LoraShouse is ready to ROOT again in 2023

Hi all. Sorry it took me so long to get signed up for this year. I am soooo far behind on everything.

For this year, my definition of a ROOT will still be the same as for the past umm... how many years now? Anyway, it will be any hard copy (or archaic reading device) book i have owned since before January 1, 2023. This year's goal will be the same as last year's - 15 ROOTs - as well. That seems to be a workable number for me.

It is possible that by next year I may need to revise my definition of a ROOT. I think I am actually starting to get a little low on hard copy books that I ever intended to read and haven't read yet. Hopefully I will finally get to register with my local library too so that I can donate some of the books I finish.

So far I haven't finished any ROOTs for this year. I am, however, about halfway through with Level 4: Virus Hunters of the CDC.

Here are my stats for the year so far:

Reading Stats – 2023

4 of 100 Total Books
0 of 15 ROOTS
0 of 25 List Books
0 Library books
3 Kindle books
0 New Books (by request or otherwise)
1 Audible Audiobooks
0 e-book on Nook app
0 Audiobooks on Scribd
0 e-books on Scribd
0 other books
0 books reread
0 books from Kindle Unlimited
0 book did not finish

Welcome back to ROOTing and good luck with your goal!

Welcome back, Lora. Good luck with ROOTing for 2023.

Hi Lora! Figured I should check out your thread since we both loved The Goblin Emperor :)

Welcome back Lora!

Welcome back, Lora! Have a great reading year :)

>7 curioussquared: Thanks. I believe there are now at least two more books set in the same universe. Not exactly sequels I think, but some of the characters appear again in at least one of them. Good luck with your reading.

>5 MissWatson: >6 connie53: >8 Jackie_K: >9 rabbitprincess: Thanks for the welcome and encouragement. I think I haven't been to your threads yet, but welcome back and good luck to you too!

I finished Level 4: Virus Hunters of the CDC, my first ROOT for this year. It seems like this is the third or fourth book on the adventures of the CDC's virus hunters I have read, although I can't remember all the names of the others. Some of the stories were the same while others were different. It was interesting seeing some of the viruses from a slightly different perspective. This book was written in 1996 and covers sort of the glory years of the CDC virus hunters. The authors were instrumental in working on Lassa virus, Ebola, early work with AIDS and some other viruses. Much of their work was done in Africa. They also spent time in South America and the Middle East, and after leaving the CDC they went to work in Pakistan. I am always impressed that, given the primitive state of healthcare in many third world countries anybody manages to survive at all. And yet the world still manages to be overcrowded.

One thing I had heard before and read more other clarification on later really hit home. My first full-time job was grinding points on hypodermic needles. Our company made reuseable needles and syringes, although they also packed various kinds of kits containing disposable needles and syringes. It turns out that a key factor in the spread of many viruses (and other diseases) in some third-world countries is reuse of unsterilized and insufficently sterilized needles. People in these countries know about and believe in vaccines (or at least they used to), but supplies are extremely limited in the best of hospitals and clinics and often they have only one or two needles for a large population and have no time, or no way to sterilize the needles. Disposable needles and syringes can't really be sterilized for more than one use - the hubs and the syringes are made of plastic and would melt (or worse) if boiled. I understand that even the reusable needles have their points dulled by repeated use, even if facilities for sterilizing them are available. Long ago I thought that the problem was that they were trying to reuse disposable needles, but according to this book almost all of the various possible scenarios are happening all the time.

Anyway, moving on soon (I hope) to the next book, What Looks Like Crazy on an Ordinary Day by Pearl Cleage.

So, yes, I am finally back to update my ROOT totals and tickers. I finished 2 ROOTs during February - What Looks Like Crazy on an Ordinary Day and Brothel: Mustang Ranch and Its Women. Both of these books illustrate for me one of the best benefits of reading books. They illustrate for me what life is like for some of the people I will never be in this life - a young black woman who is HIV positive, and prostitutes in a legal brothel in Nevada.

Reading stats as of the end of February 2023:

17 of 100 Total Books
3 of 15 ROOTS
5 of 25 List Books
0 Library books
9 Kindle books
2 New Books (by request or otherwise)
5 Audible Audiobooks
0 e-book on Nook app
0 Audiobooks on Scribd
0 e-books on Scribd
0 other books
0 books reread
0 books from Kindle Unlimited
0 book did not finish

Alright, I cheated on this one. I started out to read Empire by Michael Hardt and Antonio Negri, but found I couldn't finish it.

