furyofvissarion (![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
furyofvissarion) wrote2011-01-09 04:30 pm
furyofvissarion) wrote2011-01-09 04:30 pm
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... & the first books of 2011!
Akata Witch - Nnedi Okorafor. There is always something very comforting about Okorafor's YA stuff (I haven't read Who Fears Death yet, alas). Even though there are v. real dangers in the books -- which I appreciate -- there's also a sense of delight that I love. This new book (which won't be out until April, neener neener) is no exception. Sunny was born in the US to Nigerian parents, but has recently moved to Nigeria. She's albino, & viewed as indelibly American, & now strange things are starting to happen to her. It turns out, of course, that she has special powers, as do her friends Orlu & Chichi, & oh yeah, they have to save the world.
I appreciated that Okorafor engages with tensions between African Americans & Africans (not just with Sunny herself, but with her friend Sasha, an African American boy sent to live in Africa to fix his bad behavior), as well as sexism. And things get genuinely creepy. I also like that none of her characters are remotely close to perfect; they get cranky & judgmental like anyone else. Also, the guidebook Sunny is given, as a crash course in managing her magical powers, contains a lot of problematic advice; I liked seeing Sunny engage with that & get critical of the assumptions the book makes while nevertheless trying to extract the useful bits on magic technique.
Kitty Goes to War - Carrie Vaughn. The latest in one of my favorite urban fantasy series, about the DJ werewolf named Kitty. The last book, Kitty's House of Horrors, was cracky delicious fun (a supernatural reality TV show, w/elimination-style challenges when suddenly, the supes start getting eliminated... PERMANENTLY, mwahahaha) & also amped up a relatively new (for the series) theme of overarching menace: in other words, more of a wide-angle view, not just on Kitty's friends but on threats to, well, the world.
This installment I felt a bit nervous about, because it deals with the army cultivating werewolf soldiers for use in Afghanistan, & previously I've felt uneasy about using ongoing conflicts as plot points. This book didn't rub me the wrong way, though, maybe partly b/c there wasn't a sense -- to me -- of tragedy porn. We get a sense of the trauma that the werewolf soldiers went through, but there aren't specific gender-based events that seem to exist purely for soldier angst. I've never been in the military, though, & know v. few people who have been, so take that with a grain of salt.
Anyway -- overall enjoyable & suspenseful, although the subplot with Cormac, newly released from prison, suddenly acting weird & different, & the reason revealed for that, felt a bit roughly handled. Nevertheless, I am excited to read future books.
You Gotta Have Wa - Robert Whiting. Completely fascinating book about the differences in baseball -- both the rules, & the culture surrounding it -- in the US & Japan. Whiting, a US American who has lived in Japan for years & years, has written other books about Japanese baseball that were apparently well received in the Japanese media, so I felt relatively optimistic about this book. I do think that his bias towards the US style of baseball, after all, does come through a bit, but this was more evenhanded than I feared.
The book was originally published in 1989 but has a 2009 introduction & afterword. This means, unfortunately, that some of the writing in the main body comes across as cringeworthily outdated: for example, lots of references to "Orientals" & even "Nipponese" (!).
Despite this, this was a fun & absorbing read. Whiting knows how to engage a reader, even though his writing is sometimes clunky & also the chapters read like they were all written separately & then bunged together without consistency checking--for example, introducing a player in a chapter in the latter half of the book without any recognition that we'd already heard about him a little in the first chapter, often while repeating the same descriptors or anecdote.
Anyway, on to content. One of the main rifts between Japanese and US style of baseball appears to be around practice. Japanese players practice. Every day. A lot. For hours before games, even if it's August & a zillion degrees with high humidity. US players believe more in resting, if need be, or taking it easy, before a game, & in general do not practice as much. This, Whiting says, can be traced back to cultural differences relating to excellence: the US has more of a mentality that certain people are talented at certain things, & if they practice they can hone these skills, but that there's a limit to how much improvement practice can bring. In Japan, effort is lauded much more, & practice seen as a way to perfect skills; pretty much anyone can improve if they only practice enough. The results of these differing philosophies? US ballplayers that are comparatively out of shape; Japanese pitchers who pitch until they ruin their arms in just a few years.
There's also a lot in Japan about the moral purity of sports in general & baseball in particular as a way to develop character; this comes through in the stress on innocence & youth around high school baseball, where teams (& coaches!) have strict behavioral codes & uniforms are almost always white to emphasize purity. I know that baseball in the US is thought of as a wholesome, all-American sort of sport, although now I'd like to read more about the way baseball is connected (or not!) to character there.
Tensions between Japanese & US players in Japan have generally been high, partly because the US players get paid a lot more, as well as receiving other perks. On the other hand, US players complain of discriminatory treatment: a larger "gaijin strike zone"; they say they don't receive the credit for good records that Japanese players performing similarly get; & when a US player comes close to beating a hitting record held by a Japanese player, opposing pitchers will almost always, uniformly, walk the player each & every time he's at bat, even if it means driving in runs.
