September RandomCAT - Reccies!

----- Reccies!

One of the things I love about LibraryThing is how there are so many ways to get exposed to a variety of books and authors. So using, LT, we'll let it suggest books to read.

RandomCAT for September:

1. If you have book bullets you've already been hit with, you can use one of them.
2. Or, navigate to: https://www.librarything.com/home#recommendations and use any of the types of recommendations (automatic or member recommendations) to select a book for this challenge.
3. Alternatively, choose a book you loved, navigate to it's main page, and select a book listed under 'Recommendations for You" based on that book.

Addendum: If a book in a series is recommended, and you are reading that series (or not yet started it), select the book that is up next for you, or the first of the series, obviously. Or that particular entry to the series if you skip around within series and you're not OCD about series reading like I am.

Good luck!

(I'm posting a few days early as we are heading out tomorrow to go RVing so I don't want to forget to do this!)

And - don’t forget to update the wiki: https://wiki.librarything.com/index.php/2020_RandomCAT#2020_Random_CAT

Great idea. I love this category! And like most of us, I have lots to choose from.

Enjoy your RVing!

This will be the perfect time to read one of the many books that my dad has loaned to me.

I'm going to check out the book pages for all of the books I've rated as my "best of the month" this year and come up with some ideas! Ideally I will be able to fill this challenge with a book I own already.

I've been tracking my book bullets this year so I'm all set!

I'll have to go through my shelves and see if I remember which were BB. I really must keep better notes. I have so many books on my reader where I wonder "What led me to get that?".

Have a great weekend RV-ing, Jean.

>6 Robertgreaves: This is my issue! Trying to remember which were BB!! Ah, well, if I don't remember, I might just use the LT recommender, just for something different.

>6 Robertgreaves: >7 LibraryCin: Me too! I tend to remember if it was a BB, but not where from! I definitely know I have lots on my TBR that are BBs from here so it will be easy to find something.

>6 Robertgreaves: >8 JayneCM: Chiming in here. I should make a new year's resolution of this. Have fun, Jean!

I am by no means short of books in the category!

>6 Robertgreaves: - >7 LibraryCin: - >8 JayneCM: - >9 MissWatson: - I ended up adding an extra collection in LT called "Recommended and Wishlist" and I use the comments field to keep track of where I heard about it and when.

I was already planning to read Assumption by Percival Everett for the Alpha kit and I took a BB for this from Kay (RidgewayGirl) last year so I'll read that for this too.

This is a great theme for September! Most of the books on my shelves were recommendations from someone here on LT - now I just have to decide which one to read. Have a great trip, Jean.

ETA: I've decided to read Jimmy Bluefeather by Kim Heacox. I've had this one on my shelf for about three years, it was recommended to me by Mark (msf59).

>11 dudes22: you beat me to it! I was just going to mention that I created a collection "Recommended to Me". I add the name of the person who recommended it in the comments area at the bottom. :)

>10 Helenliz: I have so many! I haven't ever used the LT Recs. Its kind of fun, especially when you go to a book you loved and look at the recs there. I am finding that many, a majority, of the LT recs for me are already on my virtual TBR. I rarely hunt for a next book, its just which one of the virtual TBR or the new shiny objects will I choose. LOL

>11 dudes22: >14 fuzzi: Oh, I really need to do that.

Ok, I took a look at the LT Recs, and found a few that aren't officially on my tbr, but I've heard good things about them, and was already open to possibly reading them.

One of them has lots of ebooks available, so it's likely the one I'll go for:

Educated / Tara Westover

I have a lot to choose from but I think I'm going to read My Name is Mary Sutter by Robin Oliveira. It's the oldest recommendation on my TBR, its been there since 2013.

@NinieB recommended Anthony Berkeley's The Piccadilly Murder to me earlier this year, and I already have it on my shelves, so I'll probably go with that!

>19 christina_reads: Oh fun--golden age delight!

>19 christina_reads: Amazon wants 36 bucks for a paperback copy!

Think I’ll read Paper Ghosts by Julia Heaberlin since it’s the book my dad was most enthusiastic about when the gave it to me.

A short browse through the automatic recommendations led me to a couple of books I already own - The Layton Court Mystery by Anthony Berkeley for example...

I'm going to read Through the Language Glass for the Non-Fic Challenge September challenge, which was a BB from @rabbitprincess. If I have time, I think I'll also try and squeeze in We by Yevgeny Zamyatin - I can't remember who hit me with that BB, several years ago, but it was definitely from someone on LT!

>24 Jackie_K: Haha I'd forgotten about that one! I think I must have borrowed it from the library but ran out of time to read it myself!

