Avidmom ROOTS Through Her Own Shelves

I know I'm very late to the party here, but I figured I needed a little help rehabilitating my book habits. I have a tendency to buy, get (as gifts), lovely, shiny books that end up looking pretty on the shelves, or in the cabinet, or under my bed, or under the kids' bed(s). I am so excited when I get them and then I read Club Read Threads or go to the library (a dangerous habit for me) and the actual physical pile and/or wishlisted pile of books gets taller and taller by the second. And then my "Thingaversary" hit last week and it occurred to me that the year is slipping away and my TBR pile is as tall as ever .... and getting taller.

There was a wonderful bookstore close to me (a Warehouse bookstore) that closed and I ended up with quite a mountain of wonderful and inexpensive reads that I am going to start climbing now. I am taken it a little easy on myself and just holding myself accountable to reading the books I bought in 2014 because most of them actually are pertinent to my specific reading goals this year.

I actually have more than 15 books that I bought this year TBR, but 15 seemed like such a more manageable number than 20. I don't know why.

Welcome, and it's never too late!

Books Acquired in 2014

Batman and Psychology: A Dark and Stormy Knight by Travis Langley
Carole King: A Natural Woman by Carole King
Mandela: A Biography by Martin Meredith
Elton John: Love is the Cure: On Life, Loss, and the End of AIDS by Elton John
Paul Simon: A Life by Marc Eliot
David Bowie: Starman by Paul Trynka
Steven Tyler: Does the Noise In My Head Bother You? by Steven Tyler
Life Itself by Roger Ebert
Mrs. Dalloway by Virginia Woolf
The Bible Salesman by Clyde Edgerton
I Am A Pole (And So Can You) by Stephen Colbert
Pox: An American History by Michael Willrich
America Again: Re-Becoming the Greatness We Never Weren't by Stephen Colbert
Eleanor vs. Ike by Robin Gerber
Thoughts Without Cigarettes by Oscar Hijuelos
George Lucas's Blockbusting: A Decade-by-Decade Survey of Timeless Movies Including Untold Secrets of Their Financial and Cultural Success
An Easy Burden by Andrew Young
So Long Insecurity: You've Been a Bad Friend to Us by Beth Moore
The True History of Chocolate by Sophie D. Coe
The Minor Adjustment Beauty Salon by Alexander McCall Smith
Knee Deep in Paradise by Brett Butler
The Minicolony Concept: A Different Approach to Feral Cat Control by Dan Winters

>2 Tess_W: Thanks!

Welcome aboard and good luck! Always glad to see new faces. I hope you like the Paul Simon book; I read the author's biography of Jimmy Stewart and it was very good.

>5 rabbitprincess: Thanks so much! I'm so glad you recommend the author who wrote the Paul Simon book. By the way, I LOVE Jimmy Stewart! (Of course, who doesn't?)

Welcome to the club! And it's never to late to join!

>7 connie53: Thank you. I just hope I have the discipline enough to move that ticker further to the right ..... :)

I'm sure you will,

>9 connie53: Thanks for the vote of confidence.

I will not mention the fact that I have my nose stuck squarely in the middle of a library book and bought 10 books on Saturday at the library sale. HA!

LOL, sounds like me!

>11 Tess_W: .... and this is why we're both here. HA! :)

Success! I moved the butterfly up one. XD

Knee Deep in Paradise by Brett Butler



This book is a little dated, published in the mid 1990s (1996) when Brett Butler was "Grace" in the sitcom in "Grace Under Fire." A solid 3 and 1/2 to 4 star read. Glad I found it at the library sale.

Just finished this one. Not knowing much about Carole King, I wasn't sure what to expect at all. She herself is rather down to earth and "normal" but her life has been anything but boring. Quite an interesting life. I've always known that Carole King was "important" in the world of music but really never knew why or how far of a reach she, either alone or with a partner (namely Gerry Goffin, her first husband) had. She certainly has left her mark on the pop/rock music world!

