Patrick Sherriff's Blog

This is a good book for any keen amateur artist wanting to make a go of it professionally. Packer explains how he made it into the art world, how the art world is actually a series of villages, and to get the rules of your village (commercial sales) right. As he well points out, in the commercial sales world, buyers don’t respect post-modernist conceptual bullshit, they want well made, beautiful art, that makes them say “Wow! I wanna hang this in my home!” Until you can make that, no amount of marketing will make your art sellable. But, don’t despair, well-made, beautiful art that people want to buy is within the ability of anyone willing to work at it, and to keep experimenting until you find a style that you love and enough of the public love… and Mr Packer will show you how. Yes, he wants you to join his online courses, but I found this book through his YouTube channel, which has much of his advice given for free, but it is nice to have it all here in one place.

No. 4 of 24 books I intend to read and review in 2026.

I’m Patrick Sherriff, an Englishman who survived 13 years working for newspapers in the US, UK and Japan. Between teaching English lessons at my conversation school in Abiko, Japan, I write and illustrate textbooks for non-native speakers of English, release Hana Walker mystery novels, short stories, paint, and write essays and Our Man in Abiko, a monthly  newsletter   highlighting good writing in English, often about about Japan, art, crime fiction and teaching.

This is the rather good 2002 sequel to the rather good 1996 Ukrainian semi-surrealist crime caper Death and the Penguin. We rejoin our rather stoic narrator Viktor, the former obit-writer, as he attempts to relocate Misha, his lost penguin, in the post-Soviet states of Ukraine and Chechnya. If you liked Death and the Penguin, and I did, then you’ll like this one too. According to Wikepedia, Kurkov was born in Leningrad, is a trained Japanese translator and wrote children’s books while serving as a prison guard in Odessa. He self-published his first novel and was rejected by 500 publishers before finally making it in trad publishing. Amusing fact: His penguin novels were translated from the Russian by a chap whose name is George Bird. And his wife is English. (Kurkov, unsure if there is a Mrs Bird or what nationality, if any, she has. Kurkov, thanks to the Russian Invasion of his home in Ukraine, has none. Nationality, that is. Wife, as mentioned earlier, there is at least one of).

No. 3 of 24 books I intend to read and review in 2026.

I’m Patrick Sherriff, an Englishman who survived 13 years working for newspapers in the US, UK and Japan. Between teaching English lessons at my conversation school in Abiko, Japan, I write and illustrate textbooks for non-native speakers of English, release Hana Walker mystery novels, short stories, paint, and write essays and Our Man in Abiko, a monthly  newsletter   highlighting good writing in English, often about about Japan, art, crime fiction and teaching.

My summary, using 10 quotes from Seneca, read and compiled while on a flight from Helsinki to Tokyo:

“There is nothing that the passage of time does not demolish and remove. But it cannot demolish the works that philosophy has concecrated: no age will wipe them out, no age diminish them.

“Of all people, only those are at leisure who make time for philosophy, only those are really alive… We are excluded from no age, but we have access to them all.

“You will find much that is worth your study: the love and practice of the virtues, forgetfulness of the passions, the knowledge of how to live and die, and a life of deep tranquility.

“Life is very short and anxious for those who forget the past, neglect the present, and fear the future. When they come to the end of it, the poor wretches realise too late that for all this time they have been preoccupied in doing nothing… They lose the day on waiting for the night, and the night in fearing the dawn.

“Life is divided into three periods, the past, present and future. Of these, the present is short, the future doubtful, the past is certain. For this last is the one over which Fortune has lost her power, which cannot be brought back to anyone’s control. But this is what preoccupied people lose: for they have no time to look back at their past, and even if they did, it is not pleasant to recall activities they are ashamed of.

“In the present we have only one day at a time, each offering a minute at a time. But all the days of your past will come to your call: You can detain and inspect them at your will — something which the preoccupied have no time to do.

“Putting things off is the biggest waste of life: it snatches away each day as it comes, and denies us the present by promising the future… You are arranging what lies in fortune’s control, and abandoning what lies in yours.

“People are frugal in guarding their personal property; but as soon as it comes to squandering time they are most wasteful in the one thing in which it is right to be stingy.

“The man who spends all his time on his own needs, who organises every day as though it were his last, neither longs for, nor fears the next day.

“So, however short, life is fully sufficient, and herefore whenever his last day comes, the wise man will not hesitate to meet death with a firm step.”