****

I have several paths to choose from for this challenge. Can't decide which way to go!

If I take a rec from the work page for The Inconvenient Indian (my book of the month for July), I would most like to read Indian Horse, by Richard Wagamese, or The Back of the Turtle, by Thomas King.

If I pick up a British Library Crime Classic recommended by the work page for Murder by Matchlight (my book of the month for June), I could read The Arsenal Stadium Mystery, by Leonard Gribble; The Hog's Back Mystery, by Freeman Wills Crofts; Murder in the Museum, by John Rowland; or Death in the Tunnel, by Miles Burton.

Or I could pick up one of several automatic recommendations that are not yet in my LT library: La Reine Margot, by Alexandre Dumas, which I downloaded off Project Gutenberg for the group read in May but never got to read; Babbitt, by Sinclair Lewis, which I could pick up on Serial Reader; Confessions of a Bookseller, by Shaun Bythell, which is waiting for me at the library; or even Deep Waters, edited by Martin Edwards, which I'm in the ebook queue for at the library.

I have a feeling a British Library Crime Classic will win the day, but we'll see!

>21 majkia: ABE.com has them for around $7 for a "good" used one.

I have several possibilities here that were BBs.
The Sirens Sang of Murder by Sarah Caudwell (my copy just arrived from Powells recently!)
The Anchoress by Robin Cadwallader

At the moment I'm planning on Lake District Murder and The Age of Swords

LOVE this category!! Like others, I have so many books on my TBR shelves that are recommendations by other LTers. I could probably dedicate all my September reads to this category (but I probably won't).

>21 majkia: Oh no! I think I got my copy for a few dollars at a library sale. Frustrating how some of these older mysteries are still not readily attainable!

>21 majkia:
betterworldbooks.com has a copy of Piccadilly murder for $12

After all of my planning in >25 rabbitprincess:, I'm going with an automatic recommendation that just came in for me at the library: Confessions of a Bookseller, by Shaun Bythell.

I'm currently reading Her Body and Other Parties by Carmen Maria Machado. It is so far excellent. The second story is a sort of inventory of all the people with whom the narrator has had sex, but the real timeline is the end of the human race due to a pandemic. Beautifully written and hauntingly timely (written and published before Covid-19, of course).

This morning I completed My Name is Mary Sutter by Robin Oliveira. It was recommended to me by a friend in 2013 and is was one of my oldest TBRs. It was very good, a 4 for me.

I finished The Century Girls which was a book bullet from Susan.

>33 rabbitprincess: Confessions of a bookseller sounds perfect! Books, Scotland, what's not to like? I've already put a hold on it at the library so if it arrives in time that will be my "reccie" choice.

I was planning on one by Arnaldur Indridason - also one of your reccies - so the sudden departure isn't too illogical. If there is time I'll read both.

>37 VivienneR: I started it yesterday and found myself remembering anecdotes from the first book, Diary of a Bookseller :D

Confessions of a Bookseller features cameo appearances from people who have been renting The Open Book, the Airbnb where you can run a bookshop for a week, at least in a world without a global pandemic: https://www.airbnb.ca/rooms/7908227?source_impression_id=p3_1599175707_FDU8YTnvy...

>38 rabbitprincess: I had no idea such a thing existed on Airbnb! How wonderful that would be.

>38 rabbitprincess: - That is so cool.

>38 rabbitprincess:
Just checked that out. I want to go to Wigtown!

The Open Book is always booked out a loooooong time in advance! But wouldn't it be brilliant?

Just finished The Anchoress by Robin Cadwallader which was a BB from another LTer.

>41 nrmay: I can recommend Wigtown for sure! I went there in 2014, which amusingly enough was the year covered by Shaun in Diary of a Bookseller. Fortunately, my family wasn't mentioned in the book :D

>42 Jackie_K: Yeah, I think it's always booked for like three years in advance or something ridiculous like that. It is definitely a bucket-list thing for me though, if I were to keep a bucket list.

Starting Venus In Copper by Lindsey Davis, which one character in Blood Will Tell recommended to another. I happen to have it on my shelves included in the omnibus volume Falco On His Metal.

I read The Piccadilly Murder over the weekend and really enjoyed it. I thought I had figured out the mystery pretty early, but there was definitely a twist or two I didn't see coming! Thanks again >20 NinieB: for the recommendation!

What an excellent theme! I'm going to keep it in mind as I choose my next book - so many of the books on my tbr are as a result of a few of you here!

>46 christina_reads: Such a classic! Glad you enjoyed it.

For this challenge, I've started An African in Greenland, which I first heard about either in Club Read or Reading Globally. The first few chapters were great and this will also fit with this month's GeoCAT.

