seeing what you think of The Man Who Was Thursday. That was one of my first ebook purchases, and it was so badly formatted with distracting typing errors that I absolutely could not read it. I still haven't read any Chesterton, though I am getting a collection of his books and thinking of starting to collect his complete collected works. Problems like that are what turned me off of ebooks. I did, however, end up with a credit from B&N as a result of some ebook class action. So that was nice. I had enough for half of a real book.

I've finished Book V of The Faerie Queene, which is about Justice. Most of the later part of this book is political allegory about Mary, Queen of Scots, English support for the Low Countries in their attempt to win independence from the Spanish, and the Elizabethan wars in Ireland, all of which I was sort of vaguely aware of but not in enough detail to follow the allegory or even to have been aware it was there without the notes.

Starting my no. 60, Dream Angus by Alexander McCall Smith as lighter reading for a break. This brings the TBR pile down to 65 and is my seventeenth ROOT for 2015.

I've also finished off The Steampunk Megapack. This was very peculiar as a lot of it was detective stories and thrillers or rather heavy-handed Victorian/Edwardian humour.

>81 billiejean: The formatting for The Man Who Was Thursday was fine. I had no problem with it at all. There were one or two typos (and it really was one or two), but that's not unknown in physical books either :-).

My review:

Gabriel Syme is an undercover policeman who is elected to the ruling council of a worldwide group of anarchists and works to foil their plan to blow up the Tsar and the President of France during the Tsar's state visit to France.

I caught on to what the twist was going to be fairly early on, though there were times when I had doubts. I did not expect the supernatural ending and I'm not sure what it means for the earlier parts of the novel or what Chesterton is saying. I will have to read it again some time in light of the ending.

As I was ill in bed, I had no problem getting through Dream Angus quickly and am now starting my no. 61 Girl Meets Boy: The Myth of Iphis by Ali Smith. This is a new ebook and so is not a ROOT.

My review of "Dream Angus":

Alexander McCall Smith tells the story of Angus, the Celtic god of dreams and love, interweaving it with vaguely related modern-day stories. Not one of his best.

Starting Book VI of The Faerie Queene.

My review of Girl Meets Boy: The Myth of Iphis:

Two sisters working in the publicity department of a company become activists for women's issues after one of them starts an affair with another woman who she thought was a man.

Couldn't get enthused by this one.

I hope you are feeling better now.

Yes, thank you. It was just a stomach upset.

Starting my No. 62, The Complete Quin and Satterthwaite: Love Detectives by Agatha Christie. This is an ebook so does not affect the TBR pile, but is my eighteenth ROOT for 2015.

COMPLETED The Faerie Queene!!!!!

Arthurian knights each of whom is emblematic of some virtue or other wander around a landscape fighting bad guys or sometimes just fighting for no apparent reason. Sometimes they rescue damsels in distress, some of the good and bad knights are damsels themselves. Various storylines come together and get wound up others are left hanging but presumably would have been wound up if Spenser had ever got round to writing the second half. Even as it is, it's too much to grasp in one reading, but I really don't feel up to reading the whole thing again.

Congratulations on a major accomplishment! I had no idea that all of that was only half of what was planned. I bet if it were twice as long, there would be half as many readers. Still, I would like to read it someday.

Woo hoo! Congratulations on completing The Faerie Queene!

That sounds like quite the achievement! :)

Indeed, that's an enviable achievment!

Congrats!

Thanks, all.

Starting my No. 63, The Sittaford Mystery by Agatha Christie. This is a new ebook and so does not affect the TBR pile and is not a ROOT.

My review of The Complete Quin and Satterthwaite: Love Detectives:

An omnibus edition of a collection of short stories from the 1920s, a full length Poirot novel, and some miscellaneous short stories.

I enjoyed the 1920s collection of short stories involving Mr. Satterthwaite as the detective prompted by the mysterious, possibly supernatural, Mr. Quin.

The Poirot mystery was spoiled a bit for me by the use of Mr. Satterthwaite. I kept expecting Mr. Quin to put in an appearance, but of course he didn't. It was all down to the little grey cells.

I'd read the miscellaneous stories before but still found the tangled melded family confusing in the last story. And Mr. Satterthwaite is very well preserved. If he was in his 60s in the 1920s, he must have been well over a hundred in 1971.

Starting my No. 64 Peril at End House by Agatha Christie. Again, a new ebook so not a ROOT.

My review of The Sittaford Mystery:

A message comes through at a seance that someone a two hour journey away has died. The deceased's best friend goes to check and finds his murdered body. The doctor's estimate of the time of death was while the seance was taking place. Emily Trefussis's fiance, the murdered man's nephew, is accused of the murder, and she decides to clear his name.

I have my doubts about whether the solution to this one is actually possible, but it was all good fun.

Starting my No. 65, Foxglove Summer by Ben Aarononvitch. This is my nineteenth ROOT for 2015 and brings the TBR pile down to 64.

My review of Peril at End House:

When Poirot is on holiday in Cornwall he hears about a young local woman who has had a series of lucky escapes from what appear to be near-fatal accidents. He decides her life is in danger and it is up to him to protect her.

An ingenious twist made this a very satisfactory read.

Starting my No. 66, The Nibelungenlied, which is my twentieth ROOT for 2015 and brings the TBR pile down to 63.

My review of Foxglove Summer:

PC Peter Grant is sent to Herefordshire to check that the local hedge wizard is not involved in the disappearance of two young girls and otherwise help the investigation into the disappearance in any way he can.

This was supposed to be the last one in the series but there are enough hanging threads to keep the story going for several more volumes. Whether I can be bothered is another matter. Reading them in quick succession worked well, reading another one a year later not so much.

>97 Robertgreaves:, is this from what Wagner's opera was taken?

Yes, but I gather he changed it quite a bit. So far the Norse/Germanic gods haven't made an appearance. Brunhild is the Queen of Iceland rather than a Valkyrie.

Yesterday I found myself with a reading opportunity but no book. Fortunately I had the ebook apps on my trusty tablet so started reading my no. 67, I, Claudia by Marilyn Todd, which has been on the virtual TBR shelf for quite a while and so is my twenty-first ROOT for 2015.

