2019 Category Challenge

Welcome to the 2019 Category Challenge, where the only rule is there are no rules.

What are the categories? Whatever you like! The point is for you to figure out what you want to get out of your reading year: Do you want to make progress on some of those series you follow? Is there an author whose works you'd like to read or re-read? Are there genres or subject areas you want to focus on?

Some members (your admin included) like to use the same categories each year and dress them up with a clever theme. Some members use the months of the year as their categories to give themselves more freedom to read by whim. It's all good! We want the challenge to work for you!

If you hate your categories halfway through the year, or sooner, change them! While we do have the word “challenge” in the group name, reading should always be fun. So if your challenge isn’t working for you, change it up!

So what's with the menagerie? CATs, KITs, DOGs??

The Category Challenge runs several group-wide challenges that members can play along with as they please: CATs, KITs, and the BingoDOG.

The CATs are monthly challenges inspired by the TIOLI (Take It Or Leave It) challenge over at the 75 Books group. We call them CATs because we are the CATegory challenge. We normally have three CATs; however, this year we had a tie for third place in the voting, so we're having four:

CalendarCAT
RandomCAT
SeriesCAT
TBRCAT

Any CATs that don't make the cut as official CATs can be turned into KITs. These are mini-CATs (KIT comes from kitten). KITs can also be former CATs from previous years, or just something fun that a member comes up with. In previous years we've had the SFFFKIT (for sci-fi, fantasy, and speculative fiction) and the AlphaKIT (two letters of the alphabet are the featured letters of the month, and you use these to pick a book to read).

The BingoDOG, meanwhile, is a bingo card put together by the members. One member is responsible for gathering suggestions for squares and weeding out the duplicates, then the finalists are put on a bingo card. We call it the BingoDOG as a counterpart to the CAT challenges. The member who gathers suggestions for squares will set the deadline for submissions.

What about regular group reads? We do those too! Members can suggest a group read at any time, or spread the word about group reads going on in other groups. We've even carried over group reads from previous years of the Category Challenge (e.g., the Vorkosigan Saga read-along).

Do I have to be a member of this group to join the group reads? Not at all. If you have a home base in another group and just want to swing by here for a CAT, KIT, or group read, or to play BingoDOG, you're most welcome to join us.

When do we get started?! The challenge officially begins on January 1, 2019, but you’re welcome to start earlier or later!

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CATs, KITs, DOG

CAT planning thread

CalendarCAT planning thread and CalendarCAT wiki
RandomCAT planning thread and RandomCAT wiki
SeriesCAT planning thread and SeriesCAT Wiki
TBRCAT planning thread and TBRCAT Wiki

AlphaKIT planning thread and AlphaKIT Wiki
ScaredyKIT planning thread and ScaredyKIT Wiki
SFFFKIT planning thread and SFFFKIT Wiki

BingoDOG planning thread and BingoDOG Wiki

Group reads

Group reads planning thread

First quarter
January: The Scarlet Letter, by Nathaniel Hawthorne
February: Secondhand Time, by Svetlana Alexievich
March:

Second quarter
April:
May:
June:

Third quarter
July:
August:
September:

Fourth quarter
October:
November:
December

Multi-month reads

The Lord of the Rings trilogy, by J.R.R. Tolkien - April / May / June
Tom Jones, by Henry Fielding - July / August / September

Year-long reads

Emile Zola: Les Rougon-Macquart series
A Suitable Boy, by Vikram Seth
The Dresden Files, by Jim Butcher: Catch-up thread | Main thread
Pilgrimage, by Dorothy Richardson
Short stories and anthologies