May TBRCAT: Book I Keep Looking at, but Never Manage to Open

Book I Keep Looking at, but Never Manage to Open



For May. are there any books on your tbr that you keep looking at, and thinking “I really need to get to that book”? Pick it up in May and join us for May’s TBRCAT to help you finally get to that book!

And, please do update the wiki with what you read this month:
https://wiki.librarything.com/index.php/2019_TBRCAT#May:_-_Theme:_Book_I_Keep_Lo...

(Sorry for the short intro - it's hard to come up with one when it's so different/personal to each person!)

I have a few possibilities:

We Bought a Zoo / Benjamin Mee
Love Saves the Day / Gwen Cooper
Madame Tussaud: a Life in Wax / Kate Berridge
Your Cat's Just Not That Into You / Richard Smith

The book I've set aside for this challenge is The Caine Mutiny, by Herman Wouk. It's on a bookshelf beside my computer and it's at eye level, so I see it all the time.

Pretty much all of the unread books on my shelves could qualify as they all call to me on a regular basis. At the very least I’m hoping to read Lessons from Tara. It’s a book I received as a birthday gift almost four years ago and I keep meaning to pick it up and read it.

I have decided to read The Sugar Pavilion by Rosalind Laker as I have had this one on my shelf for a number of years and yet I keep passing over it.

I'm going to read Gathering Carrageen by Monica Connell. I accidentally touched it once in my kobo menu, and it has sat there at 1% read ever since (even though I've only seen the front cover!). Every time I look at the list of books and see that 1% rather than 'unread', I think I really need to get to it. So this will be my month :)

I have so many books in my TBR pile that I want to read, it's hard to decide which one to read. I'm going to go with Think of a Number by John Verdon as it will also work for the Alpha Kit next month.

>4 LittleTaiko: I spend quite a bit of time just gazing at the physical TBR shelves in my living room so almost anything from there would do or Rat of Wanchai which is at the top of the list I keep of what's on my virtual TBR shelf.

>6 Jackie_K: I'm glad I'm not the only one who accidentally opens books like that. But I usually mark them as unread later.

Michelangelo : the frescoes of the Sistine Chapel is going to be my trip to Rome. I've had it on my shelf for several years hoping to reach the real Rome, I'm thinking this is going to be my only way.

>8 Robertgreaves: I've never figured out how to mark them as unread (spot the Luddite). Occasionally my kobo will ask me if I want to mark books as unread, but they have to sit there at 1% for months and months before that happens!

>10 Jackie_K: Go to My Books. Click on the 3 dots on the right of the thumbnail of the book. A menu will appear with Mark As Unread as one of the options.

>11 Robertgreaves: Thank you! I can't believe I've owned my kobo this long (6 or 7 years) and not known this!

As others have said, So Many of the books on my TBR shelves fit into this category, it's not even funny, so the books I read for this challenge will be ones that the other monthly goals are sending me towards. Right now, that definitely includes Shadows by John Saul, which has been on my shelf for ages, and So I Married a Sorcerer, which I was looking forward to even before it came out, and have thought about reading ever since I got it. Just Another Soldier is also likely going to be something I read for another challenge, but which fits in here since it's been sitting on my desk staring at me for ages...

My pick for this category is Fight Like a Girl which at two and a half years on the TBR pile is a relative newcomer.

I am planning to read The Colors of All the Cattle by Alexander McCall Smith. It has been staring at me from my living room endtable since I received it.

I've started Invisible Agents which I bought when it came out in a fit of enthusiasm and haven't touched since.

I have plenty to choose from...I've planned Dancer by Colum McCann for Random CAT and it qualifies. If I have time I'll work another one in too, probably When Will There Be Good News by Kate Atkinson.

I have been stuck on William Henry Harrison for the US Presidents Challenge for ages; I've pulled out the short bio I have of him and it's sitting on a hall table, along with a couple of early reviewer books I need to get to (Things That Fall From the Sky and My Body My Choice), which will be my choices for this month.

>18 LisaMorr: - Ugh, I'm with you. I've been stuck on Team of Rivals for several years now. I enjoy the book when I read it but for some reason just never get around to picking it back up. I'd love to finally move past it and get on with the post-Lincoln presidents. Maybe it will actually happen in May. :)

>19 LittleTaiko: Good luck! I have such a pile of Lincoln books to read - I'll be there for a while!

Awhile back I started reading Cold Comfort Farm, and then something bright and shiny came along and grabbed my attention. Poor CCF has been languishing on my nightstand ever since. Its time has come with this challenge.

