MissWatson's ROOTing is divided into 3 parts

I have got some very big books lined up for 2017 and won't manage as many ROOTs as last year, so my goal is set at 25.
Everything I owned before January 1st, 2017 will count as a ROOT and will include re-reads for the first time. Thus, my ROOTing is divided into three parts.

Good to see you back - good lick rooting 😊

In memoriam

Every time a well-known or well-loved author dies I feel an urge to search my shelves, but they didn't fit current reading plans. This year I will make time for books by authors who died in the last five years, including 2017.

1. The way through the woods by Colin Dexter

Amnesia in litteris

This is a useful phrase I found attributed to Patrick Süskind. It means you know that you have read a particular book, but cannot remember what it's about. So this is where I list my re-reads.

1. Sanditon and other stories by Jane Austen
2. Der Mantel by Nikolai Gogol
3. The dragonbone chair by Tad Williams

Ad libitum

Anything goes, as long as it was acquired before 2017.

1. Robert van Gulik by Janwillem van de Wetering
2. Die Entdeckung der Langsamkeit by Sten Nadolny
3. Maigret et les braves gens by Georges Simenon
4. The hare with amber eyes by Edmund de Waal
5. Why Frau Frohmann raised her prices, and other stories by Anthony Trollope
6. Lotta Schmidt, and other stories by Anthony Trollope
7. Blade Runner by Philip K. Dick
8. Homeworld by Harry Harrison
9. Die Kinder des Prometheus by Hermann Parzinger
10. Wheelworld by Harry Harrison
11. Starworld by Harry Harrison
12. Cover her face by P.D. James
13. Auf den Spuren der Indoeuropäer by Harald Haarmann
14. Demelza by Winston Graham
15. The long way to a small, angry planet by Becky Chambers
16. Muerte súbita by Álvaro Enrigue
17. Rulaman by David Friedrich Weinland
18. William the Silent by C. V. Wedgwood
19. Grießnockerlaffäre by Rita Falk
20. Castle Rackrent / The absentee by Maria Edgeworth
21. Habsburgs verkaufte Töchter by Thea Leitner
22. Die Herrinnen der Loire-Schlösser by Sylvia Jurewitz-Freischmidt
23. Das ewige Leben by Wolf Haas
24. Dear life by Alice Munro
25. Lichter setzen über grellem Grund by Renate Feyl
26. Briarpatch by Ross Thomas
27. Rendezvous with Rama by Arthur C. Clarke
28. Ruth by Elizabeth Gaskell
29. Villette by Charlotte Brontë
30. Die Unterwerfung der Welt by Wolfgang Reinhard
31. Mädchen in Uniform by Christa Winsloe
32. Die Verlobung by Ludwig Tieck

>2 Henrik_Madsen: Hi Henrik! Good to see you, too!

Happy new year! Looking forward to seeing what you read this year, I took a few BBs from you last year!

>8 Jackie_K: Hi Jackie, I'm eager to get started!

Great setup for your ROOT reading! I hope you discover some hidden gems on your shelves :)

Welcome back & Happy 2017 ROOTing!

Here's to a great 2017 with lots of ROOTing. I love the idea of an in memoriam section.

Looking forward to following along! I too like your in memoriam section.

Thank you all for dropping in!

Happy reading in 2017. I love that you made room for reading the authors that we lose each year.

Happy ROOTing and I'm looking forward to following along. Last year got derailed near the end and I dropped off some threads, including yours, but I have high hopes for this year.

I like your sectioning of your ROOTs and you're following the same rule as I am - anything before 1/1/17 is a ROOT!

Love, love, love your categories!

>15 billiejean: >16 karenmarie: >17 Tess_W: Thank you. Happy reading to all of you!

Ad libitum

I just realised that my first book of the year qualifies, since I bought it on December 28th, haha! Robert van Gulik is a biography, written by a Dutch mystery writer who loves the Judge Dee mysteries written by van Gulik. He led an amazing life, and many of his works mentioned here I also saw referenced in one of my 2016 reads, Needham's Science and Civilisation in China.

The next book, Die Entdeckung der Langsamkeit, was another leftover from 2016. I picked it up because one of the participants of the expedition in Euphrat Queen was lost with Sir John Franklin's last expedition, so it seemed a good time to pick up this fictionalised biography of Franklin. Another very rewarding read.

who hoo congrats on 2 down already!

Hello Brigit! Nice plans! Happy ROOTing in 2017.

>21 connie53: Thanks Connie! I'm off to a good start, currently reading my third ROOT.

WOW! I have not even started my first one.

I've already visited our fellow ROOTers' threads, so I am slightly head of you, I guess. Catching up takes some time!

>24 MissWatson: I will get there, but I first have to finish the book I'm reading now Grijze ogen by Anne Bishop

Ad libitum

Another short book squeezed in before I tackle my chunksters: Maigret et les braves gens which I pulled off the shelf because we had a new TV version of Maigret on Sunday, starring Rowan Atkinson. I was a little disoriented by the Fifties setting, but on checking my book I found that he wrote an amazing amount of Maigret books from the Thirties to the Sixties, so that's okay. It was a pleasant read, written in plain and simple French, so no need for a dictionary. No graphic violence, just the quest to find out what happened. And the TV version was also quite good.

Wow, three ROOTs done already. Looks like you will have no problem reaching your goal.

>27 Familyhistorian: Thanks, I'm afraid the "ad libitum" section will turn out to be the largest because I keep getting sidetracked from my planned reading.

Isn't that just the way things go? I get sidetracked, too.

