November ColourCAT: Blue

(The picture is my own)

Our colour this month is blue, usually described as cool and calming. It ranges from the pale blue of forget-me-nots to the deep blue of the ocean. Lots of gems come in shades of blue: aquamarine, sapphire, lapislazuli, as well as many flowers.

Which is your favourite shade, favourite gem, favourite flower? And what kind of blue are you choosing to read?

Tell us, and if you want to, add it to the wiki here: https://wiki.librarything.com/index.php/ColourCAT#November:

A lot of blue on my TBR shelves so I'll postpone a decision for a while.

I also have a ton of choices, but I may break with my tradition and go for something blue in the title rather than a blue cover (though some of my potential reads have both):

Redemption in Indigo by ‪Karen Lord‬
The Blue, Beautiful World by ‪Karen Lord‬
A Spool of Blue Thread by Anne Tyler‬
Blue Light Hours by Bruna Dantas Lobato
Indigo by Marina Warner
Winter by Ali Smith

I am reading Blue Moon by Lori Handeland for this month's challenge.

I am planning on reading The Deep Blue Good-by by John D. MacDonald which is the first in his Travis McGee series.

I'm planning to read The Last Blue by Isla Morley.

>1 MissWatson: what a lovely collection of yarn in pretty blue shades. Very inspiring. But maybe in a different direction;)

The whole cover of The Tenth Girl by Sara Faring is tinged blue, so that's my plan.

>7 amberwitch: Thank you! One of my favourite colours for knitting, I admit.

Just a heads-up that I have created the 2026 Category Challenge group: https://www.librarything.com/ngroups/24919/2026-Category-Challenge. Stop by to get a head start on planning next year's challenge!

(Cross-posted to a bunch of threads; sorry if you see this a thousand times!)

I plan to read O Little Town of Bethlehem by Elizabeth Boyle which features a beautiful blue cover.

I am reading The Blue Castle by L.M. Montgomery.

>12 JayneCM: Love that book!

I might read either a book with blue in its title such as Blue Marlin by Lee Smith (a reread) or with a blue cover such a 107 days by Kamala Harris or Thomas Jefferson and Sally Hemings by Annette Gordon-Reed.

>12 JayneCM: >13 christina_reads: Oh, nice! I just found this at the charity shop.

>15 MissWatson: Serendipity!

Just finished reading The Rowan by Anne McCaffrey which has blue on the cover

I completed my read of The Deep Blue Good-by by John D. MacDonald and although I am a fan of his stand-alone stories, I did not like this first Travis McGee book much at all.

I plan to read Mapp and Lucia by E.F. Benson in remembrance of Prunella Scales who died a few days ago. Most people remember her in Fawlty Towers, but I loved the tv series where she played Miss Mapp to perfection.

Starting The Stardust Grail by Yume Kitasei. Parts of the starfield shown on the cover are blue:

I finished Singapore Sapphire by A. M. Stuart, historical mystery set in 1910 Singapore.

I just finished Peace Like a River by Leif Enger, which has a predominantly blue cover.

I've finished another blue book, this one the cover has a light blue background, Jane and Dan at the End of the World by Colleen Oakley.

COMPLETED >20 Robertgreaves: The Stardust Grail by Yume Kitasei

Completed Good night Little One which has a blue cover.

Starting Choice Theory: A Very Short Introduction by Michael Allingham

I'm currently reading The Only One Left by Riley Sager. The font on the cover is blue.

I just finished Aviva vs the Dybbuk:

I read Murder Begins at Home by Delano Ames, whose cover includes a big swath of blue sky:

Just started Blå bror, Blue Brother in english. The language is a bit overwrought, but it has good reviews, so I’ll persevere a bit longer.

Hi all, just an FYI that CAT voting is in progress over at the 2026 group! Polls close on Saturday, November 15, so be sure to submit your votes by then to help choose next year's CATs: https://www.librarything.com/topic/374659#8995115.

(Cross-posting this at a bunch of threads.)

The background colour for the cover of What If It's Us by Becky Albertalli and Adam Silvera is blue-ish.

I have finished an early Hercule Poirot mystery: The Mystery on the Blue Train.

The Blue Hour by Paula Hawkins
A novel with an intriguing description: when a piece of art has been found to contain a human bone it attracts attention. The artist lived on a Scottish island cut off from the mainland for twelve hours a day. This should have appealed to me much more that it did but the time switches as well as the myriad forms of depicting the artist through email messages and diary entries made the story disjointed. I found it difficult to connect with the characters and in the end didn’t care much about what happened to them. I’ve enjoyed other books by Hawkins and will regard this as a one-off disappointment.

