April TBRCAT: book originally acquired for a challenge or group read

Do you have a book on your shelf that you had enthusiastically acquired for an LT group read or challenge (one of the CATs, KITs or BingoDOGs, perhaps) but that you just couldn't finish (or start) in time for the event? If you do, then now is the time to give that book another try!

If you don't have any books that were acquired for an LT group read or challenge, feel free to use books that you'd planned to read for any non-LT challenges or group reads (such as for a book club).

Please add your books to the Wiki here:
https://wiki.librarything.com/index.php/2019_TBRCAT#April:_-_Theme:

ETA: We'll be going with a loose definition of "acquired". If you rummaged through your TBR shelves, picked out a book for a group read or challenge, and started it for that purpose, but never finished it, then feel free to count it for this month's theme.

Last year, I hosted the April MysteryCAT, which had a "Golden Age and Classic Mystery" theme. That gave me the perfect excuse to pick up a stack of Golden-Age mysteries by Margery Allingham, Elspeth Huxley and Ngaio Marsh at a local used-book sale. Clearly, I was over-confident, as there were only 10 days left in the month when I acquired all those books! So this coming month, I'll try to finish at least a couple of the ones still unread.

I don't think I acquired any books specifically for an LT challenge. I try to select books for the challenges from my physical and virtual TBR shelves. However, I suspect I'm not going to get to all the books from challenges for March, so I will carry them forward for this challenge.

>3 Robertgreaves: Ack ... you just reminded me that I'd intended to include not just books acquired for a group read or challenge, but also ones started or just picked out from one's TBR shelves. Unfortunately, I don't think I can edit the title, but I'll update the description in the first post. In any case, yes, using books that you'd started for an earlier challenge but did not finish in time would be fine!

I will take a look at what I've got on hand, but if nothing fits, I'll look at my virtual tbr to see what was originally there with the intent of reading for a challenge. Although, I rarely add something for a challenge; I pretty much already pick from what's there. But, I'll find something to fit!

I chose to count A Place of Greater Safety, by Hilary Mantel, for this challenge. My tags indicate that there was a group read back in 2015, but I never got around to reading it at that time. I've read it now though :)

I have the President's Challenge that I have been working on for ** years aand FDR has been sitting patiently for several months/years. Sounds like time to give him a spot on the reading schedule.

I've decided I should finish reading Boys in the Boat by Daniel James Brown which I started for the Feb Color Cat last year but only made it half-way through. I was enjoying it but we went on vacation and it was too big to take and it was March when we got back and I went on to other books. Occasionally it gives me a nudge so time to get it done.

I'm going to go back to Upbeat by Paul MacAlindin (about the early days of the Iraqi National Youth Orchestra) which I originally started for one of last year's Non-Fiction challenge categories but didn't finish. I was enjoying it a lot, I just got distracted by other books!

I was also going to try and finish Educated by Tara Westover (which I started for several challenges and CATs last year, but again got distracted), but I'm really hoping that I'll get that finished in March.

>8 dudes22: I know exactly what you mean by the books giving you nudges! These two have been eyeing me for the last several months.

I am planning on reading The Color of Lightning by Paulette Jiles which I had originally planned to read for a Bingo prompt last year - Title Contains Something You Would See in the Sky. I ended up going with a book that had been on my TBR for a longer time.

A book I intended to read last year for a RandomCAT challenge is The Queen of Spades and Other Stories by Alexander Pushkin. Crossing my fingers I actually read it this time!

I'm planning to read We Have Always Lived in the Castle, which was my public library's Community Read last fall. Got the book ... planned to read it... didn't. This month's challenge is a nice make-up opportunity.

I have a few options for this:
- To Sleep With the Angels / David Cowan and John Kuenster
- The Hunter and the Wild Girl / Pauline Holdstock
- An Astronaut's Guide to Life / Chris Hadfield

Great choices, everyone! Good luck with getting those books back off the shelves.

I'm glad we're going with that loose definition of 'acquired', as I'm also among those who don't acquire books just for group or LT challenges or reads! But, I started The Silver Wolf for another month's challenge, and although I was enjoying it, I ran out of time and didn't have the focus the book required, so I never went back to it. I suspect I need to simply restart it to get the full experience, which I'm glad to do--that'll be my book for this month :)

>15 whitewavedarling: Whether or not I own them, I am going for books that I was planning (or hoping) to read for a challenge, but just didn't get to them. Even if I do own them, they wouldn't necessarily have been bought for the challenge. I also don't do that. I go with what's already on my tbr to choose something for challenges (that includes my virtual tbr).

>15 whitewavedarling: >16 LibraryCin: Yes, indeed! I meant to use "acquired/started" in the thread title and then forgot, and now I can't seem to change it ... but you all get the idea, right? :)

So many choices that it will take me a while to narrow it down. I'll be back...