My review of The Nibelunglied:

The epic poem telling the story of how Siegfried, king of the Netherlands, helped Gunther, king of Burgundy, marry Brunhild, the Queen of Iceland, in exchange for permission to marry Kriemhild, Gunther's sister, and the quarrel over precedence between the two women and how it led to the murder of Siegfried followed by Kriemhild's revenge on her family after she became the wife of Etzel (aka Attila the Hun).

This is a prose translation by A. T. Hatto. The story seems rather different from my admittedly vague memories of Wagner. I found it all quite baffling since I would have thought it would have been quite easy for Brunhild to have got information about Siegfried's real status, at which point the whole motivation falls apart.

If I remember correctly, Wagner went back to the Edda and the Völsung Saga for his opera. The Nibelungenlied as set down in the Middle Ages differs quite a lot from the Völsung version.

Starting my no. 68, Virgin Territory by Marilyn Todd. This is a new ebook and so is not a ROOT and does not affect the TBR pile.

My review of I, Claudia:

Members of the elite in Augustan Rome are being found dead, stabbed with their eyes gouged out. Unknown to the authorities (not to mention her husband), the common link between the victims is that they are customers of Claudia Sefirius, who has adopted a sideline as a dominatrix to the elite to help pay off her gambling debts. Can she find the murderer before her activities or her past become known to her husband or to the disturbingly attractive investigator Marcus Cornelius Orbilio?

An enjoyable romp as we follow the cheerfully and cheekily amoral Claudia round Rome and its environs.

My goodness you are a constant reader...

>87 Robertgreaves: CONGRATS!!!

>100 Robertgreaves: oh no, a reading opportunity but no book? Glad you had your trusty tablet w/ you! ;)

Starting my No. 69, Man Eater, the next in the Claudia Sefirius series.

My review of Virgin Territory:

For various reasons Claudia Sefirius decides she would be better off temporarily absenting herself from Rome, so when the opportunity comes to escort a retiring Vestal Virgin back to her family in Sicily, she leaps at the chance. The Vestal Virgin and her family all seem to be completely cuckoo and an annoying fortune teller just will not take no for an answer. And then Claudia finds a dead body.

This book started off very, very funny with lots of laugh out loud moments (I nearly did myself a serious mischief trying not to in Starbucks) but gradually turns darker and darker as the horrors mount up. Less of a romp than the first one but still well worth reading.

And the next one in the series is my No. 70, Wolf Whistle.

My review of Man Eater:

After a traffic accident Claudia Sefirius is forced to take shelter in an isolated villa in the Umbrian hills for the night. The next morning a man tries to force his way into her room and when she tries to keep him out he collapses with a knife in his belly -- a knife witnesses say she planted there. How is she going to beat a murder rap?

The usual excellent mixture of humour and thrills.

Starting my No. 71, The Martian by Andy Weir. This is an ebook from my virtual TBR shelf and so it counts as my twenty-second ROOT for 2015.

My review of Wolf Whistle:

Claudia Sefirius's creditors are getting more insistent, her late husband's family are plotting to get her declared legally incompetent, there is a serial killer on the loose, and she has her very own stalker. What more could a girl want?

The author manages to keep all the balls in the air in her usual mix of humour and thrills.

I've read good things about The Martian, Robert.

>107 Robertgreaves: ooooh I hope you like it (The Martian)! It's such a quick read :)

Yes, I've heard a lot of good word-of-mouth for it. Enough for me to choose it for my real life book club next week as we haven't had any SF so far.

I have The Martian on my Kindle TBR

Starting my No. 72, Adventures in the Ancient World: 2 by H. Rider Haggard. This brings the TBR pile down to 62, and is my twenty-third ROOT for 2015. It contains two of Rider Haggard's lesser known novels, "Morning Star" and "Cleopatra". "Cleopatra" is my online book club's choice for May.

My review of The Martian:

Mark Whitney is left behind presumed dead after the Ares 3 mission is abandoned due to weather damage. How can he survive on Mars until the next mission arrives?

For me this didn't really live up to the excellent word-of-mouth it's been getting. There was a point about half-way through the book when everything was going well and disaster struck and it really felt it was just a way of prolonging the book.

Having said that, the technical details were interesting, even if my non-mechanical brain meant I had to take it quite slowly in parts to understand it, and it wasn't a bad book, just didn't live up to expectations.

>112 Robertgreaves: I think with a book that has been hyped up that much, it's very difficult for it to live up to the hype... I've had similar experiences, and in this case, I'm glad I read The Martian before I knew it was supposed to be good ;) That being said, I definitely do not disagree (.... I find myself saying "I do not disagree" rather than "I agree" more than I probably should... I think it's part of my training as a lawyer ;p) w/ your critique - and I also had those thoughts while reading it... where at some points, it felt more like prolonging than natural flow. But I'm glad you thought it was interesting at least! :)

Starting my No. 73, Sir Gawain and the Green Knight, which brings the TBR pile down to 61 and is my twenty-fourth ROOT for 2015.

My review of Adventures in the Ancient World: 2:

Morning Star
After an attempted coup by his half brother, Pharaoh and his chief wife pray to Amen for a child and he grants their wish with a daughter. She loves her foster-brother but must make a dynastic marriage. Will the lovers find happiness?

The sort of ripping yarn you'd expect from the author of 'She', with all of the prejudices of that era. And yet it's a cracking good tale.

Cleopatra
Harmachis, a descendent of the ancient Pharaohs, heads a plot to overthrow the Ptolemies, but the plot is betrayed. Harmachis resorts to Plan B to get his revenge on Cleopatra, even if means Egypt will fall to the Romans.

The purplest of prose in this melodrama with plots and counterplots, magic, a night in one of the Pyramids, love spurned and betrayed. What's not to like?

Having finished re-reading Sir Gawain and the Green Knight Everyman's Library, now starting my No. 74, The Green Knight by Iris Murdoch. This brings the TBR pile down to 60, and is my twenty-fifth ROOT for 2015.

Starting my No. 75 The Classical World by Robin Lane Fox. This is my twenty-sixth ROOT for 2015 and brings the TBR pile down to 59.

My review of The Green Knight:

When Lucas Graffe attempts (with what serious intent is never made clear) to murder Clement Graffe, the natural son of Lucas's adoptive parents, a stranger intervenes, only to be struck down by Lucas and presumed dead. However, the stranger surfaces very much alive some months alive and comes to play an important role in the lives of the Graffes and their social circle, particularly Louise Anderson and her three daughters and Bellamy James, a would-be monk.