What was I thinking? This was on my list, and I spent money getting a paperback version of it at the end of last year. But it was awful. I think it is supposed to be about political science or something. The authors are college professors in literature and/or political science. But there was hardly a sentence in the preface or first chapter, which is as far as I got, that didn't have at least five words of three or more syllables in it. I had to read every sentence four or five times, and still wasn't sure what most of them said. I had to give up. I could have been reading on that for months and still not know what I wanted to find out from it.

I think 'way back when I added it to my list based on its blurb in the Book-of-the-Month Club, or wherever I read about it, that I expected it to talk about some new idea they had about communisim and maybe some other political systems that was not like how we saw them implemented up until then, and I wondered if whatever that idea was it would be something more useful than some of the political systems we have now, or had at that time. But I guess, since I couldn't make heads or tails out of what they were talking about, I will never know.

Anyway, I am moving on with my next ROOT. This time I am reading The Hidden Hitler by Lothar Machtan. So far, I am maybe a third of the way through it. Even though it purports to be political as well, it is much more understandable than Empire. And actually it hasn't really gotten that much into politics yet. The author's premise in this book is that Hitler was a homosexual, and so far we have been treated to a recap of his friends from his early years with a view to demonstrating this. Except for brief mentions about how some of these people or the people who knew about them later disappeared, most of Hitler's politics has mostly flickered around the edges of this discussion.

Reading stats as of March 30, 2023:

Reading Stats – 2023

29 of 100 Total Books
4 of 15 ROOTS
7 of 25 List Books
0 Library books
17 Kindle books
2 New Books (by request or otherwise)
8 Audible Audiobooks
0 e-book on Nook app
0 Audiobooks on Scribd
0 e-books on Scribd
0 other books
0 books reread
1 books from Kindle Unlimited
1 book did not finish

>15 LoraShouse: Well done for at least trying with it - but you're right, sometimes when a book just isn't connecting with you then you just have to stop and chalk it up to experience. Maybe you can pass it on to someone who could make more of it!

>18 Jackie_K: Thanks Jackie! I'm still trying to get connected with my local library to be able to donate books. I don't think I know anybody who would be interested in this book.

Meanwhile, I have finished The Hidden Hitler. it was an OK read. Not much surprising given the author's slant on Hitler. Not much actually about Hitler himself, but a lot about his various cronies.

Next I am going to read The Bondmaid by Catherine Lim. I think this is supposed to be kind of a romance, but a dark one. We'll see.

Finished The Bondmaid just in time for the end of the month. Next up will be Courts of Illusion by Rosemary Hawley Jarman.

Reading Stats as of today:

Reading Stats – 2023

39 of 100 Total Books
6 of 15 ROOTS
10 of 25 List Books
0 Library books
22 Kindle books
3 New Books (by request or otherwise)
10 Audible Audiobooks
0 e-book on Nook app
0 Audiobooks on Scribd
1 e-books on Scribd
0 other books
0 books reread
1 books from Kindle Unlimited
1 book did not finish

Hi Lora. >15 LoraShouse: good for you. Live is too short to spend it on reading books we don't like or understand.
I hope you are doing fine and still reading those ROOTS.

Wasn't sure I'd make it, but I did (just barely) manage to finish Courts of Illusion by Rosemary Hawley Jarman. This is, once again, historical fiction. Some of the characters from We Speak No Treason reappear here, but it has to do mostly with their children. Specifically, Mark Archer's son Nicholas. This time they are well within the reign of Henry VII and the rebellion of Perkin Warbeck, who has been persuaded that he is the younger of Edward IV's missing sons, Richard. A lot of background getting into it from the earlier books. But the upshot is that Nicholas, at the behest of his stepmother after the death of his brother, joins the army following the supposed Richard Plantagenet. They traipse around all over Europe going from court to court of potential supporters trying to raise money and troops, and then one thing or another sours their sponsers and they have to move on to somewhere else. By the time they get back to England, they are losing more followers than they are gaining, and many of their supposed supporters are Henry's spies anyway.

There was less fighting than there might have been, but on the whole it was a very painful book.

The next book on the list is Learn to Remember by Dominic O'Brien. Something I probably need. But I doubt if I'll remember much about it afterward. I thought it might be sort of a workbook, but flipping through, that doesn't seem to be the case.

