brewergirl's ROOT for 2018

Also see my 75 book challenge thread.

January ... 10 books ... see message 12
February ... 2 books ... see message 16
March ... 4 books ... see message 17
April ... 5 books ... see message 18
May, June, July ... 1 book ... see message 19
August ... 5 books ... see message 24
September ... 3 books ... see message 26
October ... 2 books ... see message 27
November ... 0 books ... see message 29
December ... 4 books ... see message 30

Good luck with your ROOTing in 2018!

Welcome back and have a great reading year!

Good luck, Martha!

Happy ROOTing, BG

glad you're back!

Happy reading in 2018, Martha!

Happy 2018 rooting!

Happy ROOTing!

Good luck with your challenges!

Welcome back, good luck!

January progress

#1: They Know Not What They Do by Jussi Valtonen ... Got this through Early Reviewers. It was a bit too disjointed for me. I kept losing interest in the storyline.

#2: Missing Issac by Valerie Fraser Luesse ... Another book from Early Reviewers. Charming story of a young man growing up in the South and his extended community.

#3: Little Fires Everywhere by Celeste Ng ... Great story of 2 families whose lives intertwine. Each has a different outlook on life.

#4: Farthing by Jo Walton ... Got this through SantaThing. The first in a series set in an alternate history where England made peace with Hitler in 1940. The focus is a murder at an English country house but also has a darker tale of growing fascism in England.

#5: The Precipice by Paul Doiron ... Another entry in the Mike Bowditch series of murder mysteries set in the Maine woods.

#6: The Bronte Plot by Katherine Reay ... Got this through SantaThing. A young woman who loves books falls in love, loses him, and then goes travelling with his grandmother on a literary journey. Inspired me to pick up Elizabeth Gaskell.

#7: Gwendy's Button Box by Stephen King ... Short but good story about a girl who receives a mysterious box from a mysterious stranger.

#8: My Grandmother Asked Me to Tell You She's Sorry by Fredrik Backman ... A young girl goes on a scavenger hunt set up by her grandmother before the grandmother died.

#9: The Day The World Came to Town by Jim Defede ... True stories of how the people of Newfoundland opened their communities and homes to planeloads of stranded passengers whose flights were diverted on 9/11.

#10: Misbehaving: The Making of Behavioral Economics by Richard Thaler ... Very interesting look at how people fail to make rational choices when it comes to money. Although I liked the book, it was too much like a textbook at times. I found myself skimming the parts where he talks about testing methodology.

Great start to the ROOTing year! You'll easily get to your goal at this rate. :)

Thanks. I find that January is usually the easiest month because even recently acquired books were from a previous year. I think I may work on a rolling 12 month basis this year -- a book counts as a ROOT if I acquired it more than 12 months ago, rather than in the previous calendar year. But we'll see if I can keep up the momentum!

>14 brewergirl: That would be a good system. Great work for January!

February progress

#11: Searching for Sunday: Loving, Leaving, and Finding the Church by Rachel Held Evans ... Memoir of sorts about one woman's experience growing up in an evangelical church, becoming dissatisfied with how the church's beliefs diverged from her understanding of God, and searching for a church home.

#12: The Egg & I by Betty MacDonald ... I first knew this as the movie with Fred MacMurray and Claudette Colbert. The book is a bit dated -- with less-than-politically-correct representations of native Americans. But I enjoyed it.

March progress

#13: Thinking, Fast and Slow by Daniel Kahneman ... I actually finished this in January but left it off the list. Very good. Lead me to read Misbehaving: The Making of Behavioral Economics by Richard Thaler. I also have on my shelf Nudge by Richard Thaler and The Undoing Project by Michael Lewis, which is about Kahneman and Tversky.

#14: Inside of a Dog: What Dogs See, Smell, and Know by Alexandra Horowitz ... Read this for book group. Very interesting.

#15: Underground Airlines by Ben H. Winters ... Interesting premise (that Civil War never happened). Reading some reviews lead me to the next book on this list.

#16: Billy Lynn's Long Halftime Walk by Ben Fountain ... Pretty good but not as good as I had expected from reviews.

April progress

#17: The Nightingale by Kristin Hannah ... I got this through SantaThing. Very good read.

#18: Take This Bread: A Radical Conversion by Sara Miles ... Another faith memoir. Worthwhile.

#19: One Summer: America, 1927 by Bill Bryson ... A charming great history by Bryson.

#20: News of the World by Paulette Jiles

#21: Saints for All Occasions by J. Courtney Sullivan

One of these days I will read Thinking, Fast and Slow... Glad to hear you liked it!

Good job, Martha. And congrats on passing the halfway point.

Progress - May, June, July

#22: The Last Lion: Winston Spencer Churchill: Visions of Glory 1874-1932 by William Manchester ... I read most of this back in 2017 but just finished it.

Sadly, my summer reading hasn't included many ROOTs so far. On to August... !

Good luck with your August reading!

I hope you succeed in reading some ROOTs in August, Martha.

August progress

#23: Beartown by Fredrik Backman

#24: Magpie Murders by Anthony Horowitz

#25: In the Tall Grass by Stephen King & Joe Hill

#26: The Importance of Being Earnest by Oscar Wilde

#27: Throttle by Stephen King & Joe Hill

>24 brewergirl: And yes, you did!

September progress

#28: Ten Lords A-Leaping by C.C. Benison

#29: Three Floors Up by Eshkol Nevo

#30: Nudge: Improving Decisions About Health, Wealth, and Happiness by Richard Thaler and Cass Sunstein

October progress

#31: Pocketful of Names by Joe Coomer

#32: Frankenstein by Mary Shelley

Congrats on passing your goal, Martha!

November progress

Alas, while I did some reading in November, none of them were ROOTS. On to December...

December progress

#33: The Bazaar of Bad Dreams by Stephen King

#34: Sleeping Beauties by Stephen King & Owen King

#35: Stephen King's N by Marc Guggenheim

#36: Stay: A History of Suicide and the Arguments Against It by Jennifer Michael Hecht