I found it difficult to follow who was who at the beginning of the book. As the story progressed, although the characters, their actions, thoughts, and emotions were meticulously described, and the symbolism and echoes of the Bible, myths and legends became more and more apparent, nevertheless I found the book had no emotional resonance for me. I kept going on a sort of "I've started so I'll finish" principle, but couldn't really see any point to the strange behaviour of these people. When the miraculous events seem more probable and realistic than the everyday scenes, then the author is in trouble.

>116 Robertgreaves: Woo hoo! Your progress is really impressive!

>116 Robertgreaves: >117 avanders: Never mind the reading progress, the reduction in the TBR pile is what's impressing me! Robert, I think you need to bottle your self-control in not buying more books and sell it, you'd make a fortune.

Wellll, I'm not counting the virtual TBR shelves ......

>118 Jackie_K: Yes, your restraint is rather impressive!
>119 Robertgreaves: and no worries re virtual... doesn't take up much space, does it ;)

Got another two books while on a trip to Singapore:

The Master and Margarita by Mikhail Bulgakov and Midnight Crossroad by Charlaine Harris.

While travelling, I started The Making of the Representative for Planet 8 by Doris Lessing, my No. 76, which is my twenty-seventh ROOT for 2015. As an ebook, it doesn't affect the physical TBR pile.

>121 Robertgreaves: Ooh, Master and Margarita! I tend to buy copies whenever I see them for a good price so I can lend it/give it away. I'll look forward to your thoughts!

Watch this space! (Though not till it becomes a ROOT at the end of September)

PS, which do you think is the best translation? I would have got it years ago but I was dithering over which one to buy.

My review of The Making of the Representative for Planet 8:


Within a lifetime the inhabitants of the idyllic Planet 8 find that their planet is plunged into an Ice Age due to an unexpected cosmic alignment, causing them to have to endure social, cultural, and even physical changes while they wait for rescue.

It began well, but the mystical final stages of the inhabitants' ordeal and ending went on for rather too long for my taste.

Starting my No. 77, Autumn in Carthage by Christopher Zenos. This is an ebook and so does not affect the TBR pile but is my twenty-eighth ROOT for 2015.

>123 Robertgreaves: lol good call ;)
>124 Robertgreaves: you know, for as much as I like it, I've not paid attention to translations... I just like it, however I get it :) I also saw an amazing adaptation of it in Chicago a few years ago (a play at the Strawdog Theater). How did you make your decision re which translation to get?

There were three different translations in the bookshop. I read the first paragraph in each of them and then looked at what they'd got in the way of notes etc. In the end I plumped for the Penguin Classics edition.

Starting my No. 78, Six Tragedies by Seneca, which is my twenty-ninth ROOT for 2015 and brings the TBR pile down to 58.

My review of Autumn in Carthage:

Nathan Price is about to go on sabbatical from the University of Chicago when he receives a parcel of 17th century documents among which, impossibly, is a letter in the handwriting of his best friend, Jamie McKinnon, who had disappeared six months before. Equally impossibly the letter mentions the town of Carthage, Wisconsin, which didn't exist in the 17th century. Nathan sets out for Carthage to investigate. It's a town with secrets, but then again Nathan has secrets of his own.

Good plot and characters, but rather flat descriptions. The technobabble for the time travel left me a bit 'meh', but as the plot progressed the excitement really picked up and carried me along.

>128 Robertgreaves: sounds like a good way to go about it :) Hope you enjoy your translation!

I also really enjoyed The Master and Margarita.

Starting my No. 79 Dying Every Day by James Romm. This is a new ebook I'm reading for my online book club so is not a ROOT.

With my recent purchases and some re-reads I added the physical TBR shelves have gone back up to 62.

Starting my No. 80, Murder Most Posh by Robert Colton. This is a new ebook and so is not a ROOT.

My review of The Classical World:

Robin Lane Fox takes us through the history of Greece and Roman from Homer to Hadrian, following the themes of luxury, liberty, and justice.

>132 Robertgreaves: heh heh, that happens ;) 62 is still a very manageable number!

Starting my No. 81, Bring Up the Bodies by Hilary Mantel. This brings the TBR pile down to 61 and is my thirtieth ROOT of 2015.

My review of Murder Most Posh:

Mrs Xavier Stayton is crossing the Atlantic by liner to meet a literary agent when one of the passengers goes missing. A suicide note is found and it is assumed she jumped overboard. But did she? Mrs Stayton uncovers wheels within wheels.

A fun romp which passed an hour or two pleasantly.

So did you read Wolf Hall? I have been watching Masterpiece of Wolf Hall (I did not read the book), and at the end it mentioned also Bring Up the Bodies. I don't know which was first.

Wolf Hall was the first. I read it a couple of years ago. There is supposed to be a third one coming out so when it does I might read all three together.

Starting my No. 82, Elizabeth by David Starkey. This brings the TBR pile down to 60 and is my thirty-first ROOT of 2015.

My review of Bring Up The Bodies:

The political manoeuvring to bring down Anne Boleyn and replace her with Jane Seymour, told from the point of view of Master Secretary, Thomas Cromwell.

Tense account. Although the author sometimes glosses 'he' as Thomas Cromwell in this second book of a planned trilogy, presumably in response to those who complained about how difficult it was to be sure who 'he' was at various points in "Wolf Hall", I found it more difficult with 'he' being sometimes glossed but not always.

Starting my No. 83, Death at The President's Lodging by Michael Innes. This is an ebook, so doesn't effect the TBR pile but is my thirty-second ROOT for 2015. I have very fond memories of Michael Innes's books from teens and twenties, so it should be just the thing when I'm in bed with a cold.

My review of Elizabeth:

Subtitled "Apprenticeship", this book focuses on Elizabeth I's life before she came to the throne, taking us up to her first parliament and the religious settlement, with a brief overview of the recurrent issue of religion and the succession in the rest of the reign in the last chapter.

I found it a very easy and enjoyable read, though the book could have done with some more careful editing in places.

>139 Robertgreaves: Hope you recover from the cold soon!

>139 Robertgreaves: Hope you have a speedy recovery!

Get well soon and I hope the Innes is just as enjoyable on a reread.

I also appreciated the review of Bring Up the Bodies. I will be reading the whole trilogy but wanted to wait until the third book is released, then get them all at once.

Robert Harris's series about Cicero was supposed to be a trilogy and here we are 6 years later still waiting for part three.

