Martencat clears some ROOTs in 2019

Hi.

Back for my third year of ROOTing, and whilst I may have unearthed all the ROOTS from my bookshelves (I think), I’m still buying books faster than I’m reading them. The plan is to read 15 non-fiction and 12 fiction, hopefully this should the keep the list from growing much. It’s less than last year, but I have some series to read and not all the books count as ROOTS so there will definitely be some ROOT prevention reading too.




If the book is on my bookshelves or Kindle at midnight on 31st December then it counts as a ROOT, even if I only got it for Christmas.

ROOTs 2019

Fiction
#1 The Green Man's Heir - Juliet E McKenna
#2 Sorcerer to the Crown - Zen Cho
#3 The Hundred Thousand Kingdoms - N.K. Jemisan
#4 A Shadow on the Glass - Ian Irvine
#5 The Outcasts of Time - Ian Mortimer

Non-Fiction
#1 Village Christmas - Laurie Lee
#2 The Popes - John Julius Norwich
#3 On a grander scale - Lisa Jardine
#4 Land of Plenty: a journey through the fields and foods of modern Britain - Charlie Pye-Smith
#5 The Spy and the Traitor - Ben Macintyre
#6 Saltmarsh - Clive Chatters
#7 Istanbul : A tale of three cities - Bettany Hughes
#8 Red Famine: Stalin's war on Ukraine - Anne Applebaum
#9 Finest Hour - Tim Clayton & Phil Craig
#10 End of the Beginning - Tim Clayton & Phil Craig
#11 Border - Kapka Kassabova
#12 The story of the British Isles in 100 places - Neil Oliver
#13 London's Lord Mayors: 800 Years of Shaping the City - Emma Hatfield
#14 The suspicions of Mr Whicher or the murders of Road Hill House - Kate Summerscale
#15 Tide: the science and lore of the greatest force on Earth - Hugh Aldersley-Williams
#16 The Unwomanly Face of War by Svetlana Alexievich
#17 Wonderland by Brett Westwood and Stephen Moss
#18 Wild Hares and Hummingbirds: The Natural History of an English Village by Stephen Moss

Removed from TBR list
3 books by Ian Irvine

ROOT prevention reading
1 - The Seabird's Cry - Adam Nicolson
2 - The Secret Life of Cows - Rosamund Young
3 - The Salt Path - Raynor Winn
4 - All that remains - Sue Black

Welcome back and good luck with your goal!

Good luck for 2019! I'll definitely be following, as it seems we share a taste for good nature writing, and I'm always happy to find out more!

Welcome back and have a great reading year!

Welcome back, Martencat. Happy ROOTing.

Off to a slow start - certainly when it comes to posting at least a short comment about my roots. I certainly seem to have started the year with a large number of books on the go at once and am not making much progress with anything.

ROOT 1 - Village Christmas: by Laurie Lee
A bit of a mixed bag of essays. I was hoping for more about his childhood and return to Slad.

ROOT2 - The Green Man's Heir by Juliet E. McKenna
A very enjoyable read. If you only know of Juliet E McKenna as writer of fantasy novels, then this work may come as a bit of shock, as she is writing in contemporary Britain. The twist is that she makes great use of British folklore and local legends. I hope that she continues to develop this into a series.

As dryad's son, Daniel Mackmain, is keen to find others who share his heritage and find out how they deal with this and interact with the modern world but gets caught up in a modern murder investigation.

ROOT 3 - Sorcerer to the Crown by Zen Cho
Set in an alternative Georgian England, with a strong regency romance sub-plot. Lots of good ideas jammed into the book, but not fully explored.

ROOT 4 - The Hundred Thousand Kingdoms by N.K. Jemisin

Epic fantasy

ROOT 5 - The Popes by John Julius Norwich
A huge subject. Potted biographies of a large number of popes, warts and all, a wide range of personalities. Some more spiritual than others who were focused on worldly power.

ROOT 6 - On a grander scale by Lisa Jardine
A biography of Sir Christopher Wren. A man who lived in fascinating and turbulent time and who shaped the skyline of London. A man of many talents, in mathematics, astronomy, scientific instrument making and of course architecture. He knew and worked with Robert Hooke, Sir Isaac Newton, John Flamsteed, John Evelyn and was a founding member of the Royal Society.

You are doing great, MC. Curious to see what you will read in May. And what did you think of the book by Jemisin? I've read part 1 and part 2 has just reached my shelves a few days ago.

Hi Connie,

Really enjoyed the NK Jemisin - I was very tempted buy the rest of the trilogy as soon as I finished and start reading, but as it was midnight I stopped myself. However, when I've finished the half a dozen ROOTs I am currently reading ....

