konallis plucks deep-rooted books

I'm aiming to read 30 books that have been on my TBR pile for at least a year (or for so long that I can't remember how long they've been there).

(I had a list here but I deleted it. Listing specific books immediately turned reading said books into a chore. So it's pot-luck from now.)

The Spanish Bride has been on my TBR pile for a long time as well; maybe this challenge will finally motivate me to read it!

I'm not sure why I've been putting off The Spanish Bride (it's been on my pile longer than any other Heyer). It could be because it sounds like one of her more heavy and less fun novels, but since I admired An Infamous Army that can't just be it.

2013 Pile Status

ROOTs plucked: 1
Other books read: 1
Books purged: 1
Books acquired: 2
Overall pile growth: -1 (the barest momentum)

1/30: The Spanish Bride by Georgette Heyer

Finally finished this, my first ROOT, after starting it on New Year's Day.

An enjoyable read but not one of my favourite Heyers. Focusing on the (historical) military officer Harry Smith and his teenage wife, Juana, it follows the characters through the Peninsular War from the siege of Badajos to the battle of Waterloo. It's a very episodic novel, in which the action is determined by the historical progress of the war rather than any organizing plot or character arc. For this reason I found it a bit formless and unsatisfying. Harry and Juana have little story together; they marry, abruptly, near the beginning of the novel, and they... stay married, get occasionally separated, bicker, kiss and cuddle. I wonder if Heyer was constrained by the true nature of the material and might have crafted the book into a better literary shape had she been freer to invent. Certainly An Infamous Army, a later novel that combines a fictional love story with the events of Waterloo, is more effective and mature.

On the positive side, the scenes of attacking, marching and the aftermath of battle are viscerally effective. The Spanish Bride, like An Infamous Army and The Conqueror, made me appreciate Heyer's talents as a war writer (not, of course, what she's primarily known for).

Liza Picard's Restoration London has been hanging round in my TBR pile for three years. Maybe it's time to move it up a bit.

I enjoyed Restoration London. It's divided into short, specific topic sections, so it's easy to dip in and out. It has a wealth of detail on daily life, and is an ideal resource for answers to questions like, 'Did people use wallpaper in the later 17th century?'. As a caveat, the book can be a little uncertain when it comes to wider historical changes (probably because Picard isn't a professional historian).

I've read others of her London books and found them informative, so I'm not sure why it's taken me this long to get to it.

2013 Pile Status

ROOTs plucked: 2
Other books read: 1
Books purged: 1
Books acquired: 2
Overall pile growth: -2 (better than most of last year...)

2/30: Ingo by Helen Dunmore

I picked this up in a charity shop because I like YA fantasy novels. Although I was aware of Dunmore as a respected writer in several genres, I hadn't previously read any of her books.

I found this a clear, lyrical read, that managed to juggle plenty of ideas while keeping the pages turning fast. It's about merpeople, and manages to avoid the clichés of mermaid stories and create a complex underwater world. Set on the Cornish coast, the story revolves around Sapphire and her brother Conor, who discover that they have mer ancestry and can live (with help) in the sea. Eleven-year-old Sapphire is so seduced by the sea's call that she's in danger of being swept away entirely, and leaving behind her human life on the land.

While she's exploring her heritage, Sapphire's family is struggling through the aftermath of tragedy. Her father has disappeared, presumed drowned. She and Conor believe that he is still alive (possibly, like themselves, gone away to the world of the merpeople). Her mother, however, believes him to be dead, and finally upsets Sapphire by starting to see a new boyfriend - a salvage diver whose actions precipitate the book's climax.

Perversely, Ingo is the first in a series, which means that having read it will probably increase my TBR count! Since starting it, I've already picked up one of Dunmore's adult novels from my library's discard shelf :)

That does not help reducing the pile, konallis!

9: It certainly doesn't, Connie! And I have several other incomplete series on the pile :)

You need not tell me about incomplete series. In my favorite genre, fantasy, allmost every book is part of a series. It's hopeless.

