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 Cubiertos Volkswagen

 

I first posted photos of the VW Beetle that is located outside the Cubiertos Restaurant and Grill in Sibulan onto my sorryalltheclevernamesaretaken blog in October of 2018. At that time, the VW was painted a bronze color and was basically used as a large flower pot. (see photos at the above link).

In February of last year, I met with 3 American friends to have lunch at Cubiertos and discovered that the flowers had been removed from the trunk of the VW and the car had been repainted a canary yellow.

Cubiertos is located on the National Hwy. in Sibulan in an area where I do not normally ride my bicycle, so I only recently learned of the changes involving the Cubiertos VW when I happened to drive by in the car.

As can be seen in these new photos taken this morning, the VW is still the same canary yellow, but now sets atop the roof of the restaurant. I logged onto Google Maps in order to add these photo to the restaurant location on the map and I discovered that Cubiertos was not on Google Maps. I was sure I had seen it there previously. At any rate, I edited Google Maps and added the restaurant. It should show up in a few days.

Below are the photos I took this morning.

 

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

Adiós 2022

January 1st has arrived and with it begins the year 2023 in the Gregorian calendar. It is traditionally the time when, like the month's namesake Janus, we take a look both backward at the old year and forward into the future. Who am I to go against long standing traditions?

It's been part of my philosophy to view person-hood has having three aspects; much like the Christian Trinity-Father, Son and Holy Spirit and the Hindu Trinity of Brahma, Vishnu and Shiva. Of course, we have the three gunas of yoga - tamas,rajas and sattva as well. In my philosophy, the three aspects would be body, mind and spirit. 

It is those three aspects which I try to improve upon regularly.

How well have I done over the past twelve months?
 

 Readers of my blogs know I've been keeping books lists for several years. In 2022 I managed to read 102 e books; two short of a 2 book a week average. The majority of these books have been fiction with a few covering religion, politics, science or history. An English teacher once told me that he believed reading any book helps to improve the mind. In any case, I'd say the overwhelming majority of the books I read last year were worth reading.

I'm providing links to the monthly reading lists of 2022 for anyone interested in reviewing what I've read.
January
February
March
April
May
June
July
August
September
October
November
December

As for the physical - I have to say that I've tried to take care of my body fairly well over the past 30 years. In 2022, my primary physical exercise came from bicycle riding. Looking at blog posts from January of last year, I see that, at that time, I considered my daily bicycle ride of 8 to 10 kilometers as a pretty good accomplishment for an old man. Now, my minimum daily ride is 10 miles (16 kilometers) with the occasional 11 to 13 mile ride.

In all honesty, I don't know that my progress spiritually has matched my progress in the other two areas. Perhaps, working on that could be a proper New Year's resolution.