I looked up some of the reviews here on LT and discovered there is an audio version available with King herself narrating. The advantage to the audio is that she breaks out into song when a song is part of the narrative. That would have been nice for me since I am not that familiar with her music.

This read is a two-birds/one stone whammy - 1 for reading my own book, and 2 for reading a book about music (one of my reading goals this year).

>>14 avidmom: Carole King is an amazing musician and influenced many of her contemporaries - Neil Sadaka, James Taylor, Joni Mitchell

I love that her website bio says "Now 70 and still full of life, Carole King is without question the most successful and revered female songwriter in pop music history."

BB - a new book for my wishlist.

>15 cyderry: Now 70 and still full of life, Carole King is without question the most successful and revered female songwriter in pop music history."

I even find that a bit of an understatement!
You're in for a real treat, cyderry. XD

Carole King, wow, loved her in the late 60's and early 70's. Did not know there was a book. It's now on a very long list of want to reads!

>17 Tess_W: Thanks for stopping by. And to think I almost passed it up when I saw it at the bookstore sale (I already had quite a load of books by the time I saw it)! So glad I talked myself into spending the extra $$$$ for it.

Bought this tiny little book (43 pages) for .99 cents. Since we are dealing this summer with an overexplosion of kitty cats/cats and what to do with them, I'm looking for all the help and advice I can get!!! This was interesting and well worth the very small amount of time it took to read even if there wasn't anything of real practical value for me personally here.

Wow, you are doing great at ROOTing! 9 books done before I even had time to welcome you, lol.

Thanks Merryann!

Pride and Prejudice by Jane Austen

For a while now I have set as one of my goals to read "the classics." A few years ago I picked up some "English classic literary romance" and hated it. I don't think I made it through the first chapter. (Not sure if it was this one then or something else?) But then thanks to some LTers praise of Austen and a sale at the going-out-of-business sale at the bookstore, I bought a few Austens and put them on my bookshelf. (Hey, at least I looked classy!)

Much to my surprise, I absolutely loved this book. And I don't like romance stories; they annoy me. But Austen writes so well and with such a sense of humour and her characters, even the more "flat" ones, have a quality of depth to them, that I found myself completely immersed in the story. I fell in love with this story the way Mr. Darcy describes falling in love with Elizabeth: "I was in the middle before I knew that I had begun."

5 Stars

Glad you liked it! Myself, I can't abide Austen! (I know, I'm in the minority)

>23 Tess_W: I am still in a bit of shock that I actually loved this book - especially since it's quite possible that the book I picked up and "hated" so vehemently a few years back was this one !

Hmmm .... I hated something; then ended up loving it.

Why does that seem so familiar? ;)

One of my goals this year was to read some "classics" and this is one of them that I happen to actually own.
The first time through was for a literature class where I had to write an essay. This time I just read it for fun. Sure, maybe there's deeper meaning, a poke at society at large, etc. etc. etc. but I overlooked all that and just got bigger and smaller with Alice, drank tea with the Mad Hatter and the March Hare and had much more fun reading this the second time around!

Mrs. Dalloway by Virginia Woolf

I finished this one this morning. Even though this is a rather short book (less than 200 pages), it took me longer to read than I expected. At first, I found Woolf's writing style frustrating and a bit confusing. The blurb on the back cover of my copy calls her sentences "idosyncrantic." Her writing is poetic and incredibly fluid; she sets you on your way at the beginning of one paragraph and/or sentence in one direction and you find yourself at the end in some place almost, but not quite, completely different than where you started. It was quite a struggle for me at first, but once I just simply sat back and went with the flow (literally!), things started to make more sense and I began to find the book unputdownable. Then, instead of being slowed down by my trying to understand what was written, I actually found myself re-reading the same paragraph/sentences more than once. There are some gorgeous passages in this book.