No. 2 of 24 books I intend to read and review in 2026.

I’m Patrick Sherriff, an Englishman who survived 13 years working for newspapers in the US, UK and Japan. Between teaching English lessons at my conversation school in Abiko, Japan, I write and illustrate textbooks for non-native speakers of English, release Hana Walker mystery novels, short stories, paint, and write essays and Our Man in Abiko, a monthly  newsletter   highlighting good writing in English, often about about Japan, art, crime fiction and teaching.

I enjoyed this brief exploration of Britain and non-Britishness by a literary Chinese immigrant. Guo bought a dilapadated flat with a view of the sea and spent her time ruminating on the Norman defeat of King Harold, finding parallels with Brexit and the immigrant “invasion” so bemoaned by the popular press and her double-glazing installer. The book reads like a series of blog posts summed up by the subtitle “Chronicle of a Year by the Sea.” But this is not a bad thing to make the topic of history, immigration and British damp more understandable.

No. 1 of 24 books I intend to read and review in 2026.

I’m Patrick Sherriff, an Englishman who survived 13 years working for newspapers in the US, UK and Japan. Between teaching English lessons at my conversation school in Abiko, Japan, I write and illustrate textbooks for non-native speakers of English, release Hana Walker mystery novels, short stories, paint, and write essays and Our Man in Abiko, a monthly  newsletter   highlighting good writing in English, often about about Japan, art, crime fiction and teaching.

It hit me about halfway through reading God is Not Great, that there was a massive problem with the book. I had no qualms with Hitchens arguments, briefly:

religion killsreligions are hazardous for your healththe metaphysical claims of religion are falsethe idea of a universe by design is nonsensethe Old Testament is a nightmare of Stone Age hatredsthe New Testament exceeds the evil of the old onethe Koran is borrowed nonsense cobbled together from the Jewish and Christian mythsthe miracles of religion are tawdry nonsensereligions are clearly man-madereligion doesn’t make people behave betterEastern religions are no better than Westernreligion is often a form of child abuserationalism is a far finer tradition to adopt

All well and good, but about halfway through, I was struck by the the thought that of course religion was nonsense; no truly rational person could think otherwise. So, who is the book for? Folk who were already atheists like me (preaching to the secular chior, as it were)? The “faithful” who, by definition, would not be swayed by rational argument? So what’s the point of the book? I’m not sure, except to say that Hitchens does put to bed the myth that atheists are humourless.

No. 12 of 12 books I intend to read and review in 2025.

I’m Patrick Sherriff, an Englishman who survived 13 years working for newspapers in the US, UK and Japan. Between teaching English lessons at my conversation school in Abiko, Japan, I write and illustrate textbooks for non-native speakers of English, release Hana Walker mystery novels, short stories, paint, and write essays and Our Man in Abiko, a monthly  newsletter   highlighting good writing in English, often about about Japan, art, crime fiction and teaching.

This was the last Kurt Wallander mystery that Mankell published in English before his death (in 2015). As a novella of 150 pages or so it works really well, although maybe that’s because I’ve read all the other doorstoppers in the series, I didn’t need backstories. The 20-page essay Mankell wrote on Wallander, included at the end of the book, was fascinating too. Mankell explains how he came up with the character of Wallander as a vehicle to explore the changing nature of Sweden in the 90s and 2000s, but was pleasantly surprised his struggles resonated with so many around the world. And they still do to me.

No. 11 of 12 books I intend to read and review in 2025.

I’m Patrick Sherriff, an Englishman who survived 13 years working for newspapers in the US, UK and Japan. Between teaching English lessons at my conversation school in Abiko, Japan, I write and illustrate textbooks for non-native speakers of English, release Hana Walker mystery novels, short stories, paint, and write essays and Our Man in Abiko, a monthly  newsletter   highlighting good writing in English, often about about Japan, art, crime fiction and teaching.

I read this while waiting for the last Kurt Wallander mystery to arrive in the post, so it may not have been fair to compare the two northern European detectives, the middle-aged, depressed Swedish Wallander and the wise-cracking action hero Bernie Gunther of the Berlin police. The difference being that Gunther was trying to find justice in Nazi Germany, not small town contemporary Sweden. While Wallander is all too believable, Gunther is more obviously a piece of fiction, at least I thought so, with the premise of a locked room murder mystery and a mansion full of Nazis in which our hero must try to extract some form of justice (it’s not only the readers who see the irony in trying to find justice for the killing of a murderous Nazi scumbag). Still, it was a good read and the eighth in the series. I’ve only read the first, March Violets, so I have some catching up to do.

