December AlphaKIT: G and Q

Welcome to the last month of 2021 AlphaKIT, an unofficial challenge in the 2021 Category Challenge Group. Next month, on to 2022!

The rules are: 1. Use these letters any way you wish to select reading for the month. 2. Enjoy your reading.

and

The letter images are thanks to @helenliz ! Thanks so much, they're lovely.

Please remember to update the wiki: https://wiki.librarything.com/index.php/2021_AlphaKIT#December:_-_Letters:_G_and...

I was planning to read The Great Quake by Henry Fountain in November, but I don't think I'll get to it, so I will use it for a double in December

I plan to finish my year long read A Man Without Qualities

I'm planning on Norse Mythology by Neil Gaiman,
The Quiche of Death by M.C. Beaton, and Malice by John Gwynne.

I am planning on reading The Knife Slipped by Erle Stanley Gardner and It's In His Kiss by Julia Quinn.

I'm hoping to read Mr Lemoncello and the Titanium Ticket by Chris Grabenstein and The DOg Who Knew Too Much by Spencer Quinn.

I have chosen The Wedding Quilt Bride and Daybreak by Shelley Shepard Gray.

I'll be reading The Cavanaugh Quest by Thomas Gifford

I'll figure out what I'm reading for other challenges first - to see if anything will fit, anyway. I suspect I'll be picking out something for Q, though. Usually that ends up being a title starting with "Queen"!

Tough ones this month.

Here are some of what I found.

✔Bear a Wee Grudge
Because of Miss Bridgerton by Julia Quinn
Big Trouble in Little Greektown
Death by Chocolate snickerdoodle by Sarah Graves
Death by Gravity
Fiancée's Guide to First Wives and Murder
Getaway With Murder
Jane Seymour, The Haunted Queen
Lost Queen
✔Mistletoe Cake Murder by Lena Gregory
Peril at Pennington Manor by Tracy Gardner
Renewed for Murder by Victoria Gilbert
Reserved for Murder by Victoria Gilbert

>10 cyderry: Need some assistance? We can all help.

Oh, I do have a couple already. One for each:

- Written in My Own Heart's Blood / Diana Gabaldon
- To Fetch a Thief / Spencer Quinn

And no "queen"s this year.

I started An Untamed State (by Roxane Gay; narrated by Robin Miles) but I'm going to have to re-shelve it so to speak. It's about a woman is kidnapped and... it's a bit too dark for me right now. It seems to be well written, evocative and well-narrated; but I can fell it pulling me under mood-wise-- so I will hunt through my stacks and look for something lighter.

And I did finish A Man Without Qualities for my Q

I finished North and South by Elizabeth Gaskell.

I finished Dial A for Aunties by Jesse Q. Sutanto.

I read Theodore Boone: Kid Lawyer by John Grisham.

Written in My Own Heart's Blood / Diana Gabaldon
3.5 stars

This is the 8th book in the “Outlander” series. Keeping it broad so as not to spoil anything from the previous book… Jamie and Claire are involved in the American Revolution, while the family is mostly in Philadelphia. Roger and Bree are separated in time as Roger heads back… for a purpose I won’t reveal. He ends up further back in time than expected in 1737, and meets Jamie’s father (and others).

3.5 stars for me is good. The book was good. To give a book 4 stars, it means I “really” liked it, and that’s hard to sustain with a 1000+ page book, but there were parts I really liked. Roger and Bree’s story pulled me in immediately and kept me interested. There were parts that focused on Lord John Grey and his son William – much of which I didn’t find as interesting, though some parts were. Near the start of the book, I didn’t even find Jamie and Claire as intriguing, but their story got better as the book went along, I thought. As always, I do like reading about the medical stuff, though having had a couple of eye surgeries myself, that bit with Claire fixing John’s eye was pretty graphic!

Frozen in Time: The Fate of the Franklin Expedition / Owen Beattie, John Geiger
4 stars

This book first looks at the Franklin Expedition in the mid-1800s to find the Northwest Passage. Franklin and his entire crew of 129 people and two ships disappeared. In the years following, others set out to find them or some clue as to what had happened. In the early 1980s, Owen Beattie, a forensic anthropologist, and a team of others set out to the graves of three of the expedition members on Beatty Island to dig them up to do autopsies to see if that would tell them what had happened.

Surprisingly, I found the second half more interesting than the first. I guess all of it was potentially interesting to me, but I was surprised to be more engrossed in the parts as the modern-day scientists dug up the graves to find extremely well-preserved bodies and to read the details of their testing and what they found. Be warned that there are photos of the bodies that were dug up; of course, there are other interesting photos, as well.

I finished The Quiche of Death which was a lot of fun.

2022 January thread is up: https://www.librarything.com/topic/337453

2022 Yearlong X and Z thread is up: https://www.librarything.com/topic/337452

I am reading The Quiet Little Woman by Louisa May Alcott for my Q read.

