Glimpses of January and February

 

As you can see, and I totally admit, life outside of work and studies for work involves a lot of coffee and reading. You might think me the dullest sort, but it's the books and good ideas presented to me that stretch my thoughts, and coffee that wakes up my mind in the morning. Get comfortable at the table with me, along with a good cup of coffee, and let's turn the pages of a thought-provoking book. 

A murder mystery abandoned by Dorothy L. Sayers (and finished by Jill Paton Walsh) re-visits the characters Lord Peter and Harriet, for a London based mystery that enters their circle. A murder of a new acquaintance raises so many questions, and leads them on the trail to follow the steps and timing of the murder. This felt a little bit like an unfinished work of D.L.S. (not quite as polished and brilliant as D.L.S.) but it still held some of the charm of the characters and was fun to re-visit them in a story I hadn't yet read. A good kind of escape from the real world with beloved characters.

A book about the history in Mexico in the 1930s when they outlawed the Catholic church and murdered of all the priests, here we have one priest left and he's on the run, both from the Mexican soldiers hunting him and his own past that he's ashamed of. He feels consistently unworthy and full of sorrow for the people who have been forced to renounce their faith. It reads like Dostoyevsky with complex psychological questions and moral dilemmas and stay with you later because there are no clear answers, it's muddy and messy as humanity is.

A book to encourage and inspire one to invoke an essentialist way of thinking; shifting your mindset that you can only hold so much in your life, and too often we fill it with nonessentials. We need to let go of those nonessentials, both material and time-consuming, so that we can focus on the essentials, the things that really matter and are important. This book spoke to me with profound reminders I've already been embracing but still have much room for improvement. It keeps coming back into thought, to help me grow in the best ways of embracing the essentials.