>29 billiejean: Yes, and sidetracking turns into such lovely reads. I just discovered that Jane Austen's Lady Susan has been made into a movie, and off I went to take my recently-bought Everyman's edition off the shelf!

>30 MissWatson:
Is that the recent Kate Beckinsale movie? I enjoyed that one when I went to see it, but think it is one of those films that I would have preferred to watch at home with a cozy cup of tea and scones rather than in the theatre...

>31 Caramellunacy: Yes. I'm increasingly out of the loop regarding movies, because it feels like there are only those comic-based big bang affairs for nerds and small boys. Good to know it's more for watching at home, since I missed the only showings of the original version here. Now we only have the one dubbed into German. Thank the Lord for DVDs with multiple soundtracks. I can bide my time until it's released.

>32 MissWatson: Dubbed in German. I really hate that. It was often done in the past. I hope it lessened somewhat.
When we first moved to Roermond from The Hague (when I was 10 years old)we watched German TV lot, but I got a bit frustrated with all the dubbing. It looked like they had only 8 persons who spoke in the German text.
It was good for my German, though.

>33 connie53: No, it's still standard practice to dub everything. It was more than a little disorienting to hear the original voices of much-loved stars for the first time, when VHS cassettes could be bought from the UK. Haven't looked back since, I watch the original soundtrack these days.

>34 MissWatson: Good for you. I can understand the disorientation.

>27 Familyhistorian: Just what I was going to say :)
and >26 MissWatson: nice to start off with easy ones before tackling a chunkster.. I did the same thing.. :)

Amnesia in litteris

I finished Sanditon and other stories which reunites all of Jane Austen's early and unfinished writings in a single volume, and I read it now because I find that a new movie is based on two of these tales (Lady Susan and Love and freindship) and because last year I bought the gorgeous Everyman's Library edition. Wonderful smooth paper and two of my favourite typefaces in a reasonably generous font size. It was a replacement for a tattered OUP edition which I read ages ago, and I had no clear memory of the various stories.
Not as polished as her novels, but it had me giggling quite often. I was amazed to read the phrase "leader of the Gang" here, it's surprising how old some of these sayings are.

>37 MissWatson: Hi Birgit! I have Sanditon and Other Stories on my shelves, although not in as fine an edition as you have. Physical qualities of books can be very important and I almost swooned over the Wonderful smooth paper and two of my favourite typefaces in a reasonably generous font size. description.

>38 karenmarie: Yes, it can be important. A cheap or second-hand paperback is perfectly okay for a one-time read, but for books that I know I will re-read several times, I try to find well-made editions. Paper quality really makes a difference as I am finding now when reading decades-old books from my shelves. Some have pristine white pages, others crumble as soon as you open them. And while e-books are convenient, I still prefer printed paper.

Ad libitum

Why Frau Frohmann raised her prices, and other stories is an e-book I downloaded before Christmas because it contains a Christmas story. The title story takes place in Austria and reads like a lesson in basic economics (monetary theory and inflation, to be exact), and there are three romances. A pleasant read, but I prefer his big novels.

Five ROOTs already, and I'm 150 pages into my non-fiction chunkster. Can I keep this up?

>40 MissWatson: yes! You can do it! ;)

Like your categories, especially honoring authors who have recently died. I happened to be reading The March: A Novel by E L Doctorow at the time of his death. With that event, I was especially glad to be reading such a great Civil War novel about Sherman's march from Atlanta to the Atlantic because I hadn't enjoyed Ragtime or Billy Bathgate, in comparison.

He was a second-chance author in my book, and he exceeded the bar with "March."

I only wish Umberto Eco had died when I was reading his better work instead of when I was reading what is probably his weakest, Numero Zero. Found it unpolished and too meta to be called a novel. Experimental fiction seems to be a better category.

I know we're almost 2 weeks into the new year, but I'm still trying to drop in on everyone and say hello. Good luck with your goals this year! :) I like your set-up.

>30 MissWatson: I've been wanting to see Love and Friendship for a while. I think it's streaming on Amazon. I've never read the short story (stories?) it is based on, though.

>40 MissWatson: Thanks, Aletheia! Bad weather certainly helps with staying indoors and reading.

>41 avanders: I read Der Name der Rose decades ago and still haven't got around to those others. But I'm still optimistic for this year.

>42 Limelite: Nice to see you here, Elizabeth! Love and freindship is an epistolary novel, very short, and makes fun of the overly romantic and often unrealistic novels of her time.

I love your phrase 'Amnesia in litteris'. I think I'll have to steal uh, *borrow* that. I plan to do a couple rereads this year that definitely fit into that category.

>45 streamsong: I borrowed it myself, so help yourself. And enjoy the re-reads!

Hi Birgit! Congrats on so many books this year so far!

>44 MissWatson: it so does ... especially the reading w/o feeling guilty about whatever else I'm *not* accomplishing part ;)

ad libitum

I finished The hare with amber eyes. Interesting bits about Charles Ephrussi as the probable model for Charles Swann, the Parisian art world, Vienna, Tokyo, and a truly chilling chapter about the Anschluss.
But I couldn't warm to the book, maybe I was expecting too much from the fact that it won the Costa biography award. This is not what I expect from a biography, even if it is the biography of an entire family. I missed proper notes and found myself constantly turning to the internet to check up on names, people, places. And I really wish he had identified that Wassermann novel that apparently echoes The 39 steps.