Currently reading A Case of Two Cities by Qiu Xiaolong

I've finished The Dog Who Knew Too Much by Spencer Quinn.

I just realized that the audiobook I picked up and started listening to yesterday fits for this month!
I've started The End of the Affair (by Graham Greene; narrated by Colin Firth) - This is a semi-autobiographical piece about an author's affair with a married woman. It's brutally honest and, at the same time, beautiful writing that is equally well-narrated. I've often shied away from celebrity narrations in the past; but this is well-deserving of its accolades.

The Overnight Guest / Heather Gudenkauf
4.5 stars

Current day: Wylie is a true crime writer who has left her son with her ex-husband to head to an isolated rural area where she has rented an old farmhouse to be able to better concentrate on her writing. On a cold, blizzardy, freezing-rain/snow-filled night, she finds a little boy curled up in the snow outside the house. She brings him in to warm him up, but he’s not talking as to how or why he was there.

2020: 12-year olds Josie and Becky are best friends, but tragedy strikes when Becky stays overnight one night. The farmhouse then houses two murdered people and two people have disappeared. Josie is the only one who managed to get away.

Timeline unclear initially: a mother and daughter are kept locked in a basement, with an abusive man/father coming to visit occasionally.

Wow, this pulled me in right away and I wanted to keep reading! Unfortunately, for me, I was reading before bed (twice) and especially the first night, I had a hard time getting to sleep! (Which, really, in a thriller or horror book, is a good thing!). All three storylines were appealing to me, and the author brought them together very well.

I read Close Quarters by Michael Gilbert for both the G and the Q. It's a Golden Age detective story set in a cathedral close.

I did read It's In His Kiss by Julia Quinn for this month's AlphaKit, but I changed my mind for my G read and read A Gun For Sale by Graham Greene instead of the Erle Stanley Gardner that I originally planned on.

Thanks for a great AlphaKit year, Jean, I'm looking forward to 2022!

I just finished The Guncle by Steven Rowley. Very fun, but also in spots very sad.

I just finished The End of the Affair (by Graham Greene; narrated by Colin Firth) and now I need a moment to let all the feelings settle in and take their place before I start anything new. I've only read a couple things by Graham Greene before but each time I've finished one of his books, I always rave about his writing: the poignancy, the word-smithing, that distinctive war and post-war style that remind me of Evelyn Waugh... Colin Firth narrating was simply amazing. I'm going to putting the 1955 film version on my "To watch" list (Deborah Kerr, van Johnson, John Mills) for this weekend :-)

>30 Tanya-dogearedcopy: I also loved The End of the Affair, although I read a print version -- I'm thinking I need to experience the Colin Firth narration!

Finished my "G" book - Me. Lemoncello and the Titanium Ticket by Chris Grabenstein. My last book for this year. Can't wait to start again.

>21 majkia: thank you!

Starting my G read. Ghosts of Christmas Past by Tim Martin

Starting Death in the Fifth Position by Edgar Box, aka Gore Vidal

COMPLETED Death in the Fifth Position by Edgar Box, aka Gore Vidal

I just finished (and really liked) my G book, The Winter Bride by Anne Gracie. Next I'll start my Q book, The Brass Queen by Elizabeth Chatsworth.

For G, I read Less by Andrew Sean Greer.

Just finished another G book, Victories Greater Than Death.

To Fetch a Thief / Spencer Quinn
4 stars

When an elephant and her handler go missing from a circus, it is cancelled to the disappointment of PI Bernie and his son, Charlie. However, since Bernie shows up before he knows about the cancellation, he chats with the police detective who is there to find out more. Later on, Bernie (and his dog Chet, whose POV the book is from) are hired by the handler’s partner (and the circus’s clown) to find out what happened, since the police are treating this as the handler simply having taken the elephant to get away from the circus.

I really liked this one. As always, it’s fun (and sometimes humourous) to read from Chet’s perspective. This one was extra interesting to me with the animal welfare/cruelty angle of circuses.

I have another G, Nadine Gordimer, read The Conservationist.

True North / Gary Eller
3 stars

The book starts with three young unmarried pregnant girls in a small area in rural North Dakota. The entirety of the book takes place between the 1930s and 1960s. All three girls eventually all end up married and they are “related” in some way. There are feuding neighbours in the mix, and a nearby Indian reservation.

The girls: Fawn was raised by her father, extremely isolated, and had never met any other human until shortly before she became pregnant. Ida Florence – I can’t remember her circumstances at the start of the book. Leah liked a nearby boy (one of the indigenous people, I think), but her father did not. Her father was pushing for an unmarried older man, Harold, to marry Leah after she got pregnant.

There are a lot of characters and I (sometimes) found it difficult to either remember who was who and/or who was related to whom in what way(s). It took a long time for me to figure out that these three pregnant girls were not of the same generation. Similarly, I sometimes found it difficult to remember which characters were indigenous or not. There were very few likable characters. All that being said about the numerous characters, the story itself ended up being ok, but it took a while at the start to get “into” it.