Here are the reading stats for the year so far:

Reading Stats – 2023

46 of 100 Total Books
7 of 15 ROOTS
11 of 25 List Books
0 Library books
26 Kindle books
3 New Books (by request or otherwise)
12 Audible Audiobooks
0 e-book on Nook app
0 Audiobooks on Scribd
1 e-books on Scribd
0 other books
0 books reread
2 books from Kindle Unlimited
2 books did not finish

Just finished Learn to Remember by Dominic O'Brien. It was a pretty short and easy read. Not quite what I expected. There was some stuff about how the brain works, especially in relation to memory. A lot of that I had already read in books on brain function or brain evolution, but it was a nice, simple refresher. Interspersed with that were several memory enhancing techniques. Unfortunately, I didn't relate well to most of the techniques. They involved things like associating the things you want to remember with pictures or places on a journey (whether it was around your house or on the golf course or wherever). Neither of these tactics relates to me very well. The author participates in memory competitions and similar exercises. Apparently, these things work for him!

Updated reading stats:

Reading Stats – 2023

56 of 100 Total Books
8 of 15 ROOTS
13 of 25 List Books
0 Library books
32 Kindle books
3 New Books (by request or otherwise)
15 Audible Audiobooks
0 e-book on Nook app
0 Audiobooks on Scribd
1 e-books on Scribd
0 other books
0 books reread
3 books from Kindle Unlimited
3 books did not finish

I finished reading The Miracle of Castel de Sangro by Joe McGinnis earlier this month. I was going to move on to another book but haven't gotten around to it yet.

This The Miracle of Castel de Sangro wasn't quite what I was expecting; it was a book about an Italian soccer team that, after years of playing in really low-level leagues, hardly better than the soccer equivalent of sand-lot baseball to begin with, finally began moving up to the second tier of Italian soccer. The author, newly converted into a soccer fan, moved to the tiny village of Castel di Sangro to follow their bid to remain in this league for the next year. This was in the mid-1990's.

I know very little about soccer, but McGinnis must be a fantastic writer, because the book was fascinating. He profiled all the players, the coach (or allenatore), the preesident of the booster club, and the man who had become the team owner when they began to make an impression in the world. It is part travel book and part sports memoir and something more. The owner appears to have been involved in some kind of organized crime, similar to the Mafia, but a different group, as this was a different part of Italy. This lent an atmosphere of menace to part of the book and led to something of a sad ending even after the team had secured their place in the second tier for the next year. I don't think I would like to live in Castel di Sangro mostly because of the weather, though. They were high in the mountains, and the people who ran the hotels and apartment houses don't seem to have ever heard of heat.

Latest reading stats:

Reading Stats – 2023

70 of 100 Total Books
9 of 15 ROOTS
17 of 25 List Books
0 Library books
41 Kindle books
4 New Books (by request or otherwise)
19 Audible Audiobooks
0 e-book on Nook app
0 Audiobooks on Scribd
1 e-books on Scribd
0 other books
0 books reread
3 books from Kindle Unlimited
3 books did not finish

Oh! Update on the library situation: I finally got to go out by myself and get signed up at my local library. I have given them three boxes of books, and after one more, I will have gotten rid of everything I was going to give away from what I have read over the past 2 years since we moved.

I like you stats, Lora. I've to tackle mine soon.

Good idea to take your books to your local library. I don't think I can do that here. Have to check that possibility some time.

>31 connie53: The libraries I have belonged to here have periodic used book sales to supplement their funding. At least when Covid hasn't been happening.

It's showing up again around here though. My husband got it at the rehab facility he is currently in. He was supposed to be ending his contagious stage today though. Don't know if I have had it or not; couldn't find a place to get tested. I hope not, though, since I haven't been allowed to stop going places.

This month's ROOT was Hidden Evidence by David Owen. It was a perfectly nice book about the use of forensic evidence in solving crimes (and a few other things, like identifying bodies). It was fairly easy to read and had lots of pictures. I had a hard time getting through most of it though due to the trauma surrounding our ongoing hospital experience. True crime just wasn't what I wanted to read about right now. Made up crime, especially of the non-serious variety currently suits me much better.

Here are the reading stats for this month:

Reading Stats – 2023

81 of 100 Total Books
10 of 15 ROOTS
18 of 25 List Books
0 Library books
49 Kindle books
4 New Books (by request or otherwise)
21 Audible Audiobooks
0 e-book on Nook app
0 Audiobooks on Scribd
1 e-books on Scribd
0 other books
0 books reread
4 books from Kindle Unlimited
4 books did not finish

'Nother thing: I know I'm just whining here, but I am really put out with Amazon's latest update to the Kindle for PC app. First they messed up my mind. Now the app doesn't seem to be working at all. I suppose most people don't use their Kindle for PC apps, but I need mine to keep up with what I am reading and what I am going to read next. Also, it is an invaluable help in writing reviews. IMHO this needs to be fixed right away.