2016 Category Challenge
Welcome to the 2016 Category Challenge!
The idea here is to read books from different categories, to chat about what you read, and to inflict bookbullets on your fellow challengers. You can have as many or few categories as you wish, they can cover any sort of topic, and you can read as many books as you want in each category.
When this group was started, the idea was for everyone to pick (their own!) 8 categories of books and read 8 books in each of those categories in 2008. In 2009, it was to read 9 books each in 9 different categories, 10 in 10 in 2010, 11 in 11 in 2011, etc. Once we got into the higher years/numbers, it started to get difficult to get that many books read in a year, but since we still liked our category reading (it helps with reading out of the box), we changed it to a category challenge, so that everyone could pick whichever number of categories they wished and, of course, whichever number of books to read in each category. That's a short version of how this recurring group came to be and you are very welcome to join with us - just set up a thread, name your categories, and chat away!
In this group, we do a few group reads. Some of them are straight group reads, where we pick a book to read for a month or a quarter or sometimes for the whole year.
However, we also do something we call "CATs." They are a variant of the TIOLI (Take It Or Leave It) that is being done over in the 75:ers group, but to avoid confusion we named ours "CATs" since we're a category challenge group... Get it? :) At the end of each year, we vote on which CATs to have the following year (usually 3) and for this year, we have a geographic CAT, a Dewey CAT, and a Random CAT. Each month a different volunteer will create the thread for each CAT and outline its parameters.
In addition to the CATs, there are sometimes a few extra challenges that weren't voted as an "official" CATs and are (usually) led by the people who suggested them. We call these KITs (for kittens...). This year, we have an alphabetical KIT.
In 2015, there was also a bingo card challenge added. Not surprisingly, we gave our canine friends a chance to shine and so named it the BingoDOG. This year, we also have a second bingo card that concentrates on female authors, and that one became the WomanBingoPUP...
The challenge officially begins on January 1, 2016, but starting early or late is welcomed.
Have fun!!
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This Year's Group Reads, CATs, and DOG:
GeoCAT General Thread and GeoCAT Wiki
DeweyCAT General Thread and DeweyCAT Wiki
RandomCAT General Thread and RandomCAT Wiki
BingoDOG General Thread and BingoDOG Wiki
WomanBingoPUP General Thread and WomanBingoPUP Wiki
AlphaKIT General Thread and AlphaKIT Wiki
SFF/SFFF-KIT General Thread and SFF/SFFF-KIT Wiki
Group Reads
First Quarter:
War and Peace by Leo Tolstoy
February:
Between the World and Me by Ta-Nehisi Coates
March:
Ludwika by Christoph Fischer
Second Quarter:
Robertson Davies Author Read
July:
The Round House by Louise Erdrich
August:
Things Fall Apart by Chinua Achebe
September:
The Game of Kings by Dorothy Dunnett
October:
Dracula by Bram Stoker
November:
Barbara Pym Author Read
December:
Year-Long Group Reads:
The Vorkosigan Saga
Fables by Bill Willingham
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