The last books I read in 2021

I must admit I had a silent non-disclosed resolution ...or more a hope or wish, to read one book per month this year.  After years of not reading, I slowly started to read a few books again in 2018 mostly on vacation.  I think last year I moved from 4-5 a year to 8 or something so I thought it would be feasible to read on average one book a month. 

And since I have been reading in the first half of the year (after becoming library members again) and in the summer  (staying 2 weeks in a vacation house, not roadtripping helps!!), I was already pretty close again.   But I did lose a bit of reading rhythm in autumn but not entirely so these are the books I read in the last 4 months: 

I enjoy a good police detective now and then and it's always fun to read Jo Claes since the stories take place in Leuven. This was particularly strong because a murder happened in the ponds of the Park Abbey! And the murderers were having a drink in the restaurant we visit now and then and plotted just around the corner from the boys school.   I just must correct the script: I really doesn't take 45' to walk from the abbey ponds to the police office ...dugh, wussies. 

But fun fun pass time. 

A coaching conversation triggered borrowing this book.  Since I feel like I absorb negative emotions from other like a sponge she asked me if I were high sensitive.  No of course not, but later on I wondered. I do puke from the slightest bad smell ...really great when I need to clean up a children's mess: they first have to wait until I took my turn. 

So anyhow, I borrowed the book, started reading but found it was too scientific, focussing on definitions and research approaches and I never finished it. 

Just a nice story about people relationships that all cross in a town in Cornwall. Nice vacation literature that is smooth but doesn't stick too long afterwards. 

I finished this book on New Year's Eve,  setting my number of read books in 2021 on 14.  I didn't know whether I'd finish this one though. I had randomly picked it in the library as I felt like reading a historic book. It's about Portuguese missionaries going to Japan in the 17th century, when Christians are prosecuted. 

It starts as letters written to the clergy , then it's just the main character talking and it ends by letters from Dutch tradesmen. The shift in talking style and narrators is confusing to me. 

While I found it a difficult book at first and wondered if I wanted to continue, in the end I persisted and was intrigued. I wasn't so surprised by the ending.  The personal struggle and doubts are strong, there is a lot of thought in the book and yet it is very alienating to me. It is a part of history that is totally unknown to me. It was weird, it was deeper than what I tend to read and for that reason it was probably refreshing. 

It's only now afterwards that I realize that this book is a Japanese and international classic and has been turned into a movie twice.