June AwardsCAT -- Drinking Coffee on the Back Porch

This month's literary award is the Costa; sponsored by the Costa Coffee Company, this award was previously called the Whitbread. There are five categories: First Novel, Novel, Biography, Poetry and Children's Book, so hopefully everyone will find something to suit themselves.

http://www.costabookawards.com
http://www.costabookawards.com/archive.aspx

June's genre award is the National Outdoor Book Award. There are ten categories for this award: History, Literature, Children, Nature, Natural History, Instructional, Adventure Guidebook, Nature Guidebook, Design, and Outdoor Classic so, again, there is a lot of choice.

http://www.noba-web.org
http://www.noba-web.org/master.htm

Let us know here what you're planning to read, and then come back and tell us about it when you've read it!

I'm planning on What Was Lost by Catherine O'Flynn for the Costa. Sunk Without a Sound: The Tragic Colorado River Honeymoon of Glen and Bessie Hyde won the National Outdoor Book Award for history/biography, and it will also be a CAT trick.

Carrie, I loved What Was Lost. I'm looking forward to reading what you think of it.

I see that Child 44 is on the 2008 First Novel Shortlist. I've been meaning to get to this book for a while. It fits the Alpha Cat also, I just noticed that.

I have a few options for this:

1. Small Island, by Andrea Levy
2. Stuart: a Life Backwards, by Alexander Masters
3. A Spot of Bother, by Mark Haddon
4. Wolf Hall, by Hilary Mantel,
and 5. Whatever you love, by Louise Doughty, hmm...

oh yeah, it's also "Women author month" so that narrows it down slightly

Not sure if I will manage to read a June AwardCAT but I do have some possibilities to choose from from the Costa Award:

The Tenderness of Wolves by Stef Penney
Pure by Andrew Miller
The Meaning of Night by Michael Cox

I've been looking forward to both these awards. I am planning on reading What Was Lost by Catherine O'Flynn and The Tenderness of Wolves by Stef Penney for the Costa Award. For the National Outdoor Book Award I am planning on Rowboat in a Hurricane by Julie Angus.

I've already got a pretty full slate lined up for June, but I'd like to read The Tenderness of Wolves if I can squeeze it it - thanks for pointing it out, Judy.

I need to take a closer look at both these awards to see if there is anything else that I want to add to the stack.

I loved The Tenderness of Wolves when I read it several years ago. For those of you reading it, it will also fit the June AlphaCAT.

I have The Buddha of Suburbia on my bookshelf. It won the 1st novel Costa in 1990, so this will be a perfect time to read it.

I've also requested Where the Pavement Ends: One Woman's Bicycle Trip Through Mongolia, China & Vietnam from the library - a winner of the NOBA award. From the title alone I think this might be a dangerous read about what I would rather be doing in life.

I'd love to read The Innocents by Francesca Segal, which won the Costa First Novel Award last year. Not sure I'll have time to get to it in June, but I'll do my best!

I'm eying The Tenderness of Wolves, too.

I might read Stuart: A Life Backwards, shortlisted for the 2005 Costa/Whitbread in the Biography category. Seems more manageable than my original thought of Wolf Hall.

I don't have anything in the TBR pile that's on either of the lists that i haven't already read, so I think I'll pass on this CAT this month and concentrate on other books I currently have that will move me toward my own challenge.

I'm kind of like Betty. There is one book on my wish list from the Costa List. It was not available when I checked for it Saturday night. My library only has it available as an e-book. If it becomes available before the end of the month, I may add it, but otherwise, I think I want to plow through some other options this month.

I chose to read Small Island. I really enjoyed The Tenderness of Wolves when I read that - all the way back in 2009 , so happy reading to everyone thinking of that as a choice!

I finished Sunk Without a Sound: The Tragic Colorado River Honeymoon of Glen and Bessie Hyde last night. It won a National Outdoor Book Award in 2001. It's also a CAT trick!

I didn't love The Tenderness of Wolves by Stef Penney, but I did appreciate the lovely writing, and although I didn't become attached to any of the characters, they were fully-fleshed out people.

I'm reading The Innocents by Francesca Segal, which won the Costa First Novel Award in 2012.

^18. These were almost my thoughts exactly regarding Small Island. Infact I think I'm going to investigate what exactly it was that people loved about it.

I completed my read for the Outdoor Life Book Award, Rowboat In a Hurricane was a great read about a couple that rowed across the Atlantic Ocean. This book was both well-written and educational, yet for me the biggest surprise is that these two people, after spending 5 months together on a 23 foot rowboat, went on to get married.

I just finished the Whitbread/Costa winner of Book of the Year and of First Novel in 1992, Swing Hammer Swing! and it was absolutely brilliant! Torrington only wrote one other book (a short story collection), but I'll be hunting that one down immediately.

I am so glad that I managed to fit What Was Lost into my reading this month. Winner of the 2007 Whitbread/Costa First Novel, I loved this book and have added this author to my list of "Must Reads".

I finished one last AwardCAT for the month. A Golden Age was on the Costa First Novel shortlist in 2007. It's a historical novel about the 1971 Bangladesh War of Independence. I'll be reading the rest of the projected trilogy. The second book has already been published, but I'll have to wait for the third.

I managed to finish a Costa winner last night, The Buddha of Suburbia. It was the 1990 winner for First Novel. It was a middle of the road, 3 star read for me.