Familyhistorian needs to up her ROOTing game for 2024

A picture from the local river taken in the summer.

This is Meg's ROOTing thread. I'm hoping to increase my ROOTs read this year and hopefully move them along. Even I had to admit that I have a lot of books (maybe even too many).

Hi Meg. Great picture, makes me long for summer and blue sky.
Great to see you back with the ROOTers.

Hi Meg, glad to see you're back for another year! Good luck with moving those books along!

>4 connie53: Thanks Connie, yes when I saw it again the immediate thought was that summer will be here soonish, not soon enough though.

>5 Jackie_K: Hi Jackie, those books are a perennial problem aren't they. Can't live with too many of them but where to draw that line.

Your photo feels warm and relaxing, ahhhh. Welcome back!

Totally agree with >8 detailmuse:! This looks like a delightful summer's day. Or maybe late spring, that first really summer-like day of the year when everyone takes a cheeky day off to enjoy it :)

Welcome back!

>8 detailmuse: It's nice thinking of the lazy hazy days of summer, isn't it?

>9 rabbitprincess: Actually it was in August in the middle of a drought and the body of water is a river so all of the banks for miles were chock a block with people trying to beat the heat. There were also people tubing down the river with the current.

>10 cyderry: Thanks Cheli!

Welcome back, Meg. That's a lovely picture to look at now that winter's here.

>13 MissWatson: Hi Birgit. Thanks re the picture. I wanted some incentive to get me through winter!

1. Things in Jars by Jess Kidd



Birdie had her work cut out for her searching for a special child in Victorian London in Things in Jars. It was an interesting and fantastical journey.

2. Lady Derring Takes a Lover by Julie Anne Long



Lady Derring Takes a Lover was only on my shelves since 2023 but it was long enough to grow ROOTs. It was a quick read which incorporated action and humour.

I'm juggling a lot of library holds at the moment so reading ROOTs is going by the way side a bit. On the other hand, most of the books for challenges that I am participating in are ROOTs, so, as long as I finish them by the end of the month they should up my monthly numbers.

3. Sugar and Salt by Susan Wiggs



The library holds keep coming thick and fast but I was able to sneak in another romance Sugar and Salt. Set in contemporary times, there were some social issues to work through between the woman, with a past and a way with barbeque and the man she ended up sharing part of a business with who was a divorced baker with two boys. Attraction happened and complications ensued. I enjoyed the read.

4. Love, Theoretically by Ali Hazelwood



My next ROOT was also a romance, Love, Theoretically. The setting was contemporary with lots of interesting detail about the academic world.

5. A Rip Through Time by Kelley Armstrong



My last ROOT for January was A Rip Through Time, a time travel novel with a twist and a mystery to solve. The problems her new time period presented for the heroine were well thought out creating a good deal of tension as the action unfolded.

My acquisitions for January were fewer than usual and less than the number of books taken to the Little Free Library. Now I just have to keep this up for the rest of the year. In January I brought home:

Grave Expectations by Alice Bell
The Bookbinder's Guide to Love by Katherine Garbera
Payback in Death by J.D. Robb
The Late Mrs. Willoughby by Claudia Gray
The Life of Crime: Detecting the History of Mysteries and Their Creators by Martin Edwards

I have let my ROOTs thread languish. Sorry about that. The library holds have been coming in thick and fast which has made getting to ROOTs very challenging. I'll have to fix that!

6. The Last Garden in England by Julia Kelly



It took me a while to get through The Last Garden in England, a story based around a significant English garden. It was told in three timelines, which, while showing what happened to the garden through different phases of history, made the novel hard to get into at first. It was a good story in the end.

>21 Familyhistorian: Hi Meg. That's a very good job. Taking out more then bringing in is something I certainly did no do.

>24 connie53: It's hard to do, Connie, but I really need to bring home fewer and get more on their way. The books are starting to take over!

7. The Other New York: The American Revolution beyond New York City, 1763 - 1787 edited by Joseph S. Tiedemann and Eugene R. Fingerhut



I bought The Other New York: The American Revolution beyond New York City, 1763 – 1787 because of my interest in what happened in that state during the revolution because that was where my 5 x and 4 x great grandfathers fought. (As an English immigrant to Canada I did not expect I had any one in my family tree who fought in the revolution, let alone on the “other side”.) This was a well-researched account of the issues and confrontations that took place in the various counties of New York during the years stated in the title.

>26 Familyhistorian: So interesting! My family was amused to have had ancestors on both sides in the American Civil War. Living the tensions on both sides in today's climate, I'm not giggling much.

>27 detailmuse: Past conflicts do turn up some interesting alliances but I hear you about present day tensions.

I've decided that I need to change the way that I count my owned books as ROOTs if I am to have any hope of clearing or making a dent in my shelves and stacks. Now if I own it, it's a ROOT. Books have a tendency to languish until they've sat there and been forgotten otherwise.

