July TBRCAT - Books by an author with more than one book on your TBR shelf

We've all been there I imagine - you just finished reading a wonderful book by an author and start seeking out other titles by the same author. Next thing you know you have several books just waiting on your TBR shelf or list.

Or maybe there is a series you particularly love and you just have to buy all of the titles even though you are only at the beginning of the series.

No matter how the books came to your TBR now is the time to make a dent or two by reading at least one of the books by an author who is making multiple appearances on your shelf.

Good luck and I hope you all find something enjoyable to read for July!

Feel free to update the wiki with your selections:

https://wiki.librarything.com/index.php/2019_TBRCAT#July:_-_Theme:_Book_by_an_au...

I've set aside a collection of essays by Hugh MacLennan: Scotchman's Return. Maybe I'll actually get to it this month...

I have so many options for this particular challenge. I have at least two books by the following authors on my shelves:

Dennis Lehane
C.J. Box
Charles Dickens
Diana Xarissa
Andrea Frazer
Molly Thynne
Barbara Ross
P.G. Wodehouse
Kate Parker
Haruki Murakami
Eowyn Ivey
Beatriz Williams
Emily St. John
Susan Vreeland
Val McDermid
P.D. James
R. M. Cartmel
Tess Gerritson

So many to choose from!!

I have lots to choose from too, but I've decided on Kate Atkinson's Stared Early, Took My Dog, the fourth in the Jackson Brodie series. I have two others of hers that are not part of this series.

Grea idea, Stacy!!
I have several that fit this challenge that I had also chosen for the ALPHAKit

Criminally Cocoa by Amanda Flower
Premeditated Peppermint by Amanda Flower

One Potato, Two Potato, Dead by Lynn Cahoon
✔Sconed to Death by Lynn Cahoon

Murder Most Fermented by Christine E. Blum
The Name of the Rosé by Christine E. Blum

Proposal to Die For by Vivian Conroy
Fatal Masquerade by Vivian Conroy

Triple Jeopardy by Anne Perry
Death in Focus by Anne Perry

Some of the authors who are options for me include:
Jodi Picoult
Harlan Coben
Farley Mowat

I'm going to read the next one in the Jack Reacher series by Lee Child - either Nothing to Lose or Gone Tomorrow depending on if I get to the first one for the Random Cat for this month.

I have got two books by David Mitchell waiting to be read:

Number9Dream and
Black Swan Green

I've got several books that could fit into this month's challenge. I'm going to start with fiction, as I'm consciously trying to read more fiction than usual this year, so I'm going with the second in Alexander McCall Smith's No 1 Ladies Detective Agency series, and the second in Jasper Fforde's Thursday Next series. If I have time towards the end of the month I'll probably also try the second of Alan Park's series of alpaca rearing in Spain memoirs, although to be honest I feel less enthusiastic about that than the others!

Lots of choices for me with this theme. I am definitely going to read The Robber Bride by Margaret Atwood. I have a few of hers on my shelf. Also I will read the next book for me in the Vorkosigan series, Komarr by Lois McMaster Bujold. If time permits, I would also love to read the next book in one of my many police procedurals/mysteries that I have on my shelves.

I think I will go with Curiosity Thrilled the Cat in the Magical Cats series by Sofie Kelly. This is the first in the series, but I have read others out of order.

I also like the Cruise Ship Mysteries by Hope Callaghan, and need to go back to the first one Starboard Secrets to see how it all started.

I might also read Precious and Grace by Alexander McCall Smith. I have just two in that series that I have not yet read.

Like others, I've got a crazy number of options and may well complete more than one book for the challenge. But, I'm going to start with something by Robert B. Parker.

I have 51 authors that I'm considering for this challenge, because I have *three* or more of their books waiting patiently in Mt. TBR. I don't even want to know how many I have with only two on the shelf.

Some particularly tempting authors: Angela du Maurier, Elspeth Huxley, Charles Reade, Paul Scott, Barbara Nadel . . ..

I feel both embarrassed and very seen by this month's challenge.

>14 RidgewayGirl: Haha, I concur.

Right now I'm thinking about reading John Bude's The Cornish Coast Murder. I have both that one and The Lake District Murder on my shelves, even though I've never read anything by the author. I blame the British Library Crime Classics series!

Okay, I'll make you feel better. I have 107 authors with 2 books or more on my shelves. This may be my overall challenge for next year, obviously some focus is needed!

I have an entire category dedicated to 'most collected but unread'. So, it's about time I read something by Georgette Heyer!