>21 NinieB: Ooh, that's a fun one! Hope you enjoy it!

>22 christina_reads: Thanks! I enjoyed it when I started it; I can't figure out what distracted me from it.

I finally read Lessons From Tara which I've had four almost four years now. It was a fun book that I'm glad I finally got to.

When Breath Becomes Air by Paul Kalanithi
This memoir of a young neurosurgeon who discovers that the roles have reversed as cancer invades his body was difficult for me to read. I have long had issues with thinking about death, and the thought of terminal illness and time spent in hospitals brings my anxiety-ridden brain to its proverbial knees. I knew going into this one that it would be a rough read for me, but I also knew that I wanted to give it a go because I'd heard so many fantastic things about it. And I found that it was also, unexpectedly - and despite the worries it dredged up for me - an absolute joy to read. What an impressive person Kalanithi was: so driven and compassionate and keen for all sorts of knowledge. His mix of interests and studies in the humanities and sciences shows through so beautifully in his writing. I'm awed by his eloquence, his intelligence and talents, and devastated by the thought of what the world lost when it lost him so early.

>25 scaifea: I read that book last year and felt exactly the same as you - such a tragic loss. I thought the Epilogue by his wife was also really moving.

>26 Jackie_K: Agreed - that epilogue is lovely.

I have finished Cold Comfort Farm and as Christina said it is a fun one (Flora, the heroine, would say it is amusing or diverting). I would now like to read one of the melodramatic, earthy novels that it parodies, as well as Mansfield Park, one of the Jane Austen novels that is name-checked. Four stars for two evenings of high-quality literary entertainment.

Finished The Bug Boys by Stewart Hoffman, which had been sitting on my desk for ages, and just kept getting passed over. 2.5* and a full review written.

>25 scaifea: I understand. I have not read the book for that reason. I have the same anxieties as you described, and they were magnified manyfold when I had to walk alongside my dear departed husband through his chronic illness and eventual death.

I did finish The Colors of All the Cattle by Alexander McCall Smith, which I thoroughly enjoyed.

I've finished Caleb's Crossing by Geraldine Brooks for this month. I started this years ago and put it aside thinking I didn't like it but thinking I should. But I'd heard it was good and so it stayed on the shelf taunting me. Turns out it was "right book, wrong time" as I enjoyed it quite a bit this time around.

I've read a couple of books that I've been meaning to get to for a few years now.

2015 - The Nonexistent Knight and the Cloven Viscount by Italo Calvino
2017 - The Comedians by Graham Greene

I love Calvino and have been intending to read something by Greene for quite some time now so it was nice to finally get both read this month.

Starting Meetings With Remarkable Manuscripts by Christopher de Hamel. My sister bought me this as an extra Xmas present for Christmas 2017 and I've been looking at it guiltily ever since. But it's a big, heavy hardback which is going to be difficult to carry about, so I've been putting it off.

>33 Robertgreaves: - I like the cover and I'll be interested to see what you say about how readable it is. Sometimes books that sound like they'll be very interesting end up being more like a textbook. I like it when the author manages to make you feel like you're sitting in two armchairs just having a conversation instead of a lecture. but I ramble...

I was pleasantly surprised by The Sugar Pavilion by Rosalind Laker. This historical novel has been sitting on my shelves for quite some time but I kept passing over it in favor of a Georgette Heyer or Jane Austen whose books are set in approx. the same time period. While this author cannot compare with the forementioned authors, it nevertheless was a fun story and kept me engaged throughout.

I chose Die Brücke am Kwai for this month's CAT, one of those "You've seen the movie, the book can wait" items. I have reasons to suspect the German translation is abridged, so I'm saving my judgment till I've read the original.

I finished my slim biography of William Henry Harrison and for the president with the shortest tenure, there was more there than I expected. Glad I finally got through it and have re-started my US Presidents Challenge!

>37 LisaMorr: I need to restart mine! I'm stuck at FDR.

Congrats on getting re-started with the challenge. The closes I have come is in pulling the Lincoln book off of the shelf and putting it in a stack of books to pick up soon. :)

>38 cyderry: >39 LittleTaiko: Let's see if we can push each other! I'm going to pull out the next one and let it stare me in the face: The Presidencies of William Henry Harrison and John Tyler.

COMPLETED Meetings With Remarkable Manuscripts by Christopher de Hamel

>34 dudes22: my review:

The author introduces 12 mediaeval manuscripts, where they are kept, their contents, and history.