ETC

>49 MissWatson:

I read The Hare with the Amber Eyes a few years back and enjoyed a lot of the historical bits - all fascinating stuff, particularly the bit in Vienna with the young servant(?) hiding the netsuke from the Nazis using the house as a headquarters(?). But I found the author's discussion of his porcelains and whatnot dull (especially compared to his family) and since he played his relationship to Iggy and the family so close to the chest, I thought it was missing the personal touch that I wanted out of a story billed as a personal memoir...

>50 Caramellunacy: Yes, the history bits were fascinating, and I was amazed to see how much the family (or members of it) can be traced in fiction of the time. Other things, like Anna saving the netsuke for the family (and she was old by this time, having been Emmy's maid since the wedding) seemed horribly clichéd, even if true. I was also a little disturbed by his description of post-war Japan, someone without knowledge of history (an ever-increasing number, alas) might get the impression that Japan was the victim, not the aggressor.

>51 MissWatson:
I don't remember his description of Japan (it's been quite a while), but that is certainly problematic!

>38 karenmarie: I almost swooned over the Wonderful smooth paper and two of my favourite typefaces in a reasonably generous font size. description

"swooned" -- perfect! Me too!

>38 karenmarie: >53 detailmuse: It adds so much pleasure to reading a book if it is beautifully made, doesn't it?

Ad libitum

Another recent digital acquisition is finished: Lotta Schmidt, and other stories by Trollope, which I downloaded because of a Christmas story it contains: The two generals. Almost all the stories are set abroad, there's usually a romance and surprisingly not all the romances end in marriage. They were also very topical, the two generals are brothers who find themselves on opposite sides of the American Civil War (which had not ended yet at the time of writing) and another is set in Venice during the fights for Italian independence. My own impression is that Trollope was well-travelled and willing to acknowledge that different peoples live differently. The first story is set in Vienna and he is at pains to tell his readers that girls may go out dancing without chaperones, which would be unthinkable in England. It instantly reminded me of snotty Eugenia Wraxton in The Grand Sophy who considers English manners to be superior to everything else under the sun.

Ad libitum

I finally took Blade Runner off the shelf, almost thirty-five years after I bought it because of the movie. Interesting concepts, but I found the fact that it is set in 2020 strangely distracting. The discrepancy between what is and what he imagined was too big.

>41 avanders:, >50 Caramellunacy:, >51 MissWatson: The Hare with the Amber Eyes is still on my too read list. It got a lot of good press and praise when it came out, so it's interesting to see that it's not all great and to hear some critical comments. I might bump it up on my list, am intrigued now...

>56 MissWatson: ooooh I love that .. reading what someone thought "now" would be like and how wrong and right it can be! Maybe I have to check that book out... I did enjoy the movie :)

Just a quick hello, Birgit. Hope things are going well for you.

>58 avanders: Hi Aletheia! I preferred the movie, where the androids got much more room to tell their story.
>59 karenmarie: Hi Karen! I'm fine, thanks, but work is back to normal after the holidays, which means busy. And I am halfway through my non-fiction chunkster.

>56 MissWatson: I actually kind of like reading old scifi works that are set in our current time - or even in the past by now! I just really enjoy reading about how people thought it would be and seeing how everything they conjectured is so totally off, I think it gives a nice twist to reading scifi...

>60 MissWatson: interesting.. I also enjoy comparing books & movies.. generally I need to read the book first, but sometimes I can go back and read the book after having seen the movie if I'm really motivated ;) I'll try in this case!

>61 Britt84: I also enjoy older SF but it also makes me sad to see how all that optimism about progress in the sciences seems to have been lost. I'm not sure whether it's something that we've lost as a culture or whether I'm just getting old.

>61 Britt84: Yes, it can be fascinating. I read somewhere that Jules Verne's Paris in the 20th century got an amazing number of things right...
>62 avanders: Sometimes I didn't even know there was a book first.
>63 Robertgreaves: Maybe it's because we're dealing with the unintended consequences of the optimism now? Launching Sputnik in 1957, today we worry about space junk dropping on our heads? Although, if I remember my Strugatzki correctly, the Soviets were pretty pessimistic in their SF.

Ad libitum

I have finished the first of my non-fiction chunksters, Die Kinder des Prometheus. A history of humankind as they spread across the globe and invented farming, husbandry and ceramics. It becomes a little repetitive if read in one go, there are only a few ways to vary "they settled down and started growing this or that", but interesting nonetheless. Especially for the bits we cannot verify because the missing link settlements have vanished when sea levels rose.

Ad libitum

Homeworld provided a little diversion between the dry non-fiction stuff.

>65 MissWatson: Sounds wonderful, Birgit, but it doesn't appear to have been translated to English - I don't usually have to check for translations - am I missing something?

>67 karenmarie: Hi Karen, the German National Library doesn't show any translations, and they are usually reliable. I notice that few books from the humanities are translated into English, so nowadays there's a foundation which chooses outstanding contributions and funds the translations. (The exact name of which escapes me at the moment.)

Ad libitum

The nice things about Harry Harrison's books is that they are usually short, so I finished Wheelworld last night, the second instalment in the trilogy. The only thing that links the two books is the main character, Jan Kulozik, so now I'm curious to see how this ends. I may even be able to do it this night.
Do I need to change my goal for this year? It looks suspiciously easy to achieve.

>64 MissWatson: Me too... Sometimes I can overcome that hump; sometimes not ;p

>69 MissWatson: great progress! I wouldn't change your goal just yet... My last January & February were very productive... but I still struggled to meet my goal by the end of the year.. maybe re-evaluate in a few months?