I just realized that two of the three other books I've already got planned for challenges next month will Also fit here! So, I'll be reading Robert B. Parker, Juliet Mariller, and Louise Erdrich for this challenge… at least :)

>17 LisaMorr: that's likely to be my selection this month as well.

My current list of authors with two or more TBRs has grown since the start of the year, so in keeping with my goal to try and read books owned pre-2019 I'm going with Babylon's Ashes. I don't know how successful I'll be since I'm still reading May's book and am only just about the start on June's.

I'm going to choose from my Charles Dickens pile!

>21 JayneCM: Wow, you're brave! There's no way I could manage a Dickens in a month!

Starting The Patron Saint of Liars by Ann Patchett. Her Commonwealth is also on my virtual TBR shelf.

I hope to knock out a couple of the many Miss Read volumes I have on my shelves this month.

>22 Jackie_K: Dickens is one of my favourites so every book would be a re-read. Makes it easier, I think.

I finished The Richebourg Affair by R. M. Cartmel and enjoyed it so much that I immediately started the other book I had by the author, The Charlemagne Connection.

I have three books by Helen Cresswell out of the university library on three-month checkout, renewable, but should probably still read them at some point this summer.

No idea how many authors I have multiple unread books from. Garry Ryan has published several more of his Detective Lane books since I last read any of that series, and it's very good, so I might track down the more recent ones and read them. And I was reading a lot of Anthony Trollope last year, but sort of stopped for no good reason (distracted by other books, I suppose).

Of the first 200 books in my tbr list, there are 34 authors listed more than once.

It appears all I have to do is to close my eyes and use a pin to find one for this CAT.

I've started reading Mrs. Darcy and the Blue-Eyed Stranger, a collection of stories by Lee Smith and Founding Mothers: the Women who Raised Our Nation by Cokie Roberts. I might get around to reading something else; I've decided to concentrate on this challenge, my read book club reading, and my reading for our retirement community's short story class this month.

COMPLETED The Patron Saint of Liars by Ann Patchett

I'm in the middle of The Russia House (by John le Carré.) I bought most of le Carré's novels in second-hand condition ("cabin fodder") four years ago with the intention of bing-reading them on vacation. The first year I read a few, but since then I've only read one or two every summer. And so, here we are at the eleventh novel (in order of publication.) This is a non-Smiley spy thriller set in the late 1980s during the period of glasnost and perestroika. A manuscript from the USSR has been smuggled out of; but is the the information in the document credible? Who authored it? John le Carré builds just credible worlds that my buy-in is always immediate and absolute.

>31 Tanya-dogearedcopy: Now that's a book where I remember seeing the film, but remember absolutely nothing whatsoever about the story. I might see if I can get hold of that, because the only thing I do remember is enjoying the film very much.

I've finished my July selection:



I'm a Stranger Here Myself by Bill Bryson
A collection of columns Bryson wrote for a British paper on living in the US after moving back to the states from the UK 20 years after leaving. Some laugh-aloud moments and several witty bits, but overall it's not my favorite of Bryson's work. Read straight through, there's just a little too much grousing for my tastes, and it makes Bryson seem more sanctimonious than I hope he actually is.

>32 Jackie_K: It's funny that you would mention the film! The PB I have has a movie tie-in inside the cover-- Michelle Pfieffer and Sean Connery gazing intently to the viewer... And where his hand is placed raises an eyebrow (right across her bust!) I've been contemplating whether or not to see the movie: Would it be too cheesy by today's standards? But now that you mention having liked it, it may be worth a rental once I've finished :-)

I have finished my read of The Robber Bride my Margaret Atwood, another winner from her.

I've finished reading Mrs. Darcy and the Blue-Eyed Stranger: New and Selected Stories by Lee Smith, which I really enjoyed.

The Sandman, Vol. 2: The Doll's House / Neil Gaiman
3.5 stars

Rose and her mother are flown to England and are in for a surprise when they arrive. Rose then heads back to the US to find her younger brother whom she hasn’t seen in seven years, since she was a teenager and he was only 5-years old. There is an odd convention happening.

Rose’s story was the most interesting storyline for me, though there a bit more going on in addition to her story and the convention. I reread my review for Vol. 1 and found that my favourite parts in that volume were also about the humans; I didn’t find the Sandman parts as interesting, though he does intersect with Rose’s story. On thinking back, I thought I had rated Vol. 1 lower than what I did. So, officially, I rated both volumes “good”, but I feel like I liked this one better, at least as compared to what I remember of the first one.

Silent Scream by Lynda La Plante 3.5★

A gritty police procedural by the author of the Prime Suspect series with Jane Tennison. This series features young detective Anna Travis who is investigating the murder of an up-and-coming actress. It was longer than necessary because there was so much interpersonal detail about Travis and her ex-lover who is also her superior officer. It was OK, but La Plante's writing has become formulaic. I'll read more of the series sometime and hope she changes the tune.

