Video Test

 This post is a test. I'm going to attempt to upload a video of a recent bicycle ride thru parts of Sibulan and Dumaguete, Negros Oriental along portions of Diversion Road.

Donna Leon vs Andrea Camilleri

Being an avid reader, I'm always on the lookout for new books and although I'll choose books from a wide selection of genre, I've been particularly partial to crime/mystery/detective novels lately. I've read every Agatha Christie who-done -it, as well as Dorothy L. Sayers, a few by Elizabeth George , Denzil Meyrick, Erle Stanley Gardner and Ed McBain, to name just a handful.

In May, 2023, I came upon and article online entitled The 9 Books you Must Read in 2023. One of the books in that list of nine was Death at La Fenice by Donna Leon. I was so impressed by Death at La Fenice that I began reading all of the books in Leon's "Commissario Guido Brunetti" series.......33 books in total. I finished the final book, A Refiner's Fire in February of this year.

The entire "Commissario Guido Brunetti" series takes place in Venice, Italy where Leon lived for many year. Leon will be 84 next month; I don't suspect she'll have another novel coming out any time soon - if at all.

Having finished Leon's books, I went looking for other crime/mystery/detective novels taking place in Italy. That's when I discovered Andrea Camilleri. Camilleri wrote 28 novels in his "Inspector Salvo Montalbano" series, which take place in Sicily. As I write this, I'm reading #12 in the series, The Track of Sand.

The two writers are similar in several ways. Naturally, there are quite a few differences as well. As I said, Leon's Commissario Brunetti lives and works in Venice, while Camilleri's Inspector Montalbano works in Sicily in the fictional city of Vigàta.

Leon's novels were written in English, sprinkled with the occasional phrase in Italian or the Veneto dialect. Leon's novels have been translated into several languages, although Italian isn't one of them. She has specifically forbidden her books to be translated into Italian.

Camilleri's novels were written in Italian with a substantial amount of Sicilian phrases and grammar thrown in.

Commissario Brunetti is married, with two children. His wife, Paola is quite the cook, and her meals are described in detail in every story.

Unlike Brunetti, Montalbano isn't married but is involved in a long distance relationship with a woman (Livia Burlando) living in Genoa. Like Brunetti, Montalbano spends a lot of time eating, and the dishes are also described in detail.

Neither detective gets along with his immediate supervisor. That seems to be Standard Operating Procedure in this genre. Both writers appear to prefer their novels not have happy endings. 

The two series are entertaining and I hesitate to say which I like more.

My Return to the Blogosphere.

I spend a good deal of my time reading; the books I read are now exclusively e-books, which , for the most part I read on my phone using an app for just that very thing. I've found,over the years that I much prefer reading the e-books on my phone over the Kindle, although I've taken to using my Kindle as a back up when my phone needs charging.
While charging the phone recently, I re-read James Joyces' Dubliners on the Kindle and yesterday, I began to re-read Hermann Hesse's Steppenwolf which I had re-read in 2024. I remembered writing a review of the 2024 re-read and came to this blog to read my review.
Searching for that earlier post, I began to miss the days when I was blogging on a regular basis. Sadly, I've only written five posts this year. I've chosen to remedy that by jumping back in......or at the very least, putting a toe back in.
As one can see by my meager posts of 2026, my two primary pastimes are riding my bicycle and reading.First, I'll try to bring everyone up to speed - as it were - on my cycling routine.
I purchased this bicycle in March 2021, but wasn't able to keep a reliable record of my mileage until I installed an app onto my phone in August 2023. I have no actual record of my mileage prior to installing the app. As of today, I've managed to ride,since August '23, over 11,500 miles (more than 18,500 kilometers). I try to ride six days a week when it's not raining. Not bad, I'd say, for a man in his early 70's.

I've been keeping track of the books I've read and I've posted lists and reviews of those books to this blog for a good many years. Sadly, I haven't read nearly as many books this year as in years past. There was a time when I'd post a monthly list. That's something I should return to.
I want to get into some of the books I've read this year, but that remains for another day.

One change I've made upon my return. I've removed Google Ad-sense from the blog. I'm not getting money for the ads and they were really clogging up the page.
Oh yeah.......don't ask for an explanation of the photo used for this post.

Monkey King: Journey to the West translated by Julia Lovell

Like everyone else using Facebook, I will come across a variety of video Reels that show up on my feed. One in particular has captured my interest. The Reel is produced by someone going by the name of Wenjiang Caihuaxiaoyuan. The videos are Chinese language comedies with English subtitles. The premise of these videos is of a place of business run by a middle aged woman, employing three or four younger women.

In one, the punchline was one of the younger women saying she was the daughter of Sun Wukong. Of course, I had to do a web search of Sun Wukong.

According to Wikipedia:
"Sun Wukong, also known as the Monkey King, is a literary and religious figure best known as one of the main characters in the 16th-century Chinese novel Journey to the West.In the novel, Sun Wukong is a monkey born from a stone who acquires supernatural powers through Taoist practices. After rebelling against heaven, he is imprisoned under a mountain by the Buddha. Five hundred years later, he accompanies the monk Tang Sanzang riding on the White Dragon Horse and two other disciples, Zhu Bajie and Sha Heshang, on a journey to obtain Buddhist sutras, known as the West or Western Paradise, where Buddha and his followers dwell".

Journey to the West seemed like something I'd be interested in reading, so I searched online for English translations. I located a four volume unabridged version translated by Anthony C. Yu as well as an abridged, one volume work translated by Julia Lovell (Monkey King: Journey to the West). I decided that I'd read the shorter, abridged translation first.

Journey to the West has strong roots in Chinese folk religion, Chinese mythology, Chinese Buddhism, Confucianism, Taoist and Buddhist folklore. Sun Wukong is a monkey born on Flower Fruit Mountain from a stone egg that forms from an ancient rock created by the coupling of Heaven and Earth. The Monkey King possesses supernatural strength and magical powers and is the inspiration of many modern manhwa, manhua, manga and anime series.

One of the downsides to the adventures in the novel is Sun Wukong always finds his way out of any predicament by the use of his supernatural powers. Like a Superman comic, it can become wearisome reading at times. Overall, I enjoyed the novel, although I'm certainly glad I choose to read the much smaller abridged version. Four volumes of the same thing would have been too much.