>49 RidgewayGirl: I heard about that book on a podcast recently and it went straight onto my wishlist! I'll look forward to your review.

I've also just finished Dying Fall which is 5th in the Ruth Galloway series of detective fiction. I got caught with a book bullet for the series some time ago and have gradually been working my way through them.

finished Silver in the wood, fantasy by Emily Tesh.
suggested by LT member Benita.

>52 nrmay:, what did you think? I have this one as a free download from TOR.

>53 Kristelh:

It was ok but didn't blow me away.
My LT friend LOVED it however.
It's short, quick read - a novella.
I'd be interested to know how your like it!

The Kitchen God's Wife / Amy Tan
3.5 stars

Pearl and her mother are often at odds with each other. Pearl’s mother, Winnie, immigrated to the US from China, not long after WWII. Pearl doesn’t realize just how much from her life in China Winnie hasn’t told her. But, her Aunt Helen hints that there are secrets... Aunt Helen encourages Winnie to tell Pearl and also encourages Pearl to reveal her own secret to her mother – a secret about her health.

This was good. It was told at the start and end by Pearl, but the majority of the book, in the middle, is Winnie relating her story – her life in China – to Pearl. It’s written as if the reader is Pearl. I liked Pearl’s portion of the story, but when we switched to Winnie it took a while for me to warm up to the story and become as interested as I ended up being. Ultimately, Winnie’s story was the “meat” of the book.

The October RandomCAT thread is up: https://www.librarything.com/topic/324392

>56 LisaMorr: thanks!

I have finished Rotes Gold, a series featuring a Luxembourg chef recommended by my sister, and liked it enough to continue. It's put me off tuna, though, which is the red gold referred to in the title.

I'm in the middle of Broken Promise by Linwood Barclay a reccie from rabbitprincess. Love the way Barclay draws you into the story from page one.

>59 VivienneR: Yay! I have Parting Shot lined up to read this month :)

>60 rabbitprincess: I'm already checking to find out what is available for my next read. Is is necessary to read the series in order? And, if so, should I read the prequels first or last?

>61 VivienneR: Linwood wrote Broken Promise, Far from True, and The Twenty-Three all at the same time over a period of 18 months, so I would read them in order. I would also read No Time for Goodbye and No Safe House in that order. However, I think you could read other books in between those books. So you could read Broken Promise, then No Time for Goodbye, then Far from True, then No Safe House. Does that make sense?

My reading theme this year is based on The Cat Who series by Lilian Jackson Braun. I used the first book in the series to get the recommendation of Cat on the Edge by Shirley Rousseau Murphy. I have found my new cat detectives. Joe Grey and Dulcie are good heirs to KoKo and Yum Yum.

>62 rabbitprincess: Thank you, princess! Yes, that makes sense. It's the order I have planned. I've read several, either first in a series or standalones so they didn't mess up the series.

I finished We by Yevgeny Zamyatin today. A century-old dystopian novel, forerunner to books like 1984, that stands up very well.

>64 VivienneR: I think I'm going to have to go back and read all the standalones again! Reading the trilogy was fun because of seeing all the cameos by various characters from other books.

Educated / Tara Westover
4.25 stars

In this memoir, Tara Westover primarily recalls her childhood, growing up in a Mormon family in Idaho. Her parents didn’t believe in education, or public health, or anything government-related. Her father sold scrap metal from his junkyard, and enlisted all his kids to help, including his youngest, Tara. As she and her siblings grew up with no education, a few of them decided to leave to get that education they’d been missing. Tara was left at home along with her extremely abusive brother, Shawn, until she was able to get away, as well.

It started off a bit slow, but it built and built, I thought. It was hard as the book continued on – even as Tara left TO get that education she missed out on while growing up – to watch how hard a time she had cutting ties with her abusive family. I guess – it’s her family. Even as she grew to know how they were just wasn’t right, they were still her family.

The Iron King by Maurice Druon is an exciting start to a series (The Accursed Kings) about the French kings in the 14th century. It came recommended by @rabbitprincess and @Tess_W.

I switched my September RandomCat book to a different recommendation with Where the Crawdads Sing by Delia Owens. I think I made a good choice as I enjoyed this read very much.

I started Sixty Degrees North which would have been my reccie but I won't be finishing it in September. But I am enjoying it. I think it would have been nice to have more pictures scattered through the book and there are some in the center. I am enjoying it though I found it a bit slow to get started.

LT recommended I read Elizabeth von Arnim's Elizabeth and her German Garden because I had loved The Enchanted April.

And LT was right! Completely different atmosphere, but still an entertaining read.