Category Archives: Shuichi Yoshida

Extreme Reading

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I have officially completed the extreme level of the 2010 Global Reading Challenge.

This required me to read 3 books set in different countries of Africa, Asia, Australasia, Europe, North America, South America plus two books set in Antarctica and a wildcard book set in any time or place new to me. Because that wasn’t quite complicated enough I added my own slant that all the books had to be by new-to-me authors.

Participating in this challenge opened my reading up to 21 new authors, many of whom I wouldn’t otherwise have read. For some of them a single exposure will be enough but many will be reappearing on my reading list in the not too distant future. In fact I’ve already read and/or ordered additional titles from several of the terrific authors discovered on my virtual tour around the globe where I met an array of fascinating people and learned a thing or three I didn’t know.

Here’s my final list of 21 books

Africa

Antarctica

Asia

Australasia

Europe

North America

South America

Wildcard (any time or place new to me)

And here are all the places I’ve visited virtually


View Larger Map

Thanks to Dorte of DJs Krimiblog for conceiving of and hosting the 2010 Global Reading Challenge. It was a hoot and lived up to all aspects of its name and I would encourage you to sign up for the 2011 version of the challenge (in which I am reliably informed you won’t have to read books set in Antarctica to be considered an extremist).

Books of the Month – October 2010

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That Was Then

I finished another 15 books during October (a couple of reviews still to come). Although I didn’t have any 5-star reads it was a high quality month with nothing rating below a 3. My pick of the month has to be Jo Nesbø’s The Redbreast, a novel I abandoned on my first reading last year but picked up again after you all told me to and fell in love with the book’s protagonist, Harry Hole.

There are a veritable treasure trove of honourable mentions which I simply cannot separate. They include trips to Scotland, Iceland, Ghana, America, England, 1850′s Australia and Japan.

New Additions

Since buying my eReader I have curtailed my acquisition of printed books quite dramatically (good for the trees) but have been busy stocking up eBooks and audio downloads (bad for the bank balance). Included among my new acquisitions are the latest Belinda Lawrence mystery, a Harry Bosch novel (Maxine made me give Connelly another go), a flash fiction anthology of stories that involve a mythical ‘Mega Mart’, the second novel in Karin Fossum’s Inspector Sejer series (yes I know I’m behind) and a historical work that blends fact with fiction in what promises to be an interesting fashion.

Challenge Progress

It’s a good thing I had a whole year to complete the Global Reading Challenge as it looks like it will take me that long to finish it. This month I read another two books to bring my total to 19 of 21. Both Villain and Wife of the Gods made it to my honourable mentions for the month.

My only other open challenge is the Canadian Book Challenge which requires me to read 13 books by July next year. I read four books that counted for this challenge in October bringing my total to 7.

Isn’t it marvellous that Canada produces enough entertaining female crime writers that I can have a smorgasboard of them without even trying? Well I am assuming Wolfe is female though of course as it’s a pseudonym I could be wrong.

Reading Now and Next

I’m keen to finish the global challenge now that I only have 2 books to go so have started Southwesterly Wind which is set in Brazil and I’ll probably read my wildcard historical fiction straight after that. Then it might be time for my second Elly Griffiths novel I think. I’ve just started a new audio book, C J Box’s Three Weeks to Say Goodbye, which I am already enjoying and have no plans for what will come after that in audio format.

Chart of the month

So far this year I have finished 129 books which seemed like a statistically significant enough number to look at where they all come from. As you can see I buy most of my books in one form or another. Wonder what this will look like next year? Will I have a giant chunk of pie for pirated eBooks ( and if I do how will I hide it to avoid going to prison)?

What about you? What was your favourite book for October? Or your most exciting acquisition? Or is there something coming up for you in November that you can’t wait to get to?

Review: Villain by Shuichi Yoshida

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The 18th book I’ve read for the 2010 Global Reading Challenge completes the Asian leg of my virtual tour, being set in contemporary Japan. Three books to go before I will be able to officially say I am an extreme global reader.

When Yoshino Ishibashi is found murdered near the eerie Mitsue Pass in southern Japan, a road locals only take in desperation to avoid expensive tolls on the nearby freeways, Police at first suspect a college student she knew who has also disappeared. But attention is also focused on Yuichi Shimizu, a construction worker from a nearby town.

Rather than being a whodunnit, Villain is an exploration of what makes a murderer and seen in that light it is fascinating. Any focus on the investigation of Yoshino’s murder is incidental to the author’s exploration of changes in modern Japanese society and associated issues of alienation, loneliness and despair. In short chapters, some told in flashback, we meet a wide range of people from different geographical and social backgrounds who all have some connection, albeit tenuous in some instances, to Yoshino or her murderer. We start by meeting Yoshino, a not-very-good insurance saleswoman by day and amateur prostitute with a gift for fantasy by night and move on from there. We then meet her parents, devastated and almost physically immobilised by her death and what they learn about her life, the two friends who were with her on the night of her murder,  the college student and the construction worker who are both suspects in her murder, their friends and families and so on.

The person we learn most about is Yuichi, an almost allegorical character who experiences most of life’s disappointments in a very short space of time. Abandoned by his mother at a young age he is at the beck and call of his ailing grandparents and seems to have no interests other than his car and his fairly disastrous attempts at a love life (virtually all of which involve payment of some kind). In that respect he is not alone as none of the young people in the book seem capable of engaging in anything remotely like a ‘normal’ social life, what little social activity exists  is conducted out via emails and furtive visits to love hotels, though I don’t know enough about life in Japan to know if this is a realistic portrayal of life for twenty-something Japanese people or beefed up for storytelling purposes.

For the most part the writing is very good and the translation by Philip Gabriel makes it easy to forget the words originated in another language but I must admit to finding the some of the ‘hyper-realism’ a bit off-putting as it tended to take me out of the story. The most obvious example of this is the inclusion of the price of every service and product mentioned which made me feel like I should have a calculator by my side or a shopping list on the go and I’m not really sure what purpose it all served.

For its first two thirds Villain is pretty bleak but towards the end there are glimmers of hope in which an unexpected person or two displays a hint of humanity and some of the characters, though none of the younger ones, show a bit of backbone.  However the overwhelming feeling I’m left with is sadness as I think about these difficult to forget characters. If you can handle a slow-paced thoughtful novel that might leave you feeling uneasy about the state of the world then I would highly recommend Villain.

♦ ♦ ♦ ♦ ♦ ♦ ♦ ♦ ♦ ♦

I would also recommend that you ignore most of the publicity material about this novel, much of which is either woefully inaccurate (the blurb on my copy for example claims that one of the characters is arrested for Yoshino’s murder early on which is just not true) or gives away too many spoilers. Also the US cover has a stylized gun on the cover which couldn’t have less to do with the story if it went out of its way to be irrelevant. I can only assume that no one responsible for publicising this book has actually read it.

♦ ♦ ♦ ♦ ♦ ♦ ♦ ♦ ♦ ♦

My rating 4/5
Translator Philip Gabriel
Publisher Harvill Secker [2010, originally 2007]
ISBN 9781846552380
Length 295 pages
Format trade paperback
Source I bought it