The book is full of bizarre &/or humorous anecdotes, especially in the chapter about translators, who have the uncomfortable position of having to mediate between US & Japanese baseball personnel. In one instance, a US batter was pissed about brushback pitches he'd been subject to in a previous game, & approaches the catcher before the next game, translator in tow, to raise the issue:
At the risk of sounding ridiculous, reading this book gave me a lot of insight into all the baseball anime I've been inhaling over the past year or so, & should I continue to write fic featuring these series, I hope I will better be able to convey the cultural context. I was glad to read the 2009 afterword & intro, but even more I'd like to read the next chapter in the history of US & Japanese baseball intersecting, because I think a lot of things (like the lifelong job with one corporation) have changed in Japan, & thus will be reflected in, for example, team-coach relations & power balance. Whiting did write a book about Ichiro playing in the US that I would like to read, but really I want the next volume of this one too.
I appreciated that Okorafor engages with tensions between African Americans & Africans (not just with Sunny herself, but with her friend Sasha, an African American boy sent to live in Africa to fix his bad behavior), as well as sexism. And things get genuinely creepy. I also like that none of her characters are remotely close to perfect; they get cranky & judgmental like anyone else. Also, the guidebook Sunny is given, as a crash course in managing her magical powers, contains a lot of problematic advice; I liked seeing Sunny engage with that & get critical of the assumptions the book makes while nevertheless trying to extract the useful bits on magic technique.
Kitty Goes to War - Carrie Vaughn. The latest in one of my favorite urban fantasy series, about the DJ werewolf named Kitty. The last book, Kitty's House of Horrors, was cracky delicious fun (a supernatural reality TV show, w/elimination-style challenges when suddenly, the supes start getting eliminated... PERMANENTLY, mwahahaha) & also amped up a relatively new (for the series) theme of overarching menace: in other words, more of a wide-angle view, not just on Kitty's friends but on threats to, well, the world.
This installment I felt a bit nervous about, because it deals with the army cultivating werewolf soldiers for use in Afghanistan, & previously I've felt uneasy about using ongoing conflicts as plot points. This book didn't rub me the wrong way, though, maybe partly b/c there wasn't a sense -- to me -- of tragedy porn. We get a sense of the trauma that the werewolf soldiers went through, but there aren't specific gender-based events that seem to exist purely for soldier angst. I've never been in the military, though, & know v. few people who have been, so take that with a grain of salt.
Anyway -- overall enjoyable & suspenseful, although the subplot with Cormac, newly released from prison, suddenly acting weird & different, & the reason revealed for that, felt a bit roughly handled. Nevertheless, I am excited to read future books.
You Gotta Have Wa - Robert Whiting. Completely fascinating book about the differences in baseball -- both the rules, & the culture surrounding it -- in the US & Japan. Whiting, a US American who has lived in Japan for years & years, has written other books about Japanese baseball that were apparently well received in the Japanese media, so I felt relatively optimistic about this book. I do think that his bias towards the US style of baseball, after all, does come through a bit, but this was more evenhanded than I feared.
The book was originally published in 1989 but has a 2009 introduction & afterword. This means, unfortunately, that some of the writing in the main body comes across as cringeworthily outdated: for example, lots of references to "Orientals" & even "Nipponese" (!).
Despite this, this was a fun & absorbing read. Whiting knows how to engage a reader, even though his writing is sometimes clunky & also the chapters read like they were all written separately & then bunged together without consistency checking--for example, introducing a player in a chapter in the latter half of the book without any recognition that we'd already heard about him a little in the first chapter, often while repeating the same descriptors or anecdote.
Anyway, on to content. One of the main rifts between Japanese and US style of baseball appears to be around practice. Japanese players practice. Every day. A lot. For hours before games, even if it's August & a zillion degrees with high humidity. US players believe more in resting, if need be, or taking it easy, before a game, & in general do not practice as much. This, Whiting says, can be traced back to cultural differences relating to excellence: the US has more of a mentality that certain people are talented at certain things, & if they practice they can hone these skills, but that there's a limit to how much improvement practice can bring. In Japan, effort is lauded much more, & practice seen as a way to perfect skills; pretty much anyone can improve if they only practice enough. The results of these differing philosophies? US ballplayers that are comparatively out of shape; Japanese pitchers who pitch until they ruin their arms in just a few years.
There's also a lot in Japan about the moral purity of sports in general & baseball in particular as a way to develop character; this comes through in the stress on innocence & youth around high school baseball, where teams (& coaches!) have strict behavioral codes & uniforms are almost always white to emphasize purity. I know that baseball in the US is thought of as a wholesome, all-American sort of sport, although now I'd like to read more about the way baseball is connected (or not!) to character there.
Tensions between Japanese & US players in Japan have generally been high, partly because the US players get paid a lot more, as well as receiving other perks. On the other hand, US players complain of discriminatory treatment: a larger "gaijin strike zone"; they say they don't receive the credit for good records that Japanese players performing similarly get; & when a US player comes close to beating a hitting record held by a Japanese player, opposing pitchers will almost always, uniformly, walk the player each & every time he's at bat, even if it means driving in runs.
The book is full of bizarre &/or humorous anecdotes, especially in the chapter about translators, who have the uncomfortable position of having to mediate between US & Japanese baseball personnel. In one instance, a US batter was pissed about brushback pitches he'd been subject to in a previous game, & approaches the catcher before the next game, translator in tow, to raise the issue:
"Listen you no good son-of-a-bitch," said Solaita, who was built like a Brinks armored truck and had a temper to match, "if you have a pitcher throw at my head again, I'll fucking kill you."
Shimada did not bat an eyelash as he translated: "Mr. Solaita asks that you