ROOT 7 - Land of plenty: a journey through the fields and foods of modern Britain by Charlie Pye-Smith

A very interesting view of British countryside, and modern farming. Pye-Smith meets a number of farmers in each of the main agricultural sectors to understand and share the love and concerns of modern farmers. He presents a number of different viewpoints and highlights the good and the ugly issues.

The ROOTing has been going very slowly, and the writing about the books has been even slower.

ROOT 8 - The Spy and the Traitor by Ben Macintyre
ROOT 9 - Saltmarsh by Clive Chatters
ROOT 10 Istanbul : A tale of three cities by Bettany Hughes
ROOT 11 Red Famine: Stalin's war on Ukraine by Anne Applebaum
ROOT 12 Finest Hour by Tim Clayton & Phil Craig

>13 martencat: A long as there is progress, it's fine, MC.

ROOT 13 End of the Beginning by Tim Clayton & Phil Craig

See also ROOT 12. The books cover a period of months in the course of the second world war, focusing on the battle of Britain in 1940 and the north African campaign in the desert in 1942 and retell some of the events from personal memoirs, diaries and interviews inter-spaced with some background context.

ROOT 14 Border A journey to the edge of Europe by Kapka Kassabova

A meandering journey around and across the borders of Bulgaria, Turkey and Greece, through history, geology, legends, languages, religion, foods. Although the area has a long history of migration and cross border journeys, the focus of the book is the twentieth and twenty-first centauries when the collapse of the Ottoman empire, the cold war and the war in Syria drove or hindered the movements across the borders and what that meant for the people living in the area.

ROOT 14 The story of the British Isles in 100 places by Neil Oliver

A bit of a mixture, a very personal selection of places, some well known, others distinctly quirky. I'd be interested in visiting or finding out more about some of the places.

>17 martencat: My mum is reading that book too, and figuring out which places we've already been and which ones we need to visit to complete the set :)

>16 martencat: That's on my wishlist. Bulgaria is one of those countries that I find really quite inscrutable.

>18 rabbitprincess: Yes it's an interesting book from that perspective. I know I've been to or near some of the places mentioned and didn't know about the historic significance of the place. You could also spend some time agreeing or arguing about his choices.

>19 Jackie_K: It's certainly not somewhere that features in the news or British books. I suspect that if you dig deeper into the culture and history of the country that areas in this book are quite distinct from the rest of the country. Kassabova alludes to that fact in the book

Root prevention reading

The Seabird's Cry by Adam Nicholson

Most seabirds come to land once a year to breed, frequently nesting in close proximity to each other in raucous, smelly colonies, filled with their calls. Once extremely numerous there has been a dramatic fall in the numbers of 7 of the 10 seabird families found in the North Atlantic that Adam Nicolson writes about, a cause for cries of lamentation. They are hard to see for most of the year and nest in inaccessible places for the most part so direct observation is difficult.

It makes them difficult to study and yet they have made an impact on our culture. He writes about the birds, their lives, courtships, relations and chick raising habits, their extraordinary journeys and navigation skills. He is full of admiration for the scientists who have spent decades studying these birds and developing more ingenious methods to track them across the world's oceans. He covers the latest research into their numbers and reasons for the population crisis; fishing and climate change feature but also interesting research into the bird's behaviour patterns (Is one of the reasons fewer albatrosses are caught in fishing lines that those birds who exhibited the trait of following boats in shallow waters near the nesting sites have not passed their genes one?) and whether it's better to be a specialist or generalist, what is the best balance of flying, diving and swimming skills and how it impacts the population numbers.

Adam Nicolson has visited since childhood a remote Scottish Island group, the Shiants, which he wrote about in "Sea Room". He writes about observing the birds flying around the island and about the differences in numbers from his childhood to now. Recently the islands were declared rat free, and the impact on the small birds was immediately noticeable, given the longer lives and different breeding habits of the seabirds the impact will take time to become apparent.

ROOT 16 London's Lord Mayors: 800 Years of Shaping the City by Emma Hatfield

The city of London contains two other cities; Westminster and the city. The city of London is defined by the Roman city walls and therefore has a long civic and commercial history. This was an interesting book about the civic history and the city's governance and law and order. Emma Hatfield traces the origins of the city and it's Lord Mayors and city guilds and their impact in the city and beyond.
Everybody has heard of Dick Whittington, the cat may have been a myth but he certainly left a tangible mark on the city beyond his death and the almshouses he founded continue today, although arguably his successors during the Peasant's Revolt and English Civil War had a greater political impact.