2013 Pile Status

ROOTs plucked: 3
Other books read: 3
Books purged: 1
Books acquired: 4
Overall pile growth: -3

3/30: Water: Tales of Elemental Spirits by Robin McKinley and Peter Dickinson

I'm drifting from my original list, but this volume of water-themed fantasy stories was a nice follow-up to my second ROOT, Ingo. There are six longish stories, three by McKinley and three by Dickinson. All lyrical, all a bit unearthly.

2013 Pile Status

ROOTs plucked: 4
Other books read: 10
Books purged: 1
Books acquired: 7
Overall pile growth: -8 (I'm hoping this number will improve now that it's Lent, which means NO NEW BOOKS!)

4/30: Hermaphrodites and the Medical Invention of Sex by Alice Domurat Dreger

My first nonfiction ROOT. This is a fascinating account, by a medical historian and medical ethicist, of how 19th-century doctors' growing interest in intersexed bodies had the ironic effect of more rigidly defining humans into male and female. Dreger places the doctors' work within a culture in which 'accepted' gender roles were coming under threat (by feminism and the start of the gay rights movement), resulting in an anxious need to set boundaries. People with unusual sexual characteristics, she argues, represented a more general sense of boundaries becoming unfixed; by treating them (usually by assigning them to the 'right' sex), the medical elite hoped to fix wider social issues.

I'll take away three ideas from this book in particular:

That sexually confusing anatomies are a lot more common than we sometimes realize, challenging the idea of what 'normal' really is.

That no authority has ever agreed on a universal definition of what makes someone male or female. One of the most fundamental distinctions in society, yet it rests on accepted custom rather than a rule. The ongoing uncertainties can be seen in the recent flap about athlete Caster Semenya. This issue is also relevant to the current debate about marriage: how can you define marriage as 'between a man and a woman' when some human beings challenge the definitions of 'man' and 'woman'?

That the current medical practice of assigning sexes to ambiguous babies at birth is disturbing and should be wider known. The criteria for sex assignment, Dreger argues, are essentially sexist (privileging fertility in babies who are to be raised as girls, sexual performance in those who are to be boys). The criteria are also so narrow that they could cover many people who go on to lead normal lives without medical intervention. Dreger suggests that some sex assignment procedures are no more than cosmetic in their motivation.

Sounds a fascinating book.

It is. And attracts some attention when read on a train, owing to the anatomical drawings on the cover :)

Do you mean the 8 rectangular little drawings? I can't really see them properly, but the woman is not that bad, or is she?

16: Yes, the smaller drawings (penises and breasts). Or maybe it was just the big black title 'Hermaphrodites' that caught people's attention?

I think there are loads of people who do not know what that word means ;-) The drawings are more of a give away.

Not to mention the word SEX in the subtitle.

That will do it!

2013 Pile Status

ROOTs plucked: 5
Other books read: 10
Books purged: 1
Books acquired: 7
Overall pile growth: -9

5/30: Dark Alchemy: Magical Tales from Masters of Modern Fantasy, edited by Jack Dann and Gardner Dozois

Fat, enjoyable anthology of YA fantasy stories, ranging in length from novella to a few pages. A few of the pieces fell flat, as might be expected, but this is a high-quality collection overall. (And it cost me 40 pence, so I can hardly nitpick.) I especially liked the contributions by Garth Nix, Elizabeth Hand, Orson Scott Card and Gene Wolfe.

Despite the title, most of the stories aren't notably dark. The US title is Wizards which, though boring, is probably more descriptive of the content.

2013 Pile Status

ROOTs plucked: 6
Other books read: 11
Books purged: 1
Books acquired: 8 (I'm currently forbidden to buy books, but someone gave me one)
Overall pile growth: -10

6/30: The Autumn Wind: A Selection from the Poems of Issa, by Issa Kobayashi, edited and translated by Lewis Mackenzie

Issa was one of the four 'great haiku masters' in Japanese literature. This robust, humorous selection shows both the variety and the prevailing themes of his poetry, while Mackenzie's introduction supplies biographical and critical background.

A couple of favourites:

Cry not, small insects!
Even the stars above
Part from their lovers.

My departed one!
Where has it been set tonight
Your grassy pillow.