Sorry to hear that you're under the weather. Get well soon.

Coming out of it, thanks all. I just had the one day off work and arranged matters so that even though I was there I could take it easy yesterday.

Starting my No. 84, the second Appleby book, Hamlet, Revenge. This is a new ebook and so does not count as a ROOT and does not affect the TBR pile.

When I first read Michael Innes's and Edmund Crispin's books as a teenager and in my twenties, I desperately wanted to be as erudite as Appleby and Fen, and was afraid that I had been very badly educated. Re-reading Edmund Crispin's and now Michael Innes's I have come to realise I never will be that erudite . I felt much better when looking something up, I found that according to P D James the dons who wrote detective stories quite deliberately used to weave in quotations and allusions that they hoped their colleagues wouldn't recognise.

My review of Death at the President's Lodging:

Dr Umpleby, President of St Anthony's College, is found shot dead in his study. Only seven people could have had access to the study without being seen. But which one of them was it?

Michael Innes hadn't quite got into his stride in this first of the Appleby books but it's still has all his trademark humour and intelligence.

>139 Robertgreaves: was just going to echo everyone's sentiments, but I'm glad to see you're coming out of it! (>145 Robertgreaves:) Glad you had the opportunity to take it easy -- sometimes it makes a world of a difference!

Huh that's interesting that the "dons" would try to stump their colleagues... and not really all that surprising... egos w/in a field can be challenging ;)

I'm putting Hamlet, Revenge on one side for the time being as there is so much discussion on how to stage Hamlet, I'm going to need to read it first. So, until I can get my hands on a copy, I'm reading Talking About Detective Fiction by P. D. James. This is my No. 84, but is not from the TBR pile or a ROOT.

Starting my No. 85, The Wolves of Willoughby Chase by Joan Aiken. This is my thirty-third ROOT for 2015 and brings the TBR pile down to 59.

My review of Talking About Detective Fiction:

PD James takes through a history of detective fiction from Wilkie Collins and Poe down to the Golden Age between the wars and the early post-war years. She mainly concentrates on British detective fiction apart from a brief glance across the Atlantic at the hard-boiled school.

Having brought the story down to her own day she then goes through the elements of a detective story (the who, where, when, what and why) explaining her own practice and that of some of her contemporaries. She then finishes off with some reflections on the state of detective fiction in the early 21st century.

I felt this book was most successful in the early part, her survey of the history. Her enthusiasm is very infectious and she made me want to immediately read (or in some cases re-read) the authors she discusses. As a fan I was interested in what she had to say about her own practice but I would have appreciated a wider discussion of her contemporaries.

>147 Robertgreaves: and >148 Robertgreaves: man, you're a fast reader! P.D. James is another author I've been meaning to read for years... But this is a non-fiction! I would agree (not having read the book) -- as someone who is so known, I would also expect a wider discussion of her contemporaries. But perhaps a BB for me all the same... :)

It was a very quick read :-), more like a series of magazine articles than an in-depth piece needing real concentration.

>150 Robertgreaves: even so! :)

Starting my No. 86, Ye Gods! by Tom Holt. This brings the TBR pile down to 58 and is my thirty-fourth ROOT for 2015.

My review of The Wolves of Willoughby Chase:

When Sylvia Green goes to live with her rich cousin Bonnie's family she finds the household on the verge of great changes as Sir Willoughby Green and his wife are about to leave for a six-month voyage for the sake of Lady Green's health. They are leaving Miss Slighcarp, Bonnie's new governess and a distant relation, in charge, but they are sadly deceived about her character.

Classic children's story set in an alternative history where in 1832 Britain is ruled by the Stuart King James III and the countryside is overrun with wolves from the Continent which have made their way through the Channel Tunnel.

I remember reading this as a child and I fairly whizzed my way through it. My memory was that the King put in an appearance but no sign of him.

Starting my No. 87, Lament for a Maker by Michael Innes. This is a new ebook and so is not a ROOT and does not affect the TBR pile.

My review of Ye Gods:
Jason Derry, the son of Jupiter and Mrs Derry at No. 17, is caught up in the struggle between the Olympian gods (now living in the Sun) and the Titans Gelos and Prometheus and will have to choose between a world without laughter or a world without the gods, which might be a world that's about to end.

Funny in parts, in others it was probably funnier in the early 1990s.

I couldn't find a copy of Hamlet with decent notes, so I just watched it on Youtube and then continued with Hamlet, Revenge. My review:
The Lord Chancellor is shot while playing Polonius in an amateur production of "Hamlet" at the Duke of Horton's stately home. Was it the work of a spy trying to get hold of a secret document or was it the result of long-repressed and festering hatred?

Although dated in some respects (particularly in the attitudes to the Indian character Mr. Bose), a lot of the social commentary and sense of a world being overtaken by the forces of unreason is still true mutatis mutandis 80 years on.

Sounds like 2 good reads. When I "do" Shakespeare I like an original version, a modern new-English version, and the movie! After all of these, I feel I "know" the play, and the play's the thing!

145> My daughter won't read mystery stories due to that sort of thing. If the author makes it impossible to figure out, then she doesn't think it is fair. Of course, I told her that not all mysteries are that way. But to no avail.

>153 Robertgreaves: oh Hamlet has always been one of my favorite Shakespeares :) I agree -- a lot of the themes are still relevant today!

>155 billiejean: All the clues are there, so in theory if you're paying attention the reader could figure it out. But unless you are very well read you miss the point of a lot of the banter between the characters and the authorial comments, which is a bonus feature rather than part of the mystery. It's at such a high level I do feel ridiculously pleased when I recognise one of the allusions.

I see. :) I think she based her opinion on one mystery by Poe. I am tempted to go back and read his stories and check it out for myself.

Now reading the next Appleby book Stop Press. This is my No. 88 and is a new ebook, so doesn't affect the TBR shelves and is not a ROOT.

My review of Lament for a Maker:

When Erchany castle is isolated by snow during a hard winter, the laird falls to his death from the battlements. Was it suicide or murder by the crofter lad who is eloping with the laird's ward or what?

Events are told by a series of narrators, and it has to be said the sutor's Doric did get a bit much at times. I found some of the psychologising a bit implausible but the ending where the theories flowed thick and fast was terrific.