>21 martencat: I loved Sea Room and really want to get to The Seabird's Cry. Sea Room is one of my all time favourite books, and really challenged how I think about landowners (basically, I disapprove, but then he turns up and is all thoughtful and respectful and writes so beautifully, and I couldn't dislike him even though I wanted to!).

ROOT 17 The suspicions of Mr. Whicher or the murder at Road Hill House by Kate Summerscale

This terrible murder both gripped and horrified Victorian Britain, because of what happened behind the closed doors of a respectable household and the impact of the first detective novels, which had been published a decade or so earlier. The book traces the course of the investigation, the trial and subsequent life of the family members, and the course of Mr Whicher's career as an early member of Scotland Yard.

Root Prevention reading
The Secret Life of Cows - Rosamund Young
A book full of interesting snippets about cows which will make me think differently about them next time I see them on a walk.

ROOT 18 Tide; the science and lore of the greatest force on Earth by Hugh Aldersley-Williams

Very informative book about a natural phenomenon that shapes our world. He manages to cover the scientific reasons for tides and how that information was gained, the impact of tides on the natural world and the cultural landscape. I knew that the Bay of Fundy has one of the greatest tidal ranges in the world but not why; now I do and what implications that has for tidal power generation.

Root prevention reading

The Salt Path by Raynor Winn

A book that starts with the writer losing her forever home and business due to a court case rendering them homeless and husband receiving a diagnosis of a terminal illness in the same week could be very depressing. Raynor is very frank about the turmoil of her emotions in this period and during the walk. Catching sight of a book about walking the South West Coast path in the possessions that they are packing up, she and her husband Moth set off to do the same. After all it will solve the problem of where to live once they have bought a small and cheap tent as they set off to wild camp maybe as far as Land's End.

Setting off from Minehead towards the high hills of Exmoor was not the gentle introduction to the 630 mile path that Raynor envisaged for two people who hadn't been walking for years, and one of whom is seriously ill. Their struggles in the first miles and weeks as they adapt to living on the road or path with no money are both difficult and hilarious. Raynor writes movingly about people's reactions to their decision to walk the path and the difference in reactions between living in a tent because you choose to and because you have no option. Simon Armitage (currently the poet laureate) is also on the coast path at the same time, busking his way giving poetry readings for supper and Moth is mistaken for him at several points.

As well as the writing about the people and the journey Raynor also writes beautifully about the magic of a total immersion in nature; wild swimming, foraging for limpets, spotting dolphins and badgers. But also the weather and the impact both the sun and the rain can make on two people who are living outdoors over the summer.

A really strong contender for my book of the year.

>26 martencat: Sounds like a book I would love to read, but it isn't translated. :-(.

>26 martencat: I have this on my TBR pile, and I'm hoping to get to it next year. I've only heard good reviews about it.

>27 connie53: Hopefully it will be soon

>28 Jackie_K: Possibly book of the year and certainly one that I have passed on and said "Read this now"

ROOT 19 A shadow on the glass by Ian Irvine

This fantasy series has been sat on my shelves for too long. I plodded through this as I couldn't get engaged in the characters or the story line. Abandoning the three remaining books and ejecting them out of the house tomorrow!

ROOT 20-22

Root prevention reading

Waterlog by Roger Deakin

Beautifully written book about the joys of outdoor swimming. He writes engagingly about the physical and mental effects of swimming, the people he meets as he tours the countryside and urban locations and the environment.

ROOT 23 The Unwomanly Face of War by Svetlana Alexievich

A powerful collection of first person narratives from Soviet women of their experiences in the Great Patriotic War. Many of the women were reluctant to speak out and felt that somehow their experiences were less important than the traditional battlefield focused history. Many of the woman experienced a conflict between their desire and eagerness to volunteer and how they were treated after the war, they were open about the difficulties of adjusting to life after the war.

The roles that they undertook were incredibly varied; nurse, sniper, pilot, driver, surgeon, partisan, cook ... Whilst some of the memories are more lighthearted, some of the testimony is harrowing and reminds or highlights the fact of the terrible casualty rates for both the soldiers and civilians on the German's eastern front.

Really recommend this book.

ROOT 24 The Outcasts of Time by Ian Mortimer

As two brothers, John & William, travel home from Salisbury to Exeter the black death is sweeping the country. They pass many victims as they travel and when John tries to help one victim he realises that he has caused more suffering. The brothers flee and are offered a chance of redemption or possibly damnation by a mysterious voice up on Dartmoor, by not returning home but to skip forward in time 99 years every day. There is a lot of historical fact and accurate detail but the plot once the brothers leave their own time is weak.