.... Although I just looked and you are already almost halfway done ;) Do what you think is best! Even if you smash your goal to pieces, your remaining ROOT readings will help the group!

>70 avanders: Yes, I'm still mulling this over. I will probably slow down considerably with my next non-fiction book.

Ad libitum

In a final mad dash I finished Starworld, a few minutes before midnight. Sadly, it didn't live up to the promise of the first two instalments. Which means I can part with the trilogy, I won't be re-reading this. And I am almost 50% on the way to reaching my goal, wow.
Next on deck is a followup to my fat non-fiction book, so I'll wait and see how this develops before I make a decision about changing my goal.

>72 MissWatson: bummer -- I hate it when the finale in a trilogy lets me down :-/

congrats on being 50% done already!

>73 avanders: Thanks!

Just a quick hello, Birgit! Hope you're doing well.

Ad libitum

I got sidetracked by some shiny new books, including a fat fantasy book. But last night I finished another ROOT: Cover her face. This was my first encounter with P.D. James, and her debut book. A solid country house murder mystery.

I like the Adam Dalgleish series and have read quite a few of them.

>77 karenmarie: I have at least one more buried somewhere in the TBR. I should really start sorting them, it's getting out of hand.

I'm one of those obsessive people who use location tags to identify where each book is. I also, last year, moved all the books I've read and want to keep upstairs and now the downstairs only has books I haven't yet read. For me, the only way to go, as I don't group books by genre, author, color, title, or anything else except where they fit on the shelves!

Good luck finding the next one!

>79 karenmarie: Thanks, Karen, the P.D. James turned up, but now another one is missing. I think I know what I'll be doing next weekend. I sort them alphabetically by author and since there is only one room, it should be manageable.

Ad libitum

Auf den Spuren der Indoeuropäer was a follow-up to my fat non-fiction book about prehistoric peoples. This one looks specifically at Indo-Europeans and traces them mostly by linguistic development. Quite fascinating.

Ad libitum

And I finished another ROOT this weekend: Demelza. The book-sorting project is on hold, though. My sister sent me an audiobook, a funny mystery starring a meerkat as a private eye, and that took precedence. Maybe next weekend.

>82 MissWatson: Love the Poldark Series. Read book # 1 and then watched 2 seasons of it on PBS. Will continue with it when I get a couple of other of my series finished.

>83 Tess_W: Hi Tess, I've got the new TV version standing by, but wanted to read the books first. I hope to make them for the next one in March.

#82 Our just finishing the second season of Poldark has inspired me and I'm just about halfway through Jeremy Poldark. Such a good series! I hope you liked Demelza.

>85 karenmarie: Hi Karen! Yes, I liked Demelza a lot. It was also vaguely familiar, but I cannot quite put my finger on the why.

Ad libitum

And my fourth ROOT this month is pulled: The long way to a small, angry planet which I bought last year because so many other LTers praised. I loved it, too, great characters, an interesting universe and much that resonates with current affairs. Although I found her humans to be very, very Christian and Anglo-Saxon in their attitudes. Did the West ruin life on earth for all the others and then bought their way out to the stars? I'm looking forward to find out more about this in the next book(s).

Ad libitum

Muerte súbita took me longer to finish than I expected. Lots of things to look up, not only the Mexican Spanish, but facts and people. It's one of the oddest books I have ever read. The main theme is a tennis match between the painter Caravaggio and the poet Quevedo and in between we get heaps of factoids about tennis, the Conquest of Mexico and the counterreformation of the Catholic church. Things never really came together, there was an amazing number of typos and the whole thing read as if he hadn't finished it.

>88 MissWatson: Oh that sounds very disappointing, but very impressive that you managed to plough through it!

>89 Jackie_K: I persevered mostly because of the things I found out along the way when checking up on him.

>88 MissWatson: Hi Birgit! The premise sounds wonderful, sorry the execution was disappointing.

>88 MissWatson: You are not alone in your opinion. I clicked on the link and almost every review contains the word "odd".

>91 karenmarie: >92 Tess_W: Ah well, there has to be a dud book occasionally, or we wouldn't appreciate the really good ones.

Ad libitum

Rulaman is a German children's classic about a boy living in the Stone Age, written in the late 19th century when the fossils and artefacts became the subject of scientific research. The author, David Friedrich Weinland, was a noted biologist and took a keen interest in these discoveries, and he wrote the book to make them interesting for his sons. Quite a lot of it still stands up to scrutiny, and it's a great coming-of-age tale.

Amnesia in litteris

I was running around town all day and wanted something to fit into my coat pocket for the bus rides, so I picked Der Mantel by Gogol for a re-read. Always a pleasure.

>95 MissWatson:, Haven't read that for some years. Time for a re-read for me, also!

>96 Tess_W: He's one of those writers I can appreciate much better now that I'm older.

Ad libitum

A few weeks back I watched a TV programme on the small town of Dillenburg and was reminded of a biography on my shelves: William the Silent who was born in Dillenburg, inherited the princedom of Orange and become the first leader of the Netherlands in their struggle for independence. This is a very well written biography, you get a great sense of the man and his times, and it's easy to overlook a few outdated concepts. My only complaint is that the pages were inot bound in proper sequence which resulted in jumbled a mess.
Now I want to read up more on the times. Didn't Friedrich Schiller write about this? Off to check the shelves.

ETC

Hi, Birgit! I saw in another post you said it was odd that our neck of the woods was having snow while your crocuses were in bloom....I've got both, snow and blooming crocuses!