This book is as gorgeously illustrated as one would expect. The text is for the most part interesting with lots of little nuggets of information about the manuscripts, the libraries where they are kept. and some of the deductions we can make about the scribes and origins of the books. Obviously he couldn't reproduce the complete manuscripts -- and part of the point was that much of what we can learn from the manuscripts simply cannot be seen in any reproduction however excellent -- and there were times it felt a bit like reading museum wall labels for exhibits one can't see. Despite that it was worth persisting through the occasional dry spell for the overall enjoyment. I did wish at that the end that he'd said more about why these 12 rather than any others.

Sounds interesting. I looked and I can get it as a library loan so I’ll put it in my future reading list.

I finished two more - two ERs that I have been meaning to get to: My Body My Choice and Things That Fall From the Sky.

After attempting to read several books (including 2 nonfiction ones which were published in the 1980s and out-of-date), I read My Antonia by Willa Cather, which I really enjoyed. It was pertinent to today since it featured immigrant families with different cultures, in this case, Bohemian and Norwegian.

The Key to Midnight / Dean Koontz
3.5 stars

Alex is a private detective and recognizes Joanna when he walks into her club in Kyoto. He recognizes her as Lisa, who went missing 12 years ago and disappeared without a trace. Joanna insists she is not Lisa, but as they look further into it, they are convinced she is, but she really doesn’t remember being Lisa. She has memories of her life (as Joanna) before Kyoto and before 12 years ago. What happened?

I thought this was pretty good. At first, I thought Alex was not a good person, but that turned out to be wrong (it wasn’t long before we figured this out, so it’s not a spoiler). The nightmares that Joanna had were creepy. This was originally written under a pseudonym, as it was a different genre than Koontz usually writes. He rewrote parts of it to update it in 1995 (from the original 1979), though a lot of the subject matter still felt a bit 70s. Overall, though, it was good.

I finished Monica Connell's Gathering Carrageen for this month's challenge. It's exactly my kind of book, so I'm wondering why it took me so long to get to it! It's a memoir of the author's year spent living in rural Donegal in Ireland. 4/5.

Since it would also count for the CalendarCAT (Mothers' Day, U.S.) and BingoDOG (alliterative title square), I decided to read one of the books I have put aside to read My Antonia: Linked Lives: Adult Daughters and Their Mothers by Lucy Rose Fischer. Although it was published in 1986 and the research is out-of-date, I found the later chapters rather interesting. They included daughters who did not have children and relationships with aging parents whereas the earlier chapters primarily dealt with daughters in their upper teens or 20s, and emphasized the daughters' being mothers. Throughout the book, the samples discussed were very small, and the author kept mentioning statistics.

Your Cat’s Just Not That Into You / Richard Smith.
3 stars

This is meant to be a humourous look at cats. Much of it is set up in a letter “dear Abby” advice-type format, but there are other little snippets, as well. There were a few times I laughed out loud, but really not many. It wasn’t as amusing or enjoyable as I’d hoped, though I am still rating it “ok” (that may be generous). It was a quick read, at least.

Finished Dance Dance Dance by Murakami. As a long-time fan of his, I looked forward to this one, and it absolutely lived up to my expectations. Full review written for those interested.

Also, I finished Shadows by John Saul earlier this month, which also fit into this category for me. Very different book, but also darkly wonderful. Full review written for those interested.

I read Kiss the Girls and Make Them Spy: An Original Jane Bond Parody by Mabel Maney. I kept looking at it because it has a bright pink spine and is therefore eye-catching. I did not read it for the 8+ years it was on my shelves, because I am not interested in James Bond and so a parody of James Bond did not seem very interesting either. It turned out to be a fun read. Jane Bond is not actually a spy, although most of the other characters are spies of one sort or another. There is a plot by some awful people to abduct the Queen of England, and it gets foiled, obviously. The dialogue is amusing.

I've been looking at Suite Francaise by Irene Nemirovsky on my shelf since at least 2009, as it was one of the first books I recorded in LibraryThing when I joined. I'm so relieved to have it completed and I can say it was not a disappointment.

Originally conceived in 5 parts, Nemirovsky only completed 2 parts before being arrested and sent to Auschwitz, where she perished. The book takes place during German-occupied France circa 1940-41 and explores all sorts of levels of social class, wealth and poverty, patriotism vs. altruism. But running throughout every chapter is the obsession with food: hiding, hoarding, stealing, dreaming of food. It often takes over every other instinct. Fascinating novel; one can only imagine what a masterpiece the full work might have been.