There are lots of choices, but the winner was Fünf (Five) by Ursula Poznanski. Crime fiction set in Austria, with a brutal serial killer, geocaching and likeable investigators. This is the first in a series, and I have the second one on my shelves, too. It was a BB from DeltaQueen50 back in 2015 - so thanks for that! Recommended!

I finished The Russia House (by John le Carré) this morning and will spend the rest of the day in its afterglow. Perhaps others think of this as one other lesser novels, but as I mentioned earlier, my buy-in into le Carré's world is always complete. Published in 1989 before the Iron Curtain fell, it shows amazing acuity or sensitivity to the issues of thawing Cold War tensions. Interestingly, there is an article in the London Review of Books about the attitudes of Cold War scientists that added a little more understanding or depth to the events that played out in the story: https://www.lrb.co.uk/v41/n14/steven-rose/pissing-in-the-snow

Anyway, an admittedly highly-biased 5 stars from me :-D

>40 Tanya-dogearedcopy: Great review, and the London Review of Books article is very interesting. I have The Russia House on the shelf and must thank you for pushing me to get to it sooner rather than later. I'm a big fan of le Carré's books.

I have finished Started Early, Took My Dog by Kate Atkinson. I've liked all of the books in the Jackson Brodie series, this is the 4th. The 5th has just been released and I have a hold on it at the library and should have it next month.

I have two others of hers on the shelf, not part of this series, and I'm planning on reading them before year end. If I do, I can go into the new year with at least one author cleared from my shelves. I want to look back and see if there are any others I've depleted from the TBR this year but off the top of my head I can't think of any.

I finished Durch Wüste und Harem by Karl May, who has quite a few books on my shelves, for sentimental reasons.

I've just finished reading Big Stone Gap by Adriana Trigiani, which I enjoyed much more than I expected to. I had begun reading her much longer novel, The Shoemaker's Wife for a book club a couple of years ago, and found it just did not appeal to me then. However, the Big Stone Gap books are popular in our community, and I bought one which I decided to read for this challenge. Although Ms. Trigiani lives in New York City now, this first book of a series primarily takes place in her small hometown in Southwestern Virginia. I enjoyed reading about this small town in which people knew each other. The story takes place in the 1970s before the coal industry was so hard hit. One of the main male characters is a coal miner. So far for this challenge I've read works by two regional authors from Southwestern Virginia; the other one was Lee Smith. Both of these authors were featured on a panel of very popular authors with the Virginia Festival of the Book audience at the festival last March.

Owls in the Family / Farley Mowat
3.75 stars

Billy has a collection of animals as pets, including gophers, snakes, rats… He and a couple of friends decide they want an owl, so go looking to steal one from a nest, but instead find an injured baby owl and bring him home. They later come across a second injured one, and bring him home for company for Wol, the first owl. The two owls are very different in personality, but they both seem to not realize they are owls who can fly and do other things owls can do.

This was so short; I wish it had been longer. I felt terrible when I thought Billy was going to bring home an owl by stealing it out of a nest! There were plenty of humourous stories about Wol and Weeps. I am curious if Mowat actually had owls as pets.

I've been in contact with the August host of the TBRCat and she will be putting the thread up this weekend.

Finished A Catskill Eagle and Patriot Games for this challenge! Full review written for the first, and a review coming for the second. Both were great beach reads, and now I'm just in catch-up mode on reviews!

I didn't mean to read this for this challenge, but I just finished a book of essays by Hubert Butler, The Eggman and the Fairies, and realise that I bought two of his essay collections at the same time, just last month, so this counts for this challenge too! Will add it to the wiki.

I just finished reading The Godwin Sideboard by John Malcolm, an English mystery that is the second in a series; I have three of them in my TBR. I should have read A Back Room in Somers Town first, as it is first, but couldn't find my copy and decided to just hope for no spoilers. It's sort of British hard-boiled, feels very 80s (published 1984), stars and is narrated by Tim Simpson, who is the investment advisor for the Art Fund, which invests in art, antiques, and so forth. Tim sets out to buy a sideboard designed by Godwin and should cost around 25,000 pounds. Turns out scarcity isn't the only problem with buying this piece, when the antique dealer winds up dead. Tim isn't just an art and antiques advisor, he's also ex-rugger, so we get some two-fisted action as well.

I have Clive Cussler books i need to read. I read The Oracle already. It is a new book I got from the library.