Just thought I'd add a note to bump this thread back up to the top, since we're getting close to the start of April. Let's hope we all make good progress at beating down that TBR stack!

I had intended to read The Story of a New Name for the March TBRCAT and didn't get to it. So I'm going to try again for April since it meets the criteria :-).

I've finished my selection for this month (I started early!). I've had this book for a while, having picked it up for a 75 Challenge Group read that I clearly didn't follow through with.



New and Selected Poems Volume One by Mary Oliver
Modern poetry (read: anything post-Donne) generally doesn't appeal to me, with a very few exceptions. I'd heard such wonderful things about Oliver's work, though, that I thought I'd better give her a try, but I'm afraid she doesn't quite make it into those very few exceptions for me. Her style didn't grab me, and most of her poems seem to be about nature and Being Outdoors, which just isn't a writing subject that tends to interest me.

>20 rhian_of_oz: Good luck this time around!

>21 scaifea: Too bad this book didn't live up to your expectations. I don't read much poetry myself, and I keep thinking that I should make a better effort.

>22 mathgirl40: I absolutely love poetry, just not the modern stuff, generally.

I had pulled The Help off my shelves to read for an earlier challenge - let's see if I can read it this month.

I will count The City of Brass by S. A. Chakraborty for this challenge. I had planned on reading it for last year's ColorCAT, metals, but never got to it then. Glad I was able to read it now, it was very good.

I read Lupin Leaps In: A Breaking Cat News Adventure by Georgia Dunn. I originally acquired it for the Graphic Novel square on BingoDog but ended up reading a graphic novel version of Anne of Green Gables and also the Marvel graphic version of Sense and Sensibility by Jane Austen.

>24 LisaMorr: Good luck with your goal!

>25 staci426: Glad to hear you enjoyed it.

>26 LadyoftheLodge: Ha, you've reminded me that I have quite a few graphic novels sitting in my (digital) TBR pile too!

I originally picked up The Color of Lightning by Paulette Jiles for a Bingo entry a couple of years ago and then decided on reading another book instead. This was an excellent read and, it fit one of this year's Bingo prompts as well!

>27 mathgirl40: Yes, I still have a few more lingering there too!

I've had this in my stacks for a couple of years now, but when I saw it on my postal group's reading list, I waited until it was "my turn" to read it. So, my selection for this month is a bit backward from the intent of the challenge, but in the end, I was able to knock this off my TBR stack so I'm counting it! :-)

Saga, Volume 1 (by Brian K. Vaughan) - This is Science Fiction/Space Opera graphic novel featuring two star-crossed lovers, Alana and Marko who are fleeing the ravages of war with their newborn baby, Hazel. The war is being waged between Landfall denizens (terra-based forces) and the soldiers of Wreath (moon-based forces) and both sides have placed a bounty on the family. There is a Robot aristocracy, fantastic, sentient beings, and Horrors that are not what they might seem to be... The artwork is vibrant with splashes of magenta and algae green threading their way through the panels. I loved the story and have already ordered the next volume, but a word of warning: This is an adult comic, a graphic graphic novel if you will with sex acts explicitly rendered.

>22 mathgirl40: Thanks! I'm nearly halfway through so hopefully I will finish it by the end of the month.

I finally finished Educated by Tara Westover - originally intended for several of last year's CATs, but I never got round to finishing it. The first half is pretty relentless, which I think is why I kept needing breaks from it! The second half though I could hardly put down. And despite the length of time it took me to read it, it's definitely a 5* read for me.

May's thread is posted: http://www.librarything.com/topic/305904

I read We Have Always Lived in the Castle. I gave it five stars as it really had everything: great plot, absorbing characters, fascinating psychology, and dark atmosphere. AndI thought the length was just right for the story. My copy was 146 pages, and I can't think of anything that seemed extraneous or, conversely, rushed. Sign me up for more Shirley Jackson, please.

I bought Der Tod so kalt for the ColourCAT last year and didn't get around it. A thriller about a gruesome murder in the mountains of South Tyrol which turned out be very well written (and translated from the Italian).

>28 DeltaQueen50: Nice that you were able to use it for this year's Bingo too!

>30 Tanya-dogearedcopy: Yes, you should definitely count it! I really like the Saga series, though I've not been able to keep up and I have several volumes to read now.

>32 Jackie_K: BB taken for this one. It sounds like a really gripping story.

>33 LibraryCin: Thanks!

>34 NinieB: I loved The Haunting of Hill House and The Lottery and Other Stories. Glad to hear that this one is also a winner.

>35 MissWatson: I'll have to keep this author in mind. I love mysteries from different parts of the world.