The stream-of-consciousness Mrs. Dalloway focuses on a few key characters and storylines but the story of the tortured veteran, Septimus, had my attention more than any of the other stories. One of the reasons I chose to read this now is for its description of mental illness which has been lauded as one of the most accurate portrayals of mental illness in a novel. The story of the tortured veteran, Septimus, had my attention more than any of the other stories. (This was learned on The Hibernator's "Suicide and Mental Health Awareness Theme Read"in the 75ers group). I thought the way Woolf introduced Septimus into the story was absolutely brilliant (and funny).

I'm not sure if Mrs. Dalloway will make it onto the list of my favorite books read, but I'm certain I will never forget it.

Great review.

I was going to ask, ...did read you this on Kindle or regular book? Did it have paragraphs?

>27 MissWatson: Thank you.

>28 Tess_W: My copy is a little paperback. It had paragraphs but no chapters; the only "pauses" were spaces between a group of paragraphs (that sometimes went on for pages). Odd, but I got used to it after a while.

You are almost there, Avidmom!

>30 connie53: Thanks! And this morning I finished my own copy of Black Beauty so he'll make #14.
That leaves me with only ONE more to go!!!

You can see the finish line!

>32 MissWatson: Sure can! The only thing standing in my way is a small stack of library books. ;)

The Jungle Book by Rudyard Kipling

The Jungle Book is a collection of stories. I was surprised to find Rikki-Tikki-Tavi here as I thought that was a stand-alone story. ??? Mowgli, Baloo and Bagheera's story is a little bit darker than the Disney version would have us believe. (Shere-Kahn doesn't fare too well here; he got off much easier with good old Walt.) Rikki-Tikki-Tavi was my favorite story. What a sweet and brave little mongoose! :)

I am very much looking forward to the live version of this movie coming out in 2016(?) with Christian Bale voicing Bagheera and Benedict Cumberbatch as Shere-Khan. It's almost too perfect.

I mean "purr-fect."

I have an early 1900's Kipling short story book and The Jungle Book is contained within. I think I will put it on my TBR pile for next year!

>35 Tess_W: I really enjoyed it. Have you read any other Kipling? I'm not that familiar with him.

Not exactly, I have Kim, but have not read it yet. I use his poem White Man's Burden when I teach 10th graders about imperialism and we try to "decode" it. I want the students to figure out if Kipling is for or against imperialism. I've also read a very brief part of Gunga Din, which there is a movie for. Even in world literature in high school, the curriculum does not call for writers not British, French, or Russian.

I want the students to figure out if Kipling is for or against imperialism.
I was thinking he was most definitely anti-imperialistic, then read some more, changed my mind, and then changed it back again. I don't know enough about him or that time period to make a sound judgment either way.

It would appear from his many writings that he was in fact an imperialist. Besides the poem, The White Man's Burden, in his book Regulus, he quotes from The Aenid, ""Roman! let this be your care, this your art; to rule over the nations and impose the ways of peace, to spare the underdog, and pull down the proud." I think Kipling sees British imperialism as a moral responsibility, which must be defended for morality's sake. That's this schoolmarm's interpretation, anyway!

I came across the "white man's burden" in a history class that I took last year. There is was used as a term with no reference to Kipling's poem. I had to look up the poem to see what the discussion was about.

My interpretation is that Kipling was pro-Imperialism. It reads as if it is the white man's moral duty to bring "civilization" to other lands even though they would not be thanked for doing their duty - hence the characterization of the duty as a "burden".

Nothing to Fear: FDR'S Inner Circle and the Hundred Days That Created Modern America by Adam Cohen

How are you doing on ROOTing? Any progress?

>42 connie53: Thanks for asking! The FDR book is the last book I read; I've been in quite a reading slump lately. It's either a matter of not having enough time and/or not really getting into what I'm reading. Hopefully, things will slow down and I can add a few books to my ticker before the end of the year!

I hope you can do that. And I hope you will get out of the slump real soon.