Finished another blue cover book, The Prince of the Skies by Antonio Iturbe about the life of Antoine de Saint Exupéry.

I just finished Local Custom by Sharon Lee and Steve Miller, whose cover includes a deep blue sky.

I finished The Keeper of Lost Causes by Jussi Adler-Olsen.
That's a shade of blue, right?

My book club's choice for this month is The Songbird and the Rambutan Tree by Lucille Abendanon. I've just noticed the bird has blue feathers:

I finished The Labors of Hercules by Agatha Christie (1947), a series of 12 short stories with Poirot.

I finished You Should Be So Lucky by Cat Sebastian.

Starting Sky & Stone by Ben Aaronovitch:

>42 susanna.fraser: I just loved that one. Hope you enjoyed it too.

>44 amberwitch: Isn't it delightful?

Starting Penguin Island by Anatole France

Murder in the Snow has a cover with lots of dark blue winter sky, and the snow on the roofs is also shaded in blue.

COMPLETED Penguin Island by Anatole France (>46 Robertgreaves:)

I finished Blue Light Hours by Bruna Dantas Lobato, a beautiful meditation on the love of a mother and daughter despite distance. The cover is also blue:

I probably won't quite finish it tomorrow, but I am really enjoying Black in Blues. The cover is stunning.

I read Algeriennes, a graphic novel fictionalisation of women's experiences in the Algerian revolution.

Ah! I knew there was a reason I remembered a detail from Dyer Consequences by Maggie Sefton! In addition to the blue dye on the front of the book, the book begins with a dyeing class that uses blue in the space-dyed skein. And the murder happens with a tub of Aztec Blue yarn dye.

>1 MissWatson: Applauding your lovely picture! I adore all those shades of blue and salute you for all the knitting projects they were a part of (or that you are planning for future projects). Or did a few of those blues just jump off the shelf and into your yarn shopping basket?

>53 threadnsong: Thank you! Some are left from finished projects, the others still wait to be made into shawls, pullovers or cardigans. Like many knitters, I probably have more yarn than time left...but the same goes for books.

And my final book for this month’s colour is The blue castle by L. M. Montgomery. It was the perfect for a grey Sunday, I read it in one go and loved every page of it.

>54 MissWatson: - In my case it's fabric - and books.

I ended up reading a different book than I planned. The cover of The Soul of an Octopus has a blue edge all around.

I read THE BERRY PICKERS
Blueberries on the cover.

Thanks to all of you, I hope you enjoyed your blues!

Blue Moon by Lori Handeland ★★★

The summer I discovered the world was not black-and-white, but a host of annoying shades of gray, was the summer a lot more changed than my vision. Call me Jessie, or better yet, Officer McQuade. On the night the truth began, our usually shy wolf population near my hometown of Miniwa, Wisconsin, attacked. At the scene of the first crime, I found a wolf totem, which led me to Professor Will Cadotte, an expert in Native American mythology, particularly of his tribe, the Ojibwe.
From day one, he annoyed me. Tall, dark, and gorgeous, he’s also funny, smart, and nearly as sarcastic as I am. I felt things when I looked at him. I wanted to keep feeling them longer than was healthy for a woman like me. I know what I am. Better off alone. Nevertheless, we began to work together in an attempt to determine what was rotten in Miniwa. We were getting nowhere until the arrival of Edward Mandenauer, a self-proclaimed werewolf hunter. Sure, I laughed, and then one of our dead bodies walked out of the morgue. After that, things got really strange. Now a rare Blue Moon approaches, making me wonder: Who can I trust when the moon is full?

Not a bad written paranormal romance story, I quite enjoyed the tale and did not figure out who the culprit was. However, I am lowering the rating due to the unnecessary and overly placed sex scenes. Not as graphic as some, but still distracting by the ill-timed "sessions".

Fox


In my edition the dark portion looked rather more navy blue than black.

This book was more about the symbol of the fox in human culture. The chapter titled, 'The Fox in Nature', for example, discusses how Aristotle believed foxes were made of earth, cold, and bony, and their mothers had to lick them into the correct shape after they were born. There was a large amount of discussion about foxhunting, and a surprising amount of cruelty to animals described, even beyond the foxhunts.

This was still an interesting book, it just wasn't really what I thought I was picking up.

I did have one bone to pick, though — the author makes a point several times that part of the reason foxes are so demonised and hated is their 'inability to be domesticated'. However, he also points out several times different species like Fennec and Bengal foxes are often and easily tamed, kept as pets albeit more exotic ones. This is not to mention the famous Russian experiment started in the 50s which reached some pretty strong conclusions about fox domestication in the 70s — and apparently is still ongoing.

I read A Marriage at Sea by Sophie Elmhirst.