>99 Tess_W: Lovely! We're having blue skies and sunshine today, it looks like spring is here to stay.

>99 Tess_W: How beautiful!

I've been buried in work and non-ROOT reading, but last night I picked another off the shelf: Castle Rackrent. It's very short, so I'll definitely finish it this month.
On the Netherlands front: I do have a version of Geschichte des Abfalls der Vereinigten Niederlande von der spanischen Regierung, Friedrich Schiller's take on the rebellion against Spain, on the shelf, but only in an abridged version. Openlibrary.org has a full version, but that is going to take some time. Boy, does he write convoluted sentences! And I thought his plays were hard.

Hi Birgit! I have been non-ROOTing lately, but only because I'm happily immersed in the Poldark series, which I bought this year and therefore don't count as ROOTs.

>98 MissWatson: Isn't it nice to be able to get intrigued with something and be able to go to your own shelves for more information?

Happy Thursday!

Hi Karen! I've got Jeremy Poldark lined up, but things keep distracting me.

>98 MissWatson: That's what all those ROOTs are for: providing info when it's wanted.

... I will definitely not be able to "catch up" on threads.. so I'm just dropping in to say Hi!! :)

& Congrats on such great progress w/ your ROOTs!

How wonderful to see you're back!

>104 MissWatson: I've read Poldark and Demelza and loved them both. I think there about 10 books in the series. I'm already trying to make my through Gabaldon and Trollope series, so Poldark books 3-10 will have to wait!

>106 MissWatson: thank you! It's wonderful to be back! :)

Ad libitum

My sister sent me the audio version of Grießnockerlaffäre, a Bavarian cosy mystery, which are always much more fun as audios. It means I can part with my printed copy and count it as another ROOT. That's five this month, including two very short ones. Work has been too stressful for serious reading. But I sincerely hope to tackle the big one next month.

Hi Birgit! Hope you're doing well. I've just finished the 6th book in the Poldark series, The Four Swans and ordered 7-9.

>107 Tess_W: There's an even dozen in the series, Tess. It makes buying them in groups of 3 easy for me. *smile*

>110 karenmarie: Hi Karen! Thanks, I'm doing well, just very busy between 8 and 5, and since it involves staring at screens most of the time it can be draining. But it's spring now, the daffodils are in bloom and we've had three days of continuous sunshine, yay.

Ad libitum

I made time for another short book: Castle Rackrent / The absentee by Maria Edgeworth. The first can be read in many ways, as a satire, a pamphlet or a regional novel. I found it a bit short for a novel, at 50 pages, but it packs a lot into this tale of oppression and exploitation of the Irish by their English landlords. The absentee covers much the same ground, but it's fleshed out into a coming-of-age story for the hero, heir to an Irish earl who learns about the financial problems caused by his mother's wish to cut a dash in London society where she is constantly snubbed because hers is "only" an Irish title. He travels the Irish estates incognito and decides to put things right. And he clears up the mystery surrounding the girl he loves (lost marriage certificates and disinherited parents) which reads like an attempt to satisfy the fashion for Gothic.

This was a great read, especially because it was not what I was expecting at all, I always thought Edgeworth wrote similar stuff to Ann Radcliffe. This was very different. I am ditching my copy, though, because Rackrent lacked the glossary which she added in a re-worked version. And the second book was full of printing errors, missing lines etc. Still, I'm glad it introduced me to this author.

>112 MissWatson: This makes me a bit more optimistic about returning to Edgeworth in the future. I read Ormond earlier this year and wasn't really impressed with it. Too long, not all that interesting characters etc.

>114 MissWatson: The romance part of The Absentee was a bit of a drag, but I quite enjoyed the society bits in London. Castle Rackrent requires notes for the legal details, in my mind.

Ad libitum

I finished Habsburgs verkaufte Töchter. It portrays six Habsburg women who were married off by their fathers or brothers for political reasons, ranging from the 15th to the 19th century, and five of them actually ruled. The two regents of the Netherlands and Anne d'Autriche are comparatively well known, the others less so. Maria Karolina was queen of Naples-Sicily and a fierce opponent of Napoleon, Leopoldine was Empress of Brazil. Kunigunde, who was married to a Duke of Bavaria, remains unknown, there is simply not enough documentary evidence about her. The others have been much maligned by (male) historians, and the author sets out to rectify this. Since she doesn't cite her sources, her book is of limited use in this respect, but it gives a useful overview of who was related to whom and who feuded with whom over which territory.
And now I am eyeing a few other biographies on my shelf, instead of my planned big fat book. So I have finally decided to increase my target to 40 books. At the current rate, I can reach this by summer.

>115 MissWatson: Sounds like a wonderful book! I studied the Hapsburgs in grad school for an entire semester--but mostly Franz Joseph and Maria-Theresa and their political intrigues and activity. There is a mini-series about the Habsburgs on TV now that is very interesting-from the BBC called The Hapsburg Empire. (2013)

>116 Tess_W: Hi Tess! It's one of those books where I need genealogical tables at hand to keep track of everyone. I'm still looking for a decent book on the beginnings of the tribe, medieval history is so woefully short of reliable sources.

>117 MissWatson: I like those types of books, occasionally. The last one like that I did was of the daughters/sons of Queen Victoria and where they landed in Europe and also her grandchildren. I did in fact download a genealogy chart from the net and fill it out as I went along. With that I was able to keep everybody straight in my mind.