Starting my No. 89, The Corpus Conundrum by Albert A. Bell. This is an ebook I read three years ago but am now re-reading for my online book club. It still counts as my thirty-fifth ROOT for 2015.

I actually have the next Appleby book as a physical book so I'm adding it to the TBR pile, which now has 59 books.

My review of Stop Press:

Timmy Eliot's father is the author of a series of thrillers starring the Spider, who seems to be coming alive and playing tricks on the family. Timmy's Oxford tutor agrees to come and help find out what's going on. As things become more mysterious and threatening at the annual Spider party, Timmy's sister's friend, Patricia Appleby, calls in her brother for help.

My somewhat scanty acquaintance with Pope's poetry meant a lot of the banter was over my head in this one. Still, lots of humour and some very tense moments.

35/60 - great progress!

>159 Robertgreaves: sounds interesting :) may become a BB....

Starting the fourth in the "From the Notebooks of Pliny the Younger Series", Death in the Ashes. This is my No. 90. It is a new ebook and so is not a ROOT and does not affect the TBR pile.

Starting, my No. 91 the next in the series, The Eyes of Aurora. Again, new ebook, not a ROOT, no effect on the TBR pile.

My review of Death in the Ashes:

Pliny receives a plea for help from an old friend whose husband was found standing over a murdered woman's body with the murder weapon in his hand and refuses to say anything about what happened. The only thing is they live just outside Naples, which means revisiting the site of the eruption of Vesuvius five years before and Pliny still hasn't recovered from that traumatic experience.

Good, well paced story. One loose end, will Plautia learn what Pliny means by 'implacable enemy' or will she just vanish?

Starting my No. 92, Naked Lunch by William S. Burroughs. This brings the TBR pile down to 58 and is my thirty-sixth ROOT for 2015.

My review of The Eyes of Aurora:

Searching for the husband of a woman who has now disappeared herself, Pliny comes across the body of a woman who has been brutally raped, stabbed and decapitated.

My memory of the first two books in this series is a little vague three years later, but I don't remember them or the ones I read recently being quite this sexually and violently graphic. I don't think I'm particularly squeamish, but it is quite a departure for the author.

Starting my No. 93, Pensées by Blaise Pascal. This brings the TBR pile down to 57 and is my thirty-seventh ROOT for 2015.

I notice from my review last time I read this that it's a book more for dipping into rather than reading straight through, so I'll also start my 94, The Three-Body Problem by Cixin Liu. This brings the TBR pile down to 56, but is too recent a purchase to count as a ROOT.

My review of Naked Lunch:

I read William S. Burroughs's books as a teenager mainly if not wholly for the rude bits and I was surprised to find this book on one of those '100 great books' lists, so I thought I'd give it another go and see if my impatient hormones had made me miss something.

I don't think they did. Even the rude bits couldn't keep me interested in this incoherent, self-indulgent twaddle and to be honest I strongly suspect that any reasonably literate writer of self-published erotic ebooks has got better rude bits.

>165 Robertgreaves: I agree with your assessment, Robert! I had to read this awful book for a class in college, and it is just drivel, it's not a good story or good writing, or even erotica!

>165 Robertgreaves: Pensees was highly recommended to me... I haven't read it yet, but looking forward to your thoughts on it!

Starting my No. 95, Otherwise by John Crowley. This is an ebook and so does not affect the TBR pile but is my thirty-eighth ROOT for 2015.

My review of The Three-Body Problem:

A Chinese SETI project makes contact with alien life but what is the connection with a virtual reality computer game and the murders and suicides of some of the world's leading theoretical physicists?

Interesting ideas and an intriguing story give the sort of thrill I used to get from SF as a teenager and which seems so rare these days. Can't wait for the translation of part 2 to come out in August.

I have also been interested in Pensees.

Starting my No. 96, The Question of Red by Laksmi Pamuntjak. This is a new book, and so not a ROOT but does bring the TBR pile down to 56. It's my RL Book Club's choice for July.

My review of Otherwise:


The Deep
The world of the Protectors is divided into Black and Red factions with the seemingly never-ending struggle between them sometimes turning into war. Protectors are potential targets for a group of assassins calling themselves the Just. A strange, sexless, not quite human, being lands in the midst of one battle and is wounded in the head. He knows he came with a mission, but must learn what it was.

I did lose the thread of this sometimes, forgetting who was who and how they fitted into the various factions and sub-factions. But my curiosity kept me going, to learn what the Visitor's mission was.

Beasts
In the 2070s the United States has split up into different regions and free cities, owing nominal allegiance to Washington, if that. The leos are a genetically engineered hybrid between humans and lions, the only mammalian hybrid that is not sterile. But can they find a place in human society other than as the tool of politicians scapegoating or supporting the leos to win themselves popularity?

Good story with fascinating descriptions of the world as experienced differently by hawks, leos, a solitary fox-human hybrid, and an enhanced dog.

Engine Summer
Rush That Speaks grows up in Little Belair, a warren which survived the long-ago collapse of civilisation brought about by a disaster known as the Storm. Curious about the world outside he goes off travelling, hoping to find a saint and a girl who previously left Little Belair.

I got a bit frustrated with this sometimes trying to relate it to the present, or rather the 1970s when it was written. There were definitely times when the characters were under the influence of mind-expanding technology when I really didn't understand it all.

Starting my No. 97, The Inheritors by William Golding. This is an ebook and counts as my thirty-ninth ROOT for 2015.

My review of The Question of Red:

In 2006 a woman visiting a grave on the former prison island of Buru is attacked by the dead man's wife and half-killed. When she recovers she tells the story of the passionate affair she'd had with the man for a few weeks in 1965 although she was engaged to somebody else, how they'd been separated during an army raid on a subversive friend's wake, and how she'd loved him ever since, despite their never meeting again.

The historical background was fascinating and the emotional complexities of the characters and their relationships with each other and their families and others reminds me just how foreign Indonesia is even after 28 years.

Starting my No. 98, The Moon is a Harsh Mistress by Robert A. Heinlein. This brings the TBR pile down to 55 and is my fortieth root for 2015.

My review of The Inheritors:

Lok and the people are moving to their summer camp. As they settle in they become aware of new people in the neighbourhood.

An imaginative telling of what happens when Neanderthals meet modern humans from the Neanderthals' point of view. The author really brings you into a completely different way of experiencing the world.

>172 Robertgreaves: huh sounds really interesting! Would you say it was well done?