8. A Bird in the Hand by Ann Cleeves



I was surprised to see a new to me series by Ann Cleeves so I picked up A Bird in the Hand the first in the series. Turns out it is a reissue of a series first published in the ‘80s. It was an interesting mystery on the Norfolk coast where birders gathered. The characters were interesting but there were a lot to keep track of.

9. Just Like Heaven by Julia Quinn



The only ROOTs I seem to be getting to lately are romances which I can read quickly and fit between my library holds. This time it was Just Like Heaven. It was one of the Smythe-Smith Quartet series and was an enjoyable quick read.

10. Medicine: A Graphic History by Jean-Noël Fabianai and Philippe Bercovici



To satisfy a challenge in the Reading Through Time group, I pulled Medicine: A Graphic History off the shelf. It was a good overall view of the world of medicine through history told with a sense of humour.

11. Darktown by Thomas Mullen



The mystery, Darktown, has been on my shelves for a long time but I finally read it. It was an interesting mystery set in Atlanta after WWII. The main characters, Boggs and Smith, were a couple of the newly minted black police officers who were on a much lower rung than the white members of the force. Although one of the white cops, Rakestraw, was none too happy being partnered with a bent brutal black hating cop called Dunlow who was trying his best to get the new black members of the force ousted. When Boggs and Smith tried to solve a murder on the qt nothing but trouble could follow.

12. The Inheritor's Powder: A Tale of Arsenic, Murder, and the New Forensic Science by Sandra Hempel



There are some intriguing titles in my nonfiction collection. I tend to snap them up and then let them grow roots on the shelf. One of those books was The Inheritor’s Powder: A Tale of Arsenic, Murder, and the New Forensic Science. It was an interesting look back at the shadier side of society when poison was available at the local chemist.

13. Wars of the Roses: The Fall of the Plantagenets and the Rise of the Tudors by Dan Jones



I’m finding the War Room Challenge a good way to get some of the ROOTs on my shelf read. In March the topic was the Wars of the Roses. Today I just finished Wars of the Roses: The Fall of the Plantagenets and the Rise of the Tudors. It was a good overview of this long and confusing period in English history.

I may not be reading many of my ROOTs but at least they are not accumulating at the rate they used to. Here are my acquisitions for March:

Never Met a Duke Like You by Amalie Howard
Two Dead Wives by Adele Parks
The Socialite's Guide to Murder by S.K. Golden
The Adventure Zone: The Crystal Kingdom by Clint McElroy etc.

14. The Accidental Medium by Tracy Whitwell



I’m still struggling to get to my own books. The Accidental Medium somehow found a space between all the library books. It was the story of a woman who came late to the realization that the voices in her head were people who had passed trying to communicate. Some were scary but none were as scary as the live murderer that one ghost pointed her towards.

15. Livingsky by Anthony Bidulka



It’s pretty bad when ER books grow ROOTs but that’s what happened with Livingsky. It was the story of Merry Bell, a PI who needed to leave Vancouver and chose to make her way back in her old home town of Livingsky, Saskatchewan but it was hard setting up a branch office of the PI firm she had worked for. Things in small town Saskatchewan weren’t the same as they were in the big city and life was about to get a lot more complicated as she took on her first case.

Those last two books sound really fun. Both seem like they could have a bit of a humorous or noir angle to them.

>39 Cecilturtle: They were both a bit humorous and a little off the beaten track. I hope you enjoy them if you decided to seek them out.

Hi Meg, reading all your posts and see what you have to say about them.

I hope you are doing fine. Keep up the reading and ROOTing.

>41 connie53: Thanks for visiting, Connie. I'm not visiting my own ROOTs thread much these days. I need to start reading more ROOTs!

16. Blind Justice by Bruce Alexander



I needed a book which featured a disabled character to meet a challenge and took Blind Justice off my shelves. This was the first in the Sir John Fielding mysteries and it was an interesting story set in Georgian London around the time that the blind magistrate, John Fielding, presided over the court in Bow Street.

*First ROOT for May*

My acquisitions increased in April so I was patting myself on the back regarding my restraint too soon last month it seems. New ones in for April:

Research Like a Pro with DNA: A Genealogist's Guide to Finding and Confirming Ancestors with DNA Evidence by Diana Elder, Nicole Dyer, and Robin Wirthlin
Threads in the Acadian Fabric: Nine Generations of an Acadian Family by Simone Poirier-Bures
To Hunt a Killer by Julie MacKay and Robert Murphy
Miss Morgan's Book Brigade by Janet Skeslien Charles
Marion Lane and the Raven's Revenge by T.A. Willberg
A Meditation on Murder by Susan Juby
Vice by Jane Feather
Maybe This Time by Jennifer Crusie

The last two were from a Little Free Library. The first two were due to family history research.

>43 Familyhistorian: Regarding characters with disabilities, I just enjoyed The War That Saved My Life, which I discovered on one of your threads :)

>45 detailmuse: Yes, The War That Saved My Life was a good one. Did you read the follow up book The War I Finally Won? I haven't read that one yet.