The November 2023 Reading List

 

The reading list for November is, in many ways, similar to the reading list for this past October.- books by Donna Leon and Elizabeth George, with a different writer thrown in for a change of pace.

Comparing the two I'd have to say that I prefer Donna Leon's novels. My only complaint about George is her veering off the detective/mystery story to give us way too many details on the personal lives of the characters. I'm sure she does this to flesh out the characters, but details on the love affair between DI Thomas Lynley and Lady Helen Clyde can get a bit tedious. In For the Sake of Elena, George brings in Helen's sister into the story - her character does help move the story along, but the discussion on the lawsuit involving the artist James Whistler and art critic John Ruskin put on the brakes, as it were.

My original plan was to read through the works of Leon and George every month. I'll continue getting into Leon's novels but will read no more than one of George's works per month.

As I mentioned in earlier posts, a few of the books making my reading lists have been recommended by someone on the Commentary Magazine podcast. One of the books on this list was recommended by that podcast - Scattered All Over The Earth by Yoko Tawada. Tawada had been recommended to me earlier and I had downloaded everything I could find of her work. The first book to make it to next month's list will be Tawada's The Emissary (AKA The Last Children of Tokyo). Before reading Scattered All Over the Earth I hadn't realized that it was the first in Tawada's Border Crossing Trilogy. The 2nd and 3rd books have been written but have not, as yet, been translated into English. Had I known that, I would have put off reading this book until I could download the complete trilogy.

Now, for the list:

Willful Behaviour         by Donna Leon
Uniform Justice            by Donna Leon
Doctored Evidence       by Donna Leon
For the Sake of Elena   by Elizabeth George
Scattered All Over the Earth  by Yoko Tawada

The October, 2023 Reading List

 

Upon finishing The Twelve Chairs earlier this month, I decided to go back to reading mystery/detective novels with the work of Donna Leon. Counting the three I read this month, I've managed to read 10 of her 32 Guido Brunetti novels. Her 11th in the series,Willful Behaviour will be the first on my November book list. Leon's novels take place in Venice, and although I really enjoy her work, I was feeling a bit "water-logged" after #10 and decided to take a break and go back to Elizabeth George's Inspector Lynley series.

I read George's first novel, A Great Deliverance in February. I can't recall my reason for not reading more in her series then, but better late then never I suppose. I've managed to get back up to speed with the complicated lives of Lynley, Havers, St James (and wife) and Lady Helen Clyde.

I'll be sticking with Leon and George for the time being. I've only 39 novels to go.

The list for October, 2023 -

The Twelve Chairs     by Ilya Ilf & Yevgeny Petrov
Fatal Remedies      by Donna Leon
Friends In High Places    by Donna Leon
A Sea of Troubles      by Donna Leon
Payment In Blood     by Elizabeth George
Well-Schooled in Murder    by Elizabeth George
A Suitable Vengeance      by Elizabeth George

The February 2023 Reading List

 

At the beginning of this year, it looked as if 2023 might be the year of mystery/detective novels for me. The eight books in my January, 2023 reading list fall into that category. February looked to be going in the same direction.

The first book on my list for February was A Great Deliverance by Elizabeth George. This was George's first published novel and introduces Detective Inspector Thomas Lynley. The novel won the Agatha Award for Best First Novel in 1988 and the 1989 Anthony Award in the same category.

Staying with the mystery/detective genre, the second novel for February was The Daughter of Time by Josephine Tey - a modern police officer's investigation into the alleged crimes of King Richard III of England. In 1990 the book was voted number one in The Top 100 Crime Novels of All Time list compiled by the British Crime Writers' Association. If one enjoys reading books covering history in general and English history in particular then this book is for you. I did enjoy the book, but I thought putting it as #1 on the list of the Top 100 Crime Novels of All Time a bit much.

Books 3 and 4 for February were books 2 and 3 in Stieg Larsson's Millennium series - The Girl Who Played with Fire and The Girl Who Kicked the Hornets' Nest .

In January, I read Hideo Yokoyama's mystery Six Four. Hideo Yokoyama has two other books translated into English - Seventeen and Prefecture D. I had wrongly assumed that the 2nd and 3rd novels would be mystery novels as well. I haven't gotten around to Prefecture D. yet but - Seventeen is most definitely not a detective story. The novel centers on a newspaper's coverage of the 1985 Japan Airlines flight that crashed into a mountainside in Gunma Prefecture, Japan killing 520 people and leaving only four survivors. An excellent novel, but again, not a detective story.

Since I had strayed away from the mystery genre, I thought I'd end the month with a book that doesn't fit the category, but one I'd been thinking of reading. The God Delusion by Richard Dawkins. This is the first book I've read by Dawkins and I had expected him to be a nasty, cynical S.O.B.. You may or may not agree with Dawkins views on God, but Dawkins is a talented writer and not nearly as obnoxious as I had believed he would be.

The list

A Great Deliverance         by Elizabeth George
The Daughter of Time       by Josephine Tey
The Girl Who Played with Fire     by Stieg Larsson
The Girl Who Kicked the Hornets' Nest    by Stieg Larsson
Seventeen           by Hideo Yokoyama
The God Delusion    by Richard Dawkins