Oh, definitely. It does sometimes require a bit of thought to "translate" from the Neanderthals' perspective into how we would interpret what's happening, but that's part of what makes it so convincing.

>171 Robertgreaves: The Question of Red sounds like a fascinating read, however, the cheapest book to buy I could find was $25, so I will wait till the price goes down! Also, The Inheritors sounds like a good read, but I was not too keen on his Lord of the Flies.

>171 Robertgreaves: The Question of Red sounds like a fascinating read; however, the "cheapest" book form is over $25. Will wait till the price goes down. From your review I would like to read The Inheritors, hopefully it is not too much like Lord of the Flies

>176 Tess_W: monstrous. It's Rp. 150,000 here (approx USD 11.20). If I hear of someone going to the States would you like me to get you a copy and ask them to post it to you?

My memory of Lord of the Flies is rather vague as it was another one I read at school.

That's a lot of work and then I would need to get $ to you and them....so I'll just see if the price drops....if not in say 6 months, I might get back to you, but thanks so much for the offer!

Not a problem. There's one easy way to get money to me, buy me an Amazon UK voucher.

Starting my No. 99, Down Among the Dead Men by Michelle Williams. This is an ebook which I've had long enough for it to count as the forty-first ROOT for 2015. I have a vague idea this was a book bullet from LT but I can't remember who from.

My review of The Moon Is A Harsh Mistress:

First person narrative by Manny O'Kelly-Davies telling how the Lunar Penal Colony revolted in 2076 and gained its independence from the Federated Nations of Earth.

I found the patois more irritating than when I first read this in my teens or twenties. It's too similar to my day job :-). But it is a good story with enjoyable characters whether or not you agree with Heinlein's Libertarian philosophy, which is heavily emphasised.

>174 Robertgreaves: sounds fascinating!

Starting my No. 100, The Alto Wore Tweed by Mark Schweizer. This is an ebook which counts as my forty-second ROOT for 2015.

My review of Down Among The Dead Men:

Michelle Williams moved sideways into a job as a Medical Technical Officer, otherwise known as a mortuary assistant and this is her memoir of her first year or so in the job.

Sometimes funny, sometimes desperately sad, always interesting but more due to the nature of the material than the author's style, which tends to veer between ladette and officialese.

I did think Lord of the Flies was interesting although disturbing. I hadn't even thought about other books by Golding.

I saw on tv that another planet similar to earth has been found, although quite far away. That plus the flyby of Pluto have been fun to see and think about.

>183 billiejean: cool!
(and FYI: http://www.cnn.com/2015/07/23/us/feat-nasa-kepler-planet-discovery/)

Starting my No. 101, Political Poison by Mark Richard Zubro. This is an old ebook and so is my forty-third ROOT for 2015.

My review of The Alto Wore Tweed:

Hayden Konig is the chief of police in a small town in North Carolina, choirmaster and organist at his local Episcopalian church, and wannabe author of noir mysteries. In this first installment in a series, the sexton's body is found poisoned in the choir loft.

I am definitely going to read the rest of these when I can get hold of them. Not so much for the mystery as for the goings on in the rest of the town. Though somehow I doubt whether the author can beat the unfortunate demise of Darlene Puckett by leaping out of a speeding car's sun roof and its repercussions.

Starting the next in the series, Another Dead Teenager. This is a new ebook and so does not count as a ROOT. It's my No. 102.

My review of Political Poison:

In this police procedural from the early 1990s a Chicago alderman and professor of English literature is poisoned and detectives Paul Turner and Buck Fenwick are ordered to investigate.

I wanted to like this book but 2/3 of the way in I had to admit I didn't really care who did it. The book only really gained interest halfway through the penultimate chapter. And I don't really get why that particular question made the murderer confess. I'll give him another chance with the next in the series but my series junkie juices aren't flowing.

Starting my No. 103, Death Will Extend Your Vacation by Elizabeth Zelvin. This is an old ebook which counts as my forty-fourth ROOT for 2015.

My review of Another Dead Teenager:

Two high school football players are found dead in different locations, but was it two murders or a murder followed by a suicide?

Much better paced and far more interesting than the previous book in this series. Even so, although I've put the next one in the series on my wishlist, I'm in no hurry to get to it.

>186 Robertgreaves: an alderman & a professor or just 1 person who serves both functions? Just curious.. I suppose you say "is poisoned" so I assume just the 1 person... :)
I like crime-stories set in cities in which I've lived .. but sounds like this one isn't probably worth reading

Yes, one person who is both an alderman and a professor :-). The whole series is set in Chicago. That was the second in the series. The first (Sorry Now?) and third (Another Dead Teenager) were much better but don't really get my series junkie juices flowing. The same author has another series also set in Chicago, but one of the detectives is a pro baseball player, so I suspect there would be too much I wouldn't understand and I would drive my American sports-loving friend mad with questions.

PS. Actually even Political Poison might be more interesting than I found it for someone who has lived in Chicago and can visualise the places and understands the local government politics.

I abandoned Death Will Extend Your Vacation and started City of the Sharp-Nosed Fish by Peter Parsons, an ebook which is my forty-fifth ROOT for 2015.

My review of "Death Will Extend Your Vacation":

Clea, one of the guests in a group vacation house for recovering alcoholics is found dead on the beach.

I was already bored by the time the members of the group who found the body were allowed to go home by the police. It takes a lot to get me to abandon a book once I've started, but this one managed it.

Hi Robert! Swinging by to see what you have been up to!

Thanks for dropping by.

>189 Robertgreaves: Hmm... I think if I can find time (ha), I'll look up the first and see. :) I really enjoyed The Charles Dickens Murders, even though I don't believe it's considered particularly good -- largely, I think, because it was so familiar for me :) Maybe I'll be equally forgiving of these books....

Starting my No. 104, Hawksmoor by Peter Ackroyd. This brings the TBR pile down to 52, and is my forty-sixth ROOT for 2015.

My review of The City of the Sharp-Nosed Fish:

In 1897 excavations were started in what turned out to be the rubbish heaps of Oxyrhynchos, a small Ptolemaic and Roman city in Egypt (now the village of El-Behnesa). Over six years a huge number of papyri were discovered and they are still being deciphered and published today.

After some introductory chapters on the history of Egypt, the history of Egyptology and the excavations at Oxyrhynchos, which tended to be rather repetitive, the book discusses various topics of social life in Roman Egypt based on the papyri, with extensive quotations.

