Kate's Blog

Latest Thoughts on all things Agatha

10 December 2024

Where to Find Gift Ideas for the Readers You Love

For the holidays, I will be giving quite a few books as gifts, and I am usually given books or book-related items in return. I think books make great gifts! Also, they are easy to wrap. If you need gift ideas for your favorite book lover, here are some places to look:

AgathaChristie.com has lots of fun items for the Agatha Christie fan at their online shop. And the Collecting Christie expert, David Morris, puts together his own holiday gift guide.

In my corner of the world, the Republic of Letters assembled a Local Author Holiday Catalog to promote the local writing community. To support local authors in your area, try asking your neighborhood bookstore. I bet they would have a list of recommendations.

Bookstore people are terrific sources for gift-giving suggestions. Independent shops are wonderful fun for browsing, and they usually have gift guides. If you search "book holiday gift guide" online you'll find the lists put out by the big bookstores. Also, American Library Magazine has a guide.

I might as well mention my own books here. Agatha Annotated is, of course, specifically for Agatha Christie fans, but I've written other books with history ties. Ruth by Lake and Prairie is a Little House on the Prairie-style book about early Illinois settlers and it has a companion Activity Book. Six Degrees of Abraham Lincoln is a breezy look at our sixteenth president's connections to the Chicago suburbs, and Haunted by History weaves imagined ghost stories around real landmark buildings and the real people who once lived in them. And for aspiring authors, I put together Book Rookie with tips from me and fellow authors on marketing basics.

I try very hard to choose books that the recipient will love, but it doesn't always pan out the way I expected. Especially when I'm buying for children. But that's okay. I think you need to put a lot of books in front of folks because you never know what's going to click. And books are easily regifted if the fit isn't right.

I'm nearly done with my holiday shopping, and I am planning a gift for myself. Between Christmas and New Year's, when we have lots of leftovers to eat and my day job is slow, I will be snuggled up with some of the books that have been languishing on my "To Read" pile. I can't wait!

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What is Agatha Annotated?

This website is the home of the Agatha Christie database as annotated by Kate Gingold, hence the name Agatha Annotated.

It's a rich glossary of

nearly 1900 terms
over 200 illustrations
347 French phrases

Kate found them while reading Agatha Christie novels, and wrote them, along with definitions curated from years of research, into this database.

Currently the first 11 Christie books, those she wrote in the 1920s, are annotated here.

Anybody can be a member and gain access to this rich glossary. Visit the Community page to learn the details.

We took the 1920s terms and published a book, Agatha Annotated: Investigating the Books of the 1920s, now available on Amazon in Paperback or Kindle format.

Kate will be adding to the database and members get the new terms and definitions first before the second volume is printed, plus members can comment and ask questions about the terms and Kate and other members can reply.

We hope you enjoy. Click around the pages to learn more.

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Agatha Annotated: Glossary of Terms

Kate Gingold

... has been a huge fan of the works of Agatha Christie her entire adult life. Christie's vivid descriptions of picturesque English life in the early-to-mid twentieth century fascinated Kate, but many of the people and places were unfamiliar to her. A writer herself, as well as a researcher and historian with several local history books to her credit, Kate began a list of these strange words and set out to define them. Now, Christie fans like you and all those who come after will be able to fully enjoy the richness of Agatha Christie novels with their own copy of Agatha Annotated.

Learn more about Kate