No. 10 of 12 books I intend to read and review in 2025.

I’m Patrick Sherriff, an Englishman who survived 13 years working for newspapers in the US, UK and Japan. Between teaching English lessons at my conversation school in Abiko, Japan, I write and illustrate textbooks for non-native speakers of English, release Hana Walker mystery novels, short stories, paint, and write essays and Our Man in Abiko, a monthly  newsletter   highlighting good writing in English, often about about Japan, art, crime fiction and teaching.

This is a hip and gory crime-yarn that takes tropes from samurai stories (extreme loyalty to the clan leader, an injustice done by a higher-up) sets them in a yakuza gang compound and then makes the hero a tough woman fighter who falls for the boss’s daughter, which is enough of a gender bender modern twist to turn an otherwise traditional tale on its head. Fast moving, although the passage of a couple of decades at the turn of a page left me confused. Still, an enjoyable read.

No. 9 of 12 books I intend to read and review in 2025.

I’m Patrick Sherriff, an Englishman who survived 13 years working for newspapers in the US, UK and Japan. Between teaching English lessons at my conversation school in Abiko, Japan, I write and illustrate textbooks for non-native speakers of English, release Hana Walker mystery novels, short stories, paint, and write essays and Our Man in Abiko, a monthly  newsletter   highlighting good writing in English, often about about Japan, art, crime fiction and teaching.

So that’s it, then? The last Mankell novel featuring his demorilised Swedish everyman-detective Kurt Wallander. Our hero has turned 60 and is the last-but-one left standing of his original police squad that, like the Sweden he inhabits, he barely recognises. Then there are the worrying bouts of memory loss afflicting him. Still, he has just enough piss and vinegar left to get to the bottom of a Cold War cold case that suddenly heats up as an old ex-Navy man disappears who is Wallander’s daughter’s partner’s father. Convoluted? Kinda. This time it’s personal? You could say that. In fact, that’s one reason I’m so enamoured with the Wallander mysteries, Wallander with his Alzheimer-addled father, headstrong daughter Linda and love interests ex-wife Mona and ex-lover Baiba, seems to jump (unwillingly) off the page as more real than reality. So, yes I’m saddened that this will be the last Wallander novel I’ll ever read — but I was releaved to discover there’s one more Wallander novella, An Event in Autumn, that Mankell published 2014, the year before his death. It’s on it’s way from a Reno used-bookstore as I type this, so I can at least look forward to one more final, last Wallander adventure. A sad pleasure, I hope.

No. 8 of 12 books I intend to read and review in 2025.

I’m Patrick Sherriff, an Englishman who survived 13 years working for newspapers in the US, UK and Japan. Between teaching English lessons at my conversation school in Abiko, Japan, I write and illustrate textbooks for non-native speakers of English, release Hana Walker mystery novels, short stories, paint, and write essays and Our Man in Abiko, a monthly  newsletter   highlighting good writing in English, often about about Japan, art, crime fiction and teaching.

In previous reviews of Mankell’s Inspector Wallander’s novels, I was sniffy about his habit of writing 500+ pages to weave his yarns of big-city crime in small-town Sweden. But I’d like to ammend my previous statement. I really enjoyed the gentle unravelling of the murderer’s conspiracy, mixed in with subplots of vigilante justice, official injustice, and everything else you need to fill 500 pages. I actually found myself in tears at one point, over Wallander’s alzheimer-suffering father, and my wife tells me I gaffawed a couple of times, though I don’t now remember what I could have found amusing in the pusruit of a serial killer who delighted in making the victims suffer. Makes me want to write that Japan police procedural I’ve long shelved as too ambitious to pull off. Maybe the time is right.

No. 7 of 12 books I intend to read and review in 2025.

I’m Patrick Sherriff, an Englishman who survived 13 years working for newspapers in the US, UK and Japan. Between teaching English lessons at my conversation school in Abiko, Japan, I write and illustrate textbooks for non-native speakers of English, release Hana Walker mystery novels, short stories, paint, and write essays and Our Man in Abiko, a monthly  newsletter   highlighting good writing in English, often about about Japan, art, crime fiction and teaching.