thorold takes radical action in 2013

Placeholder for my 2013 ROOTS thread.
The provisional target is to fork up at least sixty tubers placed in the soil before 01.01.2013!

Radical action -- I get it! :)

...and I take it!
That's the plan, anyway.

For those of us with space-issues (I mean domestic, not the Cosmos) this is a ripping good opportunity to deal with those sets which loom over us. While I am not necessarity as quantity-oriented as some, I sure would like to free-up several feet of shelving. But naturally, the real issue is the delight of discovery (and re-discovery). My first target is the COMPANION TO THE EPISCOPAL HYMNAL, heretofore a great "dipping" book which has always left me feeling that I should have kept-on reading it long after checking one hymn or another. On quite another tack, in my comparatively few remaining years, I really must make one more sweep through my complete Johnson & Boswell, perhaps also my Anatole France in the dear old red-cloth Lane set.

hi Mark

I'll try to follow your readings here. Radical action... I hope you did'n try to plant all your books, rooting might be hard in this time of year ;-)

Anita

Starting data: on 31.12.2012, I had 90 unread books on my shelves: these will qualify as ROOTS candidates and have been tagged accordingly. The target is to read 60 of them before the end of 2013.

Should these last two posts be here??

spammers. once enough folks flag it, it won't be seen.

I did not know how to flag it. But I suppose that belongs with the things that are under 'more' ? In dutch it is called 'markeren'?

>11 connie53: Yup, it's in "more," it's the 2nd to last link there.

First ROOT of the year (by my cunning choice of rules, 2012 Christmas presents count):

1. Two lives by Vikram Seth — acquired 25 December 2012

Famously concise novelist gives you two biographies for the price of one.

Well done on your first finish!

2. Unnatural causes by P.D. James — acquired 31 March 2012

Very early P.D. James: interesting, but not a patch on early Simenon.

@ 13 -- Famously concise? I didn't know that! Of course, I've only read Seth's A Suitable Boy, which might not be the best example... :)

3. Growing up by Angela Thirkell — acquired 25 August 2012

All change at Winter Overcotes!

So far this year, I've been very good about avoiding the temptation to buy books, even holding back from volunteering for the charity shop. But last night I had time to kill in the city centre and it was cold, so no more clean slate on the acquisitions side. It was too good to last. But it was only one book, and a small one at that...

>18 thorold: - Don't you worry. I just ordered 5 books!

4. The garden of the Finzi-Continis by Giorgio Bassani — acquired 7 June 2012

Ferrara Revisited

5. Leibhaftig by Christa Wolf — acquired some time before October 2007

Sick transit DDR, or keeping the Wolf from the door TBR shelf.

>19 connie53:
...and now it's my turn to admit ordering five books! Someone gave me an Amazon voucher, so I ordered four from them. One other thing I was looking for turned out to be out of print, so I visited ABE Books as well. With a bit of luck I'll have read at least one more from the pile before they come, thus keeping the TBR total below 90.

> 22. Hahaha, I am just avoiding any bookstores or booksites, I only downloaded three ebooks on my kobo. So they are not on the shelves taking up room.
I was doing great until this morning some demon caused me to visit BOL.com and I added 3 real books to my wishlist there. Those books are currently being translated, so they will arrive sometime in the spring and they don't count yet.

6. Een heilige van de horlogerie by Willem Frederik Hermans — bought 18 April 2012

Clockmaker wound up by Louise Brooks lookalike

7. The Unicorn by Iris Murdoch — bought 18 April 2012

Jane Eyre, with Land-Rovers

8. Les particules élémentaires by Michel Houellebecq — bought March 2010

Du côté de chez Portnoy

9. Die Kälte: eine Isolation by Thomas Bernhard — bought March 2012

Another candidate for the list of the top ten books not to give someone going into hospital...

10. A mouthful of air by Anthony Burgess — bought February 2012

A retired colonial schoolmaster sets out his views on language.

11. Boswell's London Journal 1762-1763 by James Boswell — bought June 2009

Young Scotsman on the loose in the big city: lock up your daughters!

In rebus 11 & 29. Did you catch the interesting idiom "in armour" to describe what we now would call "safe sex"? Boswell had it right a quarter-millennium ago, and still our teen-agers can't get it right!

>30 HarryMacDonald:
Yes. I noticed Pottle doesn't offer any explanation, but everyone's fascinated by that particular aspect of Boswell: I've seen several accounts of it elsewhere, e.g. in Rictor Norton's Mother Clap's Molly House.
I don't think you can hold Boswell up as an exemplar of safe sex: when he started using protection, aged 22, he'd already had one illegitimate child and infected himself with gonorrhoea at least twice.

Plus, he wasn't too stringent about his partner giving consent. Indeed, the 'armour' metaphor could be read as Boswell preserving himself from actual contact with the women of lower social class whom he picked up.

...and he had a tendency to ask for his money back if he wasn't entirely pleased with the service he got.