>119 MissWatson: My current book about the Valois Die Herrinnen der Loire-Schlösser provides several tables, including the children who died young and are normally left out to make the tables less confusing, especially with that annoying habit of giving the same name to several kids. But leafing back constantly interrupts the flow of reading which I find a little distracting. Still, it's full of amazing little details, giving context to a story I thought I knew.

Hi Birgit. Stopping in to say Hi and skim through your thread. To many posts to read them all ;-)
Thanks for keeping my thread warm.

Hi Connie, nice to "see" you here. I hope you're doing well and have some sunshine for reading in the garden!

Ad libitum

Die Herrinnen der Loire-Schlösser promises biographies of the queens and mistresses of the Valois kings who lived in the castles of the Loire Valley, but doesn't quite deliver. There's too much history of events, but with annoying gaps whenever the action moves to Paris or elsewhere. I didn't like her style, far too many exclamation marks and gossipy, so I'm parting with the book.

It was a very, very nice day here in the Netherlands. So I spend most of the time outside in the garden reading. Delightful.

Way to go w/your ROOT progress!!

>123 connie53: Let's hope the nice weather continues. Here it's very much April, changing every day.

>124 avanders: Thanks!

I have now embarked on my 1600+ pages book and will probably need the rest of the month to finish it, but it's definitely worth the time. I'm taking a short break from it to spend the Easter holidays with my sister and I'll be offline for a few days.
I hope you all enjoy a lovely holiday weekend!

>126 MissWatson: thank you - hope you have lovely break too and I'm intrigued to find out about your mega-read afterwards!

>126 MissWatson: Enjoy your break!

Have a lovely holiday!

Have a lovely time with your sister, Birgit.

>126 MissWatson: wow, 1600+ pages! Good luck!
& hope you enjoyed Easter w/your sister :)

>127 floremolla: >128 Jackie_K: >129 Tess_W: >130 connie53: >131 avanders: Thank you all! We had a lovely time, but it was very cold. There was a bit of snowfall this morning! No reading done during the hols, but lots of catching up with the family.

Off to do the round through the threads. See you soon!

Welcome back, Birgit.

Hi Birgit! What 1600 page book are you reading and how far along are you?

>134 karenmarie: Hi Karen! The book is Die Unterwerfung der Welt, a history of the European expansion from the 1400s to modern times, I'm on page 390 (it's not a quick read) in the Spanish Americas. Unfortunately, I caught a severe cold on my train trip home and my attention span is not up to hard facts at the moment. I borrowed an audiobook from my sister's library and gave it a try last night, but I didn't like it. Not the fault of the narrator, it's the book, Bernard Cornwell's Arthur trilogy, and the main characters are just too stupid for words. I think I'll part with my unread paper copies, on present showing they're not worth the time.

Hi again! I occasionally love dense history books, but must admit that I've never gotten hold of one so big. I'm sorry you got a severe cold.

Light reading is so much better when sick, sorry the Arthur trilogy isn't working. That's funny - the main characters are just too stupid for words. I hope you can find something enjoyable and light until you recover.

Hope you feel better soon, Birgit, and that you find a suitable read!

Wishing you a speedy recovery and good luck finding the right thing to read. I once developed a heavy cold over the Christmas hols - I had three days in bed and read every Jane Austin I had in the house. It was almost worth being ill :)

Get well soon!

Get well soon, Birgit!

Thank you all for the well wishes, they seem to help! The coughing has finally subsided and I'm looking forward to getting some sleep tonight.

Ad libitum
I even managed to finish one ROOT: Das ewige Leben, first in the Simon Brenner series about a detective in Graz who wakes up from a coma after a gunshot wound. The doctors say it was a suicide attempt, he insists the chief of police tried to kill him, so as soon as he can crawl he sets out to investigate. A very idiosyncratic style for the first-person narrator, who frequently drops his verbs and mangles his word order. For a long time I thought it was Brenner himself talking about himself, but towards the end someone else is revealed...very strange. Not exactly light and fluffy, but enjoyable. Especially the swipes at fashionable fads, the Austrians have a very black sense of humour.

ETC

>135 MissWatson: ick a severe cold on your train trip - hope you're feeling much better now!
& congrats on even more reading! :)

>141 MissWatson: Hope you are beginning to feel like yourself again! Definitely not a fun thing to go through. I usually find it difficult to get much reading done when feeling under the weather and am just getting over a yucky Springtime cold myself.

Good luck with your continued ROOTing and all the chunksters you plan to tackle.

> 142 Thanks, Aletheia. I'm feeling better now, but I can't remember when I've had a cough like this.

>143 This-n-That: Hi, Lisa, and thanks for the good wishes. Not feeling motivated to pick up a book means I'm seriously out of order, so I'm sort of glad that it was mostly the running eyes or the coughing that stopped me.

>144 MissWatson: ick - lingering coughs :P
Hope it doesn't linger long!

>145 avanders: Thanks, I'm almost back to normal now.

In memoriam

I picked up The way through the woods by Colin Dexter, who died earlier this year and found it rather disappointing. Over-elaborate plot, and Morse was more than usually self-indulgent. I think I prefer the TV version of the series.

And that's the final book for April. Not a great reading month, only 4 ROOTs completed. That dratted cold has seriously cut into my reading. Ah well, it's a new month tomorrow, and a holiday (Labour Day in Germany and most of Europe), and the sun is shining. I may even tackle my chunkster again...

>146 MissWatson: glad to hear it! :)

>148 avanders: Hi and thanks!

