Book List for April, 2023

The time has come around once again for me to post onto this blog a list of the books I've read this month. April being a relatively short month, it would be expected that the number of books read would not be particularly high, but this April the list is considerably smaller than usual. The list is exactly half the number of April 2022.

Part of the blame can be placed upon the Internet. I've come upon websites that have old television shows of which I'm found. Yes, place the blame on Sgt. Bilko, Lt.Columbo and Dr. Who.

The first book on the list is Deep Water by Patricia Highsmith. I was impressed with her first novel, Strangers on a Train. This novel did not disappoint. As a matter of fact, a Highsmith novel will be first on the list for May.

Next on April's list is another of David Lagercrantz' continuations of Stieg Larsson's Millennium series. Sadly, I am not as big of a fan of Lagercrantz as I am Stieg Larsson.

Book number three came to me as a pleasant surprise. Bullets and Bolos: Thirteen Years in the Philippines Islands by John R. White was recommended to me by a friend and I appreciate the recommendation. The book is a memoir of an American who served in the Philippine Constabulary under Gov. Taft, beginning in 1901. The fact that most of the events he wrote about happened on the island where I now call home is certainly a plus.

I've been thru a number of Kindles over the past few years and I've prepared for the day when my present Kindle will fail me by downloading an e-reader app onto my phone. The Kindle is still my first choice but I have used the phone app a couple of times. The e-reader on my phone came with a few e-books pre-loaded. Of course, these are books found in the public domain. 

Having the book on my phone was the reason I began reading Jules Verne's A Journey to the Center of the Earth. Jules Verne is one of those writers I heard of all my life but had never actually read. After a couple of chapters in, I did a little research on the book. As it turned out, the English translators of Verne's novels weren't always faithful to the original French novel. It seems the first English translation in 1871 was a "drastically rewritten version of the story" pretty much created out of thin air. The 1877 translation by Frederick Amadeus Malleson is considered a much better translation, although it is far from perfect. It's the Malleson translation that's on my phone. Frankly, Jules Verne might have been a wonderful writer (as far as style goes) but the story is absolutely unbelievable. It's hard for me to imagine that readers in the 19th Century could be so incredibly ignorant regarding science. Sure, scientific knowledge has advanced quite a great deal in the 150 plus years since the original French publication, but the story is totally absurd on its face.

So, without further ado, here is my April 2023 reading list.

Deep Water     by Patricia Highsmith
The Girl Who Takes an Eye for an Eye     by David Lagercrantz
Bullets and Bolos:Thirteen Years in the Philippines Islands     by John R. White
A Journey to the Center of the Earth    by Jules Verne

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

The January 2023 Reading List

Today is the last day of January and the time has come for another list of books read during the past month. I'm not likely to finish reading an eight book for January.

The first two books for January follow a theme from December - these books are the 3rd and 4th I've read that were written by the Japanese mystery writer, Seishi Yokomizo. It is my understanding that there are five novels by Yokomizo translated into English, although # five isn't scheduled to be published until later this year.

According to an article on wikipedia, Soji Shimada has more work translated into English than the two I read in January, but unfortunately, I haven't been able to locate copies.

In addition to Six Four, Hideo Yokoyama has two other novels translated into English - Seventeen and Prefecture D. Both of these novels have been placed into the queue.

The final two books for this month were not easy reading, to say the least. Both deal with serial killers who are also sexually perverse. To lighten the mood, my first two books for February will be by mystery writers mentioned in The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo - Sue Grafton and Elizabeth George - who should fit in with the more tamer elements of the mystery/detective genre.

NOTE: It is now 10:00 PM  January 31. I had not expected to have finished another book for this month, but it seems that I have after all. An 8th book will be added to the list, although the cover of that book will not be added to the jpg. at the beginning of this post.

The Village of Eight Graves          by Seishi Yokomizo
The Inugami Curse                        by Seishi Yokomizo
The Tokyo Zodiac Murders            by Soji Shimada
Murder in the Crooked House       by Soji Shimada
Six Four                                         by Hideo Yokoyama
The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo   by Stieg Larsson
The Mermaids Singing                  by Val McDermid
'A' Is For Alibi                               by Sue Grafton