2013 Pile Status

ROOTs plucked: 7
Other books read: 12
Books purged: 3
Books acquired: 8
Overall pile growth: -14

7/30: Treasure Island and Kidnapped, by Robert Louis Stevenson

Two novels, but one volume and thus one ROOT, alas :)

These classic adventure stories seem to have passed me by all my life. I'd read some of Stevenson's essays and poems, but never his novels. Now I think I'm a born-again fan and will definitely hunt out the others.

They're also interesting as examples of how violence (unlike sex) has long been considered acceptable in children's literature. To Stevenson's target audience, middle-class Victorian boys and future defenders of The Empire, blowing people away with pistols in far-flung places was perhaps a less remote imagining that it would be to many readers today.

2013 Pile Status

ROOTs plucked: 8
Other books read: 12
Books purged: 4
Books acquired: 10
Overall pile growth: -14

8/30: Always Coming Home, by Ursula K. Le Guin

This book, a portrayal of a far-future society in the form of an anthropological text, is complex but rewards patient reading. The people it depicts have been forced by ecological disaster to build sustainable communities, eventually developing attitudes towards nature, property and resources very different from those of industrial capitalism. It's at once a troubling perspective on our own society and a hopeful vision of the future. Le Guin's writing is always lucid and beautiful.

2013 Pile Status

ROOTs plucked: 9
Other books read: 13
Books purged: 4
Books acquired: 10
Overall pile growth: -16

9/30: Lud-in-the-Mist, by Hope Mirrlees

Dorimare is a prosperous land of settled, bourgeois and very, very respectable people. So respectable is it, that the fact it borders the wild land of the fairies has been almost completely expunged from its citizens' minds. But when strange things begin to happen, the most respectable citizen of all, Mayor Nathaniel Chanticleer, has to go on an unlikely quest to save Dorimare from both malevolent magic and its own lack of imagination.

This is a charming novel with an intricate plot, densely-packed wit and undertones of horror slipping below the surface. It sags a bit in the middle, but the opening chapters and closing chapters are excellent. Everything knits together in a satisfying resolution; I feel that I should read it again just to appreciate how the author planted the clues to the plot.

(Strictly speaking, this shouldn't be a ROOT because it doesn't belong to me, but I've had it on loan for so long that I might as well have stolen it from its owner.)

Shame on you! Stealing a book ;-))

But the story sounds great. But it probably is not translated in Dutch. I can't find anything on dutch book sites.

It's a shame the book isn't yet available in Dutch. It was out of print for a long time, was rediscovered in the 1970s and has only fairly recently become part of the fantasy 'canon'. Hopefully it will be translated more widely in the future.

I share your hope!

2013 Pile Status

ROOTs plucked: 11
Other books read: 20
Books purged: 8
Books acquired: 25 (um, it was my birthday...)
Overall pile growth: -14

10/30: Utopia by Thomas More

The book that christened a genre, an account of travel to a fictional island whose citizens have solved their social problems by abolishing private property. The introduction to the Penguin Classics edition describes what must have been an amusing debate in which some critics fell over themselves to prove that the saint was not advocating communism. Personally, I would love Utopia's short working day and opportunity to pursue personal development, but am not sure I could take the clothing.

11/30: Farewell Victoria by T.H. White

Short, episodic, intense novel that follows an otherwise ordinary man, John Mundy, from his childhood among the staff of an 1850s country estate to his death in 1929. In a series of scenes from different stages of Mundy's life, the author gives his view of how society changed across those busy decades. I think that maybe White needed a stricter editor to curb the idiosyncrasies of his style (fourth-wall breaking, sometimes bizarre socio-political asides; if you've read his Arthurian stories those characteristics are equally pronounced here). But he certainly can write beautiful prose, as well as moving insight into character.

2013 Pile Status

ROOTs plucked: 12
Other books read: 21
Books purged: 9
Books acquired: 26
Overall pile growth: -16

12/30: The Folklore of East Anglia by Enid Porter

Readable and entertaining account of folktales, popular medicine, witchcraft beliefs and the ritual year in the English counties of Norfolk, Suffolk and Cambridgeshire (where I live). I was especially interested to learn about the origins of some stories that I'd previously read in folktale collections. One problem with the book, though, is that in parts it felt like a mere list of anecdotes, whereas I would have liked a bit more analysis.