We're midway through the month, and I'm happy to see that we're making so much progress with our TBR books. Don't forget to add them to our Wiki page:
https://wiki.librarything.com/index.php/2019_TBRCAT

I too finished a book for this challenge. It's a Miss Silver mystery, The Case is Closed, by Patricia Wentworth, that I'd bought for a MysteryCAT challenge last year.

I'm going to count Mouths Don't Speak since I acquired it through the LT Early Reviewer program, and kept meaning to read it for a number of different challenges, but it just never quite got there. Unfortunately, it seems my instincts were correct to keep putting it off... great as the blurb sounded, it wasn't very good. Nevertheless, full review written.

I finished The End of the Affair which I feel sure I picked up for a TIOLI read - and never actually got around to reading. Having finished it, I'm not sure why I've not got to it before.

>37 whitewavedarling: Yes, ER books can be hit or miss. I'm glad this challenge helped you finally get that review done.

>38 Helenliz: I'll have to add this one to my own wishlist. I'd reread Our Man from Havana recently and before that, had forgotten how much I liked Greene's writing.

Visionary Women was originally chosen for March Calendar Cat to celebrate National Women's History month. A solid read, but not outstanding.

I've just finished Upbeat by Paul MacAlindin, which I originally chose for last year's Non-fiction challenge month on the arts.

This is another book that's been in my stacks for years but was finally compelled to read this month as a book club selection!

The Shadow of the Wind (by Carlos Ruiz Zafón) - I just finished this around midnight last night and am still basking in a sort of "book afterglow" today! Daniel is a young man who is coming into his own: falling in love, fascinated by a book and its author, building friendships, and being measured against enemies (within and without, seen and unseen.) But this not merely a bildungsroman: There is intrigue, mystery, and something of a thriller. This is a very atmospheric novel set in Barcelona in the mid-1950s. Barcelona is a city haunted by its bloody past and it is a landscape of shadows, soot, and ruins. Very Spanish Gothic (not really a term but it fits.) Four solid stars, probably five if I were to sit down and re-read this even more carefully.

To Sleep With the Angels: The Story of a Fire / David Cowan, John Kuenster
4.5 stars

On Dec. 1, 1958, a fire started in the basement of the overcrowded Our Lady of the Angels Catholic school in Chicago. The building was old and more recent fire regulations did not apply to the older buildings, as they were grandfathered in. The building had only one fire escape; it was two stories, but the only fire door was on the first floor. Because of that, the fire crept past the first floor, then exploded on to the 2nd floor. By the time the kids and nuns realized there was a fire, they couldn’t go out the hallways. Kids started jumping out the windows, while others – too scared to do so – waited and hoped to be helped to safety. Ninety-two kids, ages 8 to 14, died as a result of that fire, along with three nuns.

The book takes us through the lead-up to the end of the school day when the fire started, and some of the kids and families involved. It continues to describe the fire and the rescue efforts, and the aftermath, including those kids who got out alive, but had to recover in hospital. It continued still, with the investigation into what caused the fire and through the aftermath years later, as people remembered (or tried not to). The book also has a map of the school, and it shows the number of fatalities and injured in each room. There are also photos. Devastating story, but a fascinating read (and it always feels so weird to describe these real-life disaster books this way). But, they can be (and this one is) so compelling.

I only have 50 pages left and it's a rainy day so I expect to finish The Boys in the Boat by Daniel James Brown later today. I originally started this for the Feb Color Cat last year (brown) and got half-way then put it aside while I went on vacation and never picked it up again.

Way back in tha annals of time when I was doing the Alphabet Challenge I was looking at options for authors surnames beginning with V so picked up Buffy the Vampire Slayer 1. A collection of three stories which opens with Coyote Moon by John Vornholt. A pretty abysmal TV show tie-in tale which the BtVS universe could probably have done without. The collection as a whole was somewhat redeemed by the third tale Portal Through Time by Alice Henderson so at least it wasn't a total waste of a read.

>40 beebeereads: I'll have to keep this one in mind. Jane Jacobs is one person that I'd like to know more about.

>41 Jackie_K: This looks like an intriguing subject. My daughter was part of our city's youth orchestra for many years and it would be interesting to contrast the different situations.

>42 Tanya-dogearedcopy: I'm currently reading this right now and enjoying it thoroughly. I definitely agree with your assessment of it.

>43 LibraryCin: That book does indeed sound compelling, though disturbing too!

>44 dudes22: Good luck with the home stretch!

>45 AHS-Wolfy: I loved the TV show but I've not read any of the tie-in books. Looks like it's safe to give this one a miss.

Congratulations to all of you who managed to get TBR books off your shelves this month! It's nice to know that I'm not the only one who succumbs to way too many tempting challenges and group reads here at LT.

Don't forget to update our Wiki page:
https://wiki.librarything.com/index.php/2019_TBRCAT

I forgot to post that I had read Pray for Silence by Linda Castillo