I wasn't quite in the mood for non-fiction, so I started another re-read: The dragonbone chair, in preparation for the sequel coming out this summer. I'm glad to find that I remember most of this, it must have made a deep impression first time around. I hope to finish it before the weekend, my best friend is coming to stay and we won't be reading. There are so many other things to do and to enjoy this time of year.

Hi Birgit! I'm glad to hear you've recovered. I hope you have a wonderful time with your best friend.

>150 karenmarie: Thanks Karen! We're planning to go to Hamburg and see an exhibition of Venetian paintings.

That sounds lovely!

I think I'm going to go to an Ansel Adams Exhibit at the Museum of Art in Raleigh with my neighbor and her daughter on Saturday.

>149 MissWatson: fun and fun! Fun re-reading a book you enjoyed in anticipation of the next coming out ... and fun having your best friend visit!

>151 MissWatson: sounds great! Enjoy!

>152 karenmarie: I had to look him up, and the photos certainly look great. Enjoy!
>153 avanders: Thanks, we will.

Hi Birgit, so glad you are feeling better and are planning a nice weekend with your best friend.

Hi Connie! Nice to see you! I hope you're looking forward to a good weekend, too.

>156 MissWatson: Yes I do. tomorrow I'm going to two escape-rooms with some of my RL book-club friends. And Sunday promises to be a good day for sitting outside rrading.

Amnesia in litteris

Well, we had a lovely weekend, the paintings were well chosen and presented, and the weather on Sunday was perfect for the monthly open air fleamarket. We didn't find anything, but it's always fun to browse.
And last night I finally finished my re-read of The dragonbone chair.

>158 MissWatson: sounds like a very civilised weekend!

>159 floremolla: It was, including eating out at a nice new (to us) restaurant.

Ad libitum

I finally got round to Dear life by Alice Munro and while I enjoyed her elegant prose I still find I'm less than satisfied with the short story format.

>161 MissWatson: Short stories are not really my thing either, but I like Munro a lot. The stories are long enough to get me engaged in the characters and their life.

>162 Henrik_Madsen: On the whole, I wanted to know more about these people. There was one story that ended so abruptly that I thought: What's the point of this? What's wrong with this guy? I was baffled.

Can't catch up, but will start anew here!

>164 Tess_W: welcome back, Tess. I hope you enjoyed Hawaii!

Ad libitum

Lichter setzen über grellem Grund is a novel about the painter Elisabeth Vigée-Lebrun.
This was an interesting book to read, written entirely from Vigée's perspective, as she moves through Paris society and portraits its high society, including Queen Marie Antoinette, and then has to flee for safety when the revolution turns into a terror regime. She has to remain in exile for a long time before she can return to Paris. However, I found the style too modern for the time. Not a keeper.

Ad libitum

I finished Briarpatch by Ross Thomas, another long-time resident on the shelf. It's one of his last books, about local bigwigs doing backroom deals and trying to leave past misdeeds behind, and I think he got tired of the routine. At least I found the main character strangely uninteresting and the shenanigans quite run-of the-mill and predictable.

Hi Birgit. I hope you have e very nice weekend! With lots of reading and fun stuff.

Have a great weekend, Birgit!

>168 connie53: >169 Tess_W: Thank you, Connie and Tess!
Our local soccer team has played its last game today and is promoted to the second league, so there will be rowdy parties all night. There's a bar next door where the clients are hardcore fans. Let's see how much reading I can get in with all this racket outside. At least it will be over by morning.

>170 MissWatson: Did you get some reading in, Birgit?

>170 MissWatson: oh dear, hope it didn't go on too long. Perhaps you could invest in some noise-cancelling earphones for these occasions? I have some Bose ones that I use mainly for listening to music but have been known to wear them while trying to read when my husband is watching rugby or football ;)

>171 connie53: >172 floremolla: Thanks! Apparently the sports fans joined the celebrations in front of city hall, so there was little action in the bar. Just some neighbours having a small party and they behaved in a very civilised way. And there were fireworks which I could watch from my bedroom window!

And I managed to finish a short book: Rendezvous with Rama. A bit dated (written in 1973), but a good read about a spaceship crew detailed off to investigate a foreign object passing through the solar system which turns out to be an alien spaceship. No aliens on board, though, so I'll be keeping an eye out for the sequel.

ETA I keep hearing good things about those earphones, thanks for the reminder. Might be useful.

>173 MissWatson:. Excellent. No real nuisance with the noise! And fireworks too!

>172 floremolla: mm those are great -- you could even listen to a book on tape ... ;)
>173 MissWatson: so nice to be able to see fireworks from your bedroom window! I'm actually always a little surprised at what I *can't* see from my backyard/windows.... we live on a hill and the valley of the city is below us, but somehow I can never seem to get a good view of the fireworks here (e.g., Fourth of July, etc.)

>175 avanders: Hi Aletheia, great to see you. That's a curious thing about fireworks, they are probably planned so that onlookers close by enjoy them most. I have a clear line of sight on the tower of the city hall, and the rockets are aimed to explode around it, so that gives me a great view.

Tomorrow is a public holiday in Germany (Ascension Day) and I'm spending the long weekend at my sister's. Which means a train ride and hopefully some reading time. And no LT until Monday. See you soon!

>176 MissWatson: it's a holiday weekend here too but..well, we're retired now so don't notice so much. In fact we tend to stay home because places get so busy. Weather's looking good so gardening and BBQ are probably on the agenda. Whatever you're doing, hope it's a good one!

>176 MissWatson: have a great Holiday!