Unfortunately the ebook formatting omits most punctuation marks and all letters with diacritical marks so it is sometimes quite an exercise in decipherment itself. It's often not clear what is paraphrase and what is quotation, unless an unexpected first person gives the game away, events took place in e.g. 20610 (206-10), and there are enough missing apostrophes to stock a large city's greengrocers. Transliterations using a macron to mark an eta or omega just omit the letter altogether as do names of scholars with umlauts or French accents.

Having said all that, it is a fascinating glimpse into life as it was lived back then as shown by people's waste-paper.

>194 Robertgreaves: Sounds like a good read, if not for the format.

Starting my No. 105, Animal Wise by Virginia Morell. This is an ebook and is forty-seventh ROOT for 2015.

My review of Hawksmoor:

As occultist and architect, Nicholas Dyer, builds churches in the City of London from 1711 to 1715, events in his life are strangely echoed in the life of Nick Hawksmoor, a detective in the 1980s who is investigating murders whose victims are found in Dyer's churches.

A complex and demanding read, obviously taking Dyer's side in the belief that there is more to life than the facts we perceive based on experience and experiment as championed by the Greshamites as he calls the scientists who were early members of the Royal Society.

Starting my No. 107, Maskerade by Terry Pratchett. This is my forty-eighth ROOT for 2015 and brings the TBR pile down to 51.

My review of Animal Wise:

This book features ants who teach their nestmates routes, archerfish who learn how to hit a novel target by watching their colleagues, birds who can count and recognise themselves in a mirror (thus having a sense of self) and whose calls seem to include names for individuals, rats who laugh when they are tickled, the prodigious memories of elephants, dolphins who form friendships and alliances with other non-related dolphins, chimpanzees who can solve touch-screen intelligence tests and memorise patterns of objects faster than humans can, and finally dogs who pick up human social cues.

The author stresses the great strides being made in our knowledge now that the old paradigm of animals as stimulus-response automatons has gone. A recurring theme is that it is animals who live in social groups and need to know who can be relied upon for what and who can't which seem to develop intelligence.

A fascinating read.

Starting my No. 108, The Giver Quartet Lois Lowry. This is a new ebook, the first part of which is my RL book club's choice for August.

My review of Maskerade:

Very funny story set in the opera house of Ankhmorpok on the Discworld. The plot has a resemblance to "The Phantom of the Opera" but the Lancre witches get involved when a potential member of the coven runs away to become an opera singer.

>198 Robertgreaves: the whole quartet? I recently read The Giver for the first time and am very curious about the other books in the series!

Yes, in my local bookshop the quartet is selling as a single volume and as individual volumes. Same for ebooks.

Starting my No. 109, The Secret Vanguard by Michael Innes. This brings the TBR pile down to 50 and is my forty-ninth ROOT for 2015.

My review of The Giver Quartet:

The Giver
As Jonas approaches the end of his year as an Eleven he becomes apprehensive about what the assignment (the work for which he will train)he will be given at the end of the year will be. In his new role he finds out the secrets behind his community's idyllic lifestyle.

Gathering Blue
After Kira's mother's death, some of the women in her considerably less idyllic community try to steal the land she inherited but when Kira appeals to the Council of Guardians she is given an enhanced position in the community as the weaver who will restore the robe worn by the Singer who keeps the story of the community's history.

Messenger
All is not well in Village, the refuge where some characters from "The Giver" and "Gathering Blue" now live. The inhabitants are busy trading for desirable objects, but what are they giving up in exchange? Forest is changing to reflect the changes in Village.

Son
This fourth volume of the quartet takes an almost invisible character from "The Giver" and follows her in her journey to Village and then updates us on various characters from the earlier books.

I think I should have just read "The Giver" by itself. As a stand alone it's an interesting utopia that turns out to be a dystopia (though I suspect human nature is not as malleable as the author makes it out to be), but expanding the story out into the rest of the world just raises too many questions as to how this world actually works.

Why can't the people in The Giver's community see colours there but can see them outside? How can that community have weather control and have removed all animal life from their community but the other communities not? Where do the gifts come from? Why don't the people in the inaccessible fishing village have to worry about inbreeding? And on and on.

>201 Robertgreaves: thanks for your review! Helps me decide if I want to read more than just the first.... perhaps not ;)

Starting the next Michael Innes, There Came Both Mist and Snow. This is my No. 110, but as a new ebook it is not a ROOT.

My review of The Secret Vanguard:

In 1939, a minor poet called Philip Ploss is murdered at his home near London and a young Scottish woman travelling to visit relatives near Perth hears somebody on the train misquoting Swinburne. The connection puts her in deadly danger.

Part mystery and part spy story in the style of "The Thirty-Nine Steps", for me it's not one of Innes's best, though I am always willing to enter his world of urbane intellectuals and characters hovering on the borders between eccentricity and outright lunacy. This world probably never existed but as a teenager I desperately wanted to be part of it.

The next Inspector Appleby story is Appleby on Ararat. This is my No. 111 but as a new ebook is not a ROOT.

My review of There Came Both Mist and Snow:

Sir Basil Roper's relations have come to stay for Christmas. His nephew Wilfred Foxcroft is shot, but was he the intended victim?

The narrator's voice was obviously meant as a parody of a certain type of 1930s literary figure, but I found it grated after a while. An ingenious conclusion, so ingenious I'm not even sure it's possible.

Starting the next Inspector Appleby story, The Daffodil Affair. This is my No. 112, but as another new ebook is not a ROOT.

My review of Appleby on Ararat:

Three Englishmen (a policeman, a colonel, and a clergyman), an Englishwoman, an Australian woman, and an African man are stranded on a Pacific island after their boat is torpedoed in the early part of the Second World War. A few days later the African, Sir Ponto Unumunu, is found dead, the back of his head having been bashed in. The policeman is of course John Appleby and he investigates as they discover that the island is not as deserted as they thought.

The social comedy before the torpedo hits as the white characters bicker amongst themselves and then have to adjust their racial ideas to an educated African with a knighthood is very funny. The casual racism exhibited by the characters towards Pacific Islanders in the abstract and those they meet is deplorable but no doubt true to how many British people did think at the time the book was written. Despite these sour notes, it's still an enjoyable adventure story, rather than purely a detective story.

