It’s time to move another letter down the alphabet for The ABC Book Challenge!
Every couple of weeks I’ll be sharing at least one memorable book with a title beginning with the letter of the week, and one (or more) books currently on my TBR.
I’ll be ignoring any As etc at the beginning of titles
The ABC Book Challenge – Q
We’ve reached the letter Q! Perhaps unsurprisingly there aren’t many titles beginning with a Q in either my previously read or to be read piles of books so this week’s was a struggle!
A Memorable Book…
The QI Book Of The Dead by John Lloyd and John Mitchinson
About the book
Following their Herculean – or is it Sisyphean? – efforts to save the living from ignorance, the two wittiest Johns in the English language turn their attention to the dead.
As the authors themselves say, “The first thing that strikes you about the dead is just how many of them there are.” Helpfully, Lloyd and Mitchinson have employed a simple – but ruthless – criterion for inclusion: The dead person has to be interesting.
Here, then, is a dictionary of the dead, an encyclopedia of the embalmed. Ludicrous in scope, whimsical in its arrangement, this wildly entertaining tome presents pity and provocative biographies of the no-longer-living from the famous to the undeservedly and – until now – permanently obscure. Spades in hand, Lloyd and Mitchinson have dug up everything embarrassing, fascinating, and downright weird about their subjects’ lives and added their own uniquely irreverent observations.
Organized by capricious categories – such as dead people who died virgins, who kept pet monkeys, who lost limbs, whose corpses refused to stay put – the dearly departed, from the inventor of the stove to a cross-dressing, bear-baiting female gangster, finally receive the epitaphs they truly deserve.
Discover:
– Why Freud had a lifelong fear of trains
– The one thing that really made Isaac Newton laugh
– How Catherine the Great really died (no horse was involved)
Much like the country doctor who cured smallpox (he’s in here), Lloyd and Mitchinson have the perfect antidote for anyone out there dying of boredom. The Book of the Dead – like life itself – is hilarious, tragic, bizarre, and amazing. You may never pass a graveyard again without chuckling.
I own most of the QI companion books but I think this is the only one which actually features QI at the beginning of the title and thus qualifies for this post! I’m not entirely sure what my dad thought when I was wandering around Tesco with him in the lead up to Christmas and asked for it as part of my presents that year but it’s full of really interesting facts!
A Book On My TBR…
A Quiet Kind Of Thunder by Sara Barnard
About the book
Steffi doesn’t talk, but she has so much to say.
Rhys can’t hear, but he can listen.
Their love isn’t a lightning strike, it’s the rumbling roll of thunder.
Steffi has been a selective mute for most of her life – she’s been silent for so long that she feels completely invisible. But Rhys, the new boy at school, sees her. He’s deaf, and her knowledge of basic sign language means that she’s assigned to look after him. To Rhys, it doesn’t matter that Steffi doesn’t talk, and as they find ways to communicate, Steffi finds that she does have a voice, and that she’s falling in love with the one person who makes her feel brave enough to use it.
From the bestselling author of Beautiful Broken Things comes a love story about the times when a whisper is as good as a shout.
All of Sara’s books are still sitting on my shelves to be read, I’ve heard so many good things about all of them I really need to get to this one!
A Question Of Blood by Ian Rankin
About the book
Two seventeen-year-olds are killed by an ex-Army loner who has gone off the rails. The mystery takes Rebus into the heart of a shattered community. Ex-Army himself, Rebus becomes fascinated by the killer, and finds he is not alone. Army investigators are on the scene, and won’t be shaken off. The killer had friends and enemies to spare and left behind a legacy of secrets and lies.
Rebus has more than his share of personal problems, too. He’s fresh out of hospital, but won’t say how it happened. Could there be a connection with a house-fire and the unfortunate death of a petty criminal who had been harassing Rebus’s colleague Siobhan Clarke?
I own a lot of Rebus books as there was an offer on a bundle online and I’ve only read the first two so far so it’s going to take some to actually get to this one but I’ll get there eventually! Probably…
One memorable and two to be read Q books! Let me know yours in the comments and be sure to come back on the 12th to discover my R books!
Sarah Withers Blogs 
Charlotte
A Quiet Kind of Thunder is one of my faves.
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