>176 MissWatson: Your view sounds fantastic :)
Happy Ascension Day! Your weekend sounds wonderful.. I wish the train here in America were still as ... popular as it had once been. Then it might be more common, affordable, accessible, etc. As it is, it is quite a big trip requiring a bit of explanation when you want to take it (which my husband and I are hoping to do this fall with Malachi :)).

Have a great weekend, Birgit!

>177 floremolla: >178 Tess_W: >179 avanders: >180 connie53: Thank you all! We had a lovely time, the weather was great and on Sunday we went to see a gardening exhibition in the grounds of Castle Wilhelmsthal near Kassel. Such gorgeous roses!

On the reading front, I'm finally up-to-date with my copies of the Economist, and I started Villette on my Kobo. Not quite sure yet what to make of it. Lucy Snowe strikes me as an unreliable narrator...

>181 MissWatson: interesting to see your take on Villette.

>181 MissWatson: That sounds like a lovely weekend! Germany does such fabulous castles!

>181 MissWatson: I'm also interested to hear your verdict on Villette, having read it just a couple of months back.

Ad libitum

I just finished a print book first, Ruth, before I go on with Villette. By some strange coincidence, they were published in the same year, 1853. They couldn't be more different, and yet both are not what I would have expected from a Victorian novel. Gaskell lets her seduced heroine grow into a serious woman who educates herself in order to bring her child up herself, and she refuses to be "redeemed" into respectability by marrying her seducer, which I find quite unusual.

Ruth is on my tablet to read; I began Villette, but could not stomach it; although Bronte is one of my fav authors!

Hope you have a great weekend, Birgit.

>186 Tess_W: Hi Tess! It's been very sunny and very windy, nice for sitting on the balcony with my book!

Ad libitum

I finished Villette. I started out with a download from Gutenberg, but the weird punctuation and the lack of notes meant I finally decided to get a printed copy with proper notes. The literary and Biblical allusions were just too much.
I can't really say that I liked it. Lucy's isolation is so extreme that it is hard for a modern reader to get into her head, and I kept asking myself why she ever went to another country if she didn't really like to be among foreigners. There were so many surprises she as narrator springs on us that make you questions everything else she tells us.

I also realised that I do not know much about education for girls in Germany at the time, there are no comparable authors to the Brontës etc to tell us. I've never wondered about this before, but Lucy's constant harping on the deficiencies of continental education made me take notice.

I quite admired Villette as a feat of experimental writing, rather than for its story or its heroine - Charlotte Brontë based much of it on her own experience of travel and relationships apparently, but I'm sure she couldn't have been as snarky and xenophobic as Lucy Snow!

I got the impression that Lucy is writing this for herself, not for others, even if she occasionally addresses the reader directly.

>190 MissWatson: I hadn't really considered that but, yes, I can see what you mean, it fits with her self-containment.

Hi Birgit!

I'm back after a month in California. Mom's mail is forwarded, her safe deposit box permanently closed, and the house on the market. Back to retirement!

Drawing a line in the sand, and just moving forward seems wisest, otherwise I'd never get caught up! I hope things have been going well for you.

Hi Karen!
Glad to hear things are getting back to normal. Work is a little crazy at the moment, but otherwise I'm looking forward to a long weekend at my sister's.

Long weekend at your sister's sounds lovely! Enjoy!

>194 avanders: Thanks, I will. We're going to a concert tomorrow.

Ad libitum

Before I board my train I'm dropping in to report that I have finished my very big book, Die Unterwerfung der Welt. It covers the European expansion from early Roman days to the present, and the first parts were quite familiar, so I could put it aside occasionally. But as we reached the late 19th century and the scramble for Africa, things got a lot more complicated and I had to keep going, otherwise I would have lost the thread. The book covers a lot of ground, so it is very condensed, and in the case of Africa I wished for more detail. I'm also unhappy about the lack of footnotes. The bibliographies for each chapter are enormous, a reservoir for further reading, if I could make the time!

ETC

>196 MissWatson: Well done on finishing it! Enjoy your concert and time with your sister :)

>197 floremolla: Thanks, it was a wonderful concert with some unexpected guest soloists adding Eastern European dash to Telemann.

Ad libitum

I packed my ereader for the train trip and read Mädchen in Uniform, downloaded in 2015, so it counts as a ROOT.
There are two German movies with the same title, so I knew it was about a Prussian boarding school for girls. But there was more of it, it tells the full story of Manuela's life from her birth to the tragic end, and it was full of little details about a lifestyle that no longer exists. Manuela is an army brat, her father a Prussian cavalry officer posted to several stations, and there's a description of the parents preparing for a ball at a small court in one of Germany's lesser statelets, still clinging to the old ways even after unification. Her mother dies when she is very young, and her aunts decide that she needs more discipline, so she is packed off to a strict boarding school.
As I have learnt since, this is to a large degree autobiographical. The films were based on a play Christa Winsloe had written, and this little novel came later, filling out the blanks of Manuela's background.
Conditions at the school were harsh, no personal properties, no money, little free, unregulated time. But the girls acted just like the ones in Enid Blyton's Malory Towers. Except for the schoolgirl crushes on the favourite teacher, I suppose.

ETA

Ad libitum

Still recovering from the big one with a short novella by Ludwig Tieck, Die Verlobung. I read this in a digitised copy of the original 1823 edition, and the old spelling takes getting used. And now I need to read up on the pietism en vogue at the time, I wasn't aware of that. Ah well, the dangers of reading classics...

And 200 posts means it's time to set up a new thread. Hope to see you there!

Oh.. I posted on your new thread! :)