And the next Inspector Appleby story is The Weight of the Evidence. This is my No. 113 but is not a ROOT.

My review of The Daffodil Affair:

Applebby is given a bit of a holiday to trace the Assistant Commissioner of Scotland Yard's sister's favourite cab horse. But it seems to tie in with a house that was stolen from a Bloomsbury square during the Blitz, a young woman with multiple personalities who has gone missing and the last of the Haworth witches.

A very peculiar adventure with, as Appleby and his colleague admit, the strangest motive for a murder in the history of detective fiction.

Reading my No. 114, Appleby's End. This is another new ebook, so not a ROOT.

My review of The Weight of the Evidence:

It was Professor Prisk in the courtyard with the meteorite. Or was it? A meteorite fell from the courtyard tower onto Professor Pluckrose. Was Professor Prisk the murderer or was he the intended victim? Or was it suicide by a professor suffering from that latest contribution to psychoanalytic theory, the Sisyphus Complex? And how does the bigamous young mathematics lecturer fit in?

Great fun. Though since it was written during the war but set before war, it is possible to feel that Appleby's foresight is more a matter of authorial hindsight.

Starting my No. 115, Taken At the Flood by Robin Waterfield. This is a new ebook and so not a ROOT. It is my online bookclub's choice for September.

My review of Appleby's End:

On what seems to be an interminable railway journey to the village of Snarl in the depths of winter, John Appleby misses his connection because the timetable was printed long before Gregory Grope's grandmother fell down the well. He is invited to stay by a fellow passenger, Everard Raven, an encylopaedist and lexicographer only to find that the Raven family may be linked to the case he has been sent to investigate. Are the novels and stories of Everard's late father, the Victorian writer Ranulph Raven, starting to come true?

I was an avid Michael Innes fan in my teens and twenties and this was always my favourite because of its complete dottiness. It has stood up well to the lapse of time.

Starting my No. 116, Marple and Mystery by Agatha Christie. This contains all of the Miss Marple short stories and I'm starting it as my short story emergency reading collection. It's a newish ebook and so doesn't count as a ROOT.

So what is a short story emergency collection?

I keep these so I have something to read when the main book I'm reading is too heavy or bulky to carry around with me or I need to read it with a reference book handy. The maps and illustrations in the ebook version of Taken At The Flood are too small and so I need to have my laptop or tablet open at the maps while I'm reading the text on my ereader so if I'm somewhere that's not practical I read the short stories.

Ahhh, gotcha!

Only 11 away from your goal! Woo hoo! :)

Go, Robert! I have a kind of emergency collection too!

Starting my No. 117, Anansi Boys by Neil Gaiman. This is my 50th ROOT and brings the TBR pile down to 49.

Wow. I cannot imagine having a TBR pile of only 49! Something to aspire to... :)
Also, that's a book on my to-read-wishlist... look forward to your thoughts!

Well, that doesn't count the 50 or so on my ereader and apps. Even if I didn't buy any more books that would be getting on for a year's supply.

Starting a new book of short stories: The Mammoth Book of Egyptian Whodunnits by Mike Ashley. This is my No. 118 but is fairly new and so doesn't count as a ROOT.

My review of Anansi Boys:


After his father's death, Fat Charlie Nancy finds out that he was actually an African spider god who plays the trickster role in many folk tales and that he, Charlie, has a brother called Spider who has inherited their father's powers.

I wasn't sure what to expect going in to this book, but it was funny with all sorts of sly references for the reader to pick up. I will be looking out for the author's other books.

Starting my No. 119, Great Expectations by Charles Dickens. This brings the TBR pile down to 48 and is my fifty-first ROOT for 2015.

>218 Robertgreaves: Great Expectations is a good read! Depends upon which version you get as to how it really ends....it was first serialized and then made into a novel after his death. Dickens wrote 2 endings. Let me know how yours ends!

I have read it before, but I didn't know about the two endings.

>217 Robertgreaves: even so.... :)

Have you read American Gods also by Gaiman? I ask because it seems that Anansi Boys has similar themes (I haven't read it yet) and I wondered if they were meant to go together..

No, this was the first Neil Gaiman book I've read. But I've put American Gods on my wishlist.

>222 Robertgreaves: And I have Anansi Boys on mine :) I think it's just a theme he likes exploring - the concept of "forgotten gods" .. Although I didn't actually love American Gods (I thought it was fine), I do really enjoy Gaiman's writing -- Fragile Things is a wonderful short story collection, and I really enjoyed Ocean at the End of the Lane. Hope you enjoy the additional Gaiman you read!

>219 Tess_W:, AFTER you have finished reading Great Expectations, then read this!

http://exec.typepad.com/greatexpectations/the-two-endings.html

I've just finished it and was going to look up about the alternative endings. :-) Mine had the standard Satis House ending, which I read to mean she was dying but he didn't know it. (Sorry to anyone who hasn't read it but I don't know how to do the spoiler white out.)

Starting my No. 120, Original Sin by P. D. James. This brings the TBR pile down to 47 and is my fifty-second ROOT for 2015.

My review of Great Expectations:

Pip is brought up by his abusive sister and her gentle husband. Then Pip finds out a mysterious benefactor is going to pay for his education and provide him with an income when he reaches adulthood. He leaves the good parts of his childhood behind as well as the bad but hankers for the beautiful Estella, who has been brought up by the jilted Miss Havisham to be emotionally abusive in revenge on the male sex.

It's Dickens. He knows how to make you laugh and cry. Even when you know how it's all going to end you keep turning the pages.

Just pointing out that Wednesday is International Translation Day.

And how are you going to celebrate, Robert?

Well, I was thinking of reading a translation from the physical or virtual TBR pile, but I've got my virtual book club choice to read for next week and also my real life book club choice for October is quite a big one so I don't think it's going to be practical. So I will probably take the translators from work out for lunch.

>226 Robertgreaves: Woo hoo! :) (I am trained as a translator myself.)

What languages do your translation colleagues work in?

They translate from English to Indonesian. I translate from Indonesian to English.

>225 Robertgreaves: to do a spoiler, type <spoiler> then type your spoiler and then type </spoiler>
E.g., <spoiler>This is a Spoiler</spoiler> looks like this: This is a Spoiler

Hope that helps! ;)

OK, ta

My struggles with the TBR pile continue here.

>217 Robertgreaves: American Gods and De bende van Anansi are part 1 and 2 in a series.