ROOTs plucked: 13
Other books read: 26
All other numbers: I lost track

13/30: Rural England 1066-1348 by H.E. Hallam

By all that's good and holy in three-field crop rotation, this book was dull. The subject is interesting, but the book is structured in the least interesting possible manner. Part of the Fontana History of England series, it's an account (as the title suggests) of agriculture and economics between the Norman conquest and the Black Death. This is a period about which there's been a lot of historical debate concerning the amount of population growth and the ability of medieval farming to feed everyone.

The problem with the book is that it's structured geographically, rather than thematically. It comprises a series of near-identical chapters describing the crops grown in region A, the size and wealth of a peasant household, whether people used fertiliser on the fields, and so on, followed by the same information for region B, and then the same information for regions C, D and E.... It would be a useful reference if you wanted to know if, say, people in Yorkshire grew barley circa 1200 C.E. But when read cover to cover, it's less than enthralling.

ROOTs plucked: 14
Other books read: 28

14/30: Handbook for William: A Carolingian Woman's Counsel for Her Son, by Dhuoda (translated by Carol Neel)

The earliest book by a female author to survive from medieval Europe. Didactic yet intimate, it's a work of moral and spiritual advice written by a noblewoman to the teenage son from whom she was separated by civil war. Dhuoda hopes that her book will substitute for her physical presence and collapse the distance between herself and her son.

ROOTs plucked: 15
Other books read: 28

15/30: The Story of the Sailing Ship by Rosemary Mudie and Colin Mudie

This feels like a bit of a cheat, since it's a coffee-table book with lots of pictures that took me only a few hours to read. Still, it's been on the shelves long enough to qualify as a ROOT. It's a readable history of sailing vessels from the earliest times to their eclipse by steam... and their inevitable reappearance with the decline of fossil fuels. The authors are clearly experts in the details of ship-building (Colin Mudie is an award-winning yacht designer), though I would have liked more explanation of technical terms for readers new to the subject.

From my brief Googling, the Mudies sound like fascinating people. In the 1950s they undertook one of the first attempts to cross the Atlantic in a balloon! They eventually made landfall by using the balloon's gondola as a boat, after the balloon itself ceased to be airborne.

ROOTs plucked: 16
Other books read: 29

16/30: The Printer's Devil by Paul Bajoria

YA historical novel about a printer's apprentice in London who becomes caught up in a web of crime. I spent most of this book trying to figure out precisely when it was set, since there are no dates or references to external events. (From a couple of references to nineteenth-century technology, plus a fleeting mention of the reigning monarch being male, I'm guessing it takes place just before the Victorian era.) Apart from the vagueness about time, the setting is quite vivid. There are a few too many characters to keep track of, the plot gets pretty convoluted and, since the book is the first in a trilogy, not all of the questions raised by the story are resolved by the end. Also, one of the plot points rests on an historical error, which undercut its effectiveness for me. Still, an enjoyable read with plenty of action and a dose of humour.

End-of-year round-up. I've been reading but not updating here...

17/30: The Tin Princess by Philip Pullman
18/30: A Gathering Light by Jennifer Donnelly
19/30: No Shame, No Fear by Ann Turnbull
20/30: The Beggar's Opera and Other Eighteenth-century Plays by David W. Lindsay
21/30: Selected Poems by Edith Sitwell
22/30: Alanna: The First Adventure by Tamora Pierce
23/30: The Woman Who Rides Like a Man by Tamora Pierce
24/30: Haiku Moment: An Anthology of Contemporary North American Haiku by Bruce Ross
25/30: A Wrinkle in Time by Madeleine L'Engle
26/30: Gods and Myths of Northern Europe by H.R. Ellis Davidson
27/30: The Magic Toyshop by Angela Carter
28/30: Magyk by Angie Sage

And one unfinished:

The Mark of the Beast by Rudyard Kipling, a massive collection of Kipling's genre stories.

As you can see, I concentrated on children's books in the later stages, but still fell two short of my goal! I've enjoyed some wonderful books that might have gone unread for a lot longer.

Well you did what you could do, Gemma. Will you try in 2014?

Thanks, Connie. I don't think I will participate this year - I've found I'm not very good at reading to targets, even when the targets are self imposed! I've enjoyed the discoveries I've made and will still try to read my older books, but without a quota.