I finished the second book of Theodor Storm's collected works, Novellen 2, which contains Pole Poppenspäler. I think most German high school students had to read this at one time in their lives. He wrote mostly novellas and poems, and I still have three more volumes to go.

I've finished The Nature of the Beast by Louise Penny which was the next one in the series for me.

I finished Komarr by Lois McMaster Bujold this afternoon. I love this series and luckily I still have a few more on my shelves to read.

I finished Started Early, Took My Dog by Jackson Brodie, 4th in the Jackson Brodie series.

Packing for Mars / Mary Roach
4 stars

In Mary Roach’s usual style, she takes a humourous look at NASA and space travel in this one, looking at some of the things that most of us just don’t think about when it comes to travelling in zero-gravity. She looks at using the “toilet”, eating, sex, throwing up, hygiene, and more.

This did, of course, include some history of space travel, as well. I hadn’t even realized when I started reading it a few days ago that the 50th anniversary of the walk on the moon was yesterday, while I was in the middle reading this – good timing for me! In the first chapter, it was interesting to read about how they made the flag “fly” (with no gravity!) on the moon, and also how to even pack it to bring with them, with the limited space available. There was one real transcript of three astronauts having a discussion when one of them noticed a “turd” flying in the air – omg, I couldn’t stop laughing and crying reading that transcript! Kept me from continuing to read for at least 5 minutes, if not more!! This, and “Stiff” are my favourites of the ones I’ve read by her so far.

>55 LibraryCin: I love the Mary Roach books I've read, I'll have to keep an eye out for Packing for Mars. Despite being supposedly old and mature, toilet humour still has me howling with laughter.

Finished The Inhuman Condition by Clive Barker--a fantastic collection if you like horror. Full review written.

>56 Jackie_K: LOL! I think you will be suitably amused, then!

I have completed my read of The Quiet American by Graham Greene, another author of which I have multiple books on my shelves.

I have finished Fools and Mortals by Bernard Cornwell, whose Uhtred books still wait their turn on my shelves.
This is something completely different: Richard Shakespeare (brother of William) tells of the first presentation of a Midsummer Night's Dream at the wedding of the Lord Chamberlain's granddaughter and how he goes from playing women to men. Compared to his other offerings, this is lacking action and fighting, but it paints a wonderful picture of London in 1595.

>60 MissWatson: that sounds interesting and different.

Change of Heart / Jodi Picoult
4 stars

Shay is hired as a handyman around June’s house. When she comes home one day to find her young daughter and her husband murdered, Shay is charged, found guilty, and is the first person to be put on death row in the state in decades. In prison, it is noticed that he seems to be able to “do” things, magical sorts of things. He would also like to make amends the only way he can think of and donate his heart to June’s other daughter, who is in need of a transplant. Lawyer Maggie comes in to try to help grant Shay his wish, while priest Michael (who has a secret of his own in regards to Shay), comes in to counsel Shay.

There is a lot going on in this book, primarily religion and the death penalty. The story is told from four different points of view: June, Michael, Maggie and another prisoner, Lucius. I’m not religious myself, but did find some of the religion “debates” interesting; these mostly focused on the Gnostic Gospels, which I’d heard of, but didn’t know anything about. The “magic” portions reminded me a bit of “The Green Mile”, and in fact, one of the prisoners at one point nicknamed Shay “Green Mile”, which I did think was kind of a fun way to address that (not that it needed to be addressed, but…). At the same time, these events made the book less realistic for me. I still quite enjoyed it, though.

I just finished the second book in Jasper Fforde's Thursday Next series, Lost in a Good Book. I have the next two in the series still to read, and I enjoyed this one as much as the first, so I will get them all eventually.

>61 Helenliz: I was very pleasantly surprised and just passed it on to my best friend.

I started Tears of the Giraffe last night for this challenge, and realised that I had actually read it before. So I have retired that, and started the 3rd in the series instead, Morality for Beautiful Girls. Let's see if I can manage it for the end of the month!

Read The Given Day by Dennis Lehane which is book one in a series. I already own the second book and have a stand alone by him. Nice to get one of them finally read.

My tbr shelves kept yelling You Suck at me so I thought it was time to read another Christopher Moore book.

>67 AHS-Wolfy: LOL. He's a hoot.

Adored Ring For Jeeves by P.G. Wodehouse - happy to know I still have more of his books on my shelf to read.

I did indeed manage to start and finish Morality for Beautiful Girls in time, and very much enjoyed it. So I now have 5 left on my shelves to read (I bought the first 8 books in the series), and then it will be time to acquire the next ones in the series :)

I finished Le port des brumes a few minutes before midnight and I've still got a few more Maigrets to look forward to.