In rebus 31, 32, & 33. You two are much too worldly-wise for your own good. I recommend cold bathing and close reading of THE FAIRCHILD FAMILY. Otherwsie I may have to send my pal Harriet Marwood around to (ahem) re-line your tracks.

>34 HarryMacDonald: !!
...moving on to something rather less sensational:

12. Britain's new railway by O.S. Nock — bought August 2012

West coast modernisation — 1960s-style

13. Miss Bunting by Angela Thirkell — bought August 2012

The 1945-model Thirkell. Probably just a coincidence that Evelyn Waugh had recently brought out a book called "Put out more flags".

14. Les mémoires de Maigret by Georges Simenon — bought February 2012

Detective gets his revenge on novelist

15. Maigret et le marchand de vin by Georges Simenon — bought February 2012

Maigret investigates the death of a man with a Simenon-like attitude to women.

16. A certain justice by P.D. James — bought April 2012

Baroness takes dim view of modern Britain

You are moving right along, Thorold! Good job.

>40 connie53:
Thanks for the encouragement! I think I'm actually a bit behind target, but it's still early in the year...

17. Gustav Mahler: Erinnerungen by Alma Mahler — bought February 2012

Recollections of the first genius I married.

18. Holland verlicht by Hans Ree — acquired in 1998

Chess player writes about other things

19. Les fiançailles de M. Hire by Georges Simenon — bought April 2012

From the POV of the Usual Suspect...

20. The last temptation by Nikos Kazantzakis — bought February 2008

Nietzsche meets Odysseus and Lenin in the New Testament.

21. Letters from London by Julian Barnes — bought February 2012

Thatcher to Blair in essays written for the New Yorker

22. In Europa by Geert Mak — bought April 2012

It takes Mak only three pages to describe all the good things that happened in Europe in the 20th century (and 797 pages for the rest...).

23. The rebel angels by Robertson Davies — bought 13 September 2012

Canadian campus Carmen has carnal conversation (or: the Scholar-Gypsy as Matthew Arnold never imagined her)

24. Devices and desires by PD James

Oddly enough, the Norfolk Whistler doesn't kill by flinging a pot of paint in the face of the public, but by a much more conventional method. What a swizz!

I seem to be falling behind target again: too much travelling with the e-reader lately.

25. An experiment in love by Hilary Mantel — bought September 2012

Pentecostalists are not the only fruit-cakes

26. La Cousine Bette by Honoré de Balzac — bought February 2012

Revenge of the poor relations

27. Les bûchers de Bocanegra by Arturo Pérez-Reverte — bought August 2011

Nobody expects .......... the Spanish Inquisition!

Another long gap without ROOTS, but at least I want to get one in during July. Unfortunately, it turns out that I had never catalogued this particular book, so it gets me precisely nowhere (one added to the TBR, one taken away).

28. The lighthouse by P.D James — acquired December 2012

Fed up with detective stories set in small communities on obscure East-Anglian peninsulas? No problem: here's one set in a small community on an obscure West-Country island!

29. The game of kings by Dorothy Dunnett — acquired April 2011 (and left for many months with a bookmark 2/3 of the way through)

Pastiche Sir Walter Scott from the sixties

30. From the Beast to the Blonde by Angela Carter — bought August 2009

Once upon a time I started reading this, but I had to be kissed awake again by a prince to finish it...

31. War cries over Avenue C by Jerome Charyn — acquired ca. 2000

The quiet American, as told by Damon Runyon

32. The ring and the book by Robert Browning — acquired February 2012

Baroque true crime — in 21 000 lines of blank verse

33. He knew he was right by Anthony Trollope — acquired May 2010

...what Trollope hero ever didn't know he was right?

34. Your face tomorrow 1: Fever and spear by Javier Marías — Christmas present in 2012

First part of the Trilogy: a book in which essentially nothing happens, but the author still manages to sneak in a cliff-hanger on the last page.

35. Your face tomorrow 2: Dance and dream by Javier Marías — Christmas present in 2012

Part 2: this is one case where you would definitely be lost if you tried to read it without part 1.

36. Your face tomorrow 3: Poison, shadow and farewell by Javier Marías — Christmas present in 2012

Part 3. A long, winding road, but definitely well-worth following.

37. The wings of the dove by Henry James — acquired ca. 1990

Death in Venice, avian edition.

I'm Rooting for you, Thorold.

>61 connie53: Thanks, Connie! I'm not going to make it to 60 by the end of this month, though :-(

38. A clergyman's daughter by George Orwell — left on my shelf by visitors about five years ago

One of Orwell's more regrettable forays into fiction.

But you can manage 40! So go for that!

....getting there

39. The namesake by Jhumpa Lahiri — bought December 2010

Agreeable little novel about a Bengali family in America, which got left on the shelf because I completely forgot I had it. I fear that I shall shortly forget I read it.

That is not a very good sign, Thorold! ;-))

and...

40. The mighty angel by Jerzy Pilch — picked for me by my LT secret Santa in 2009

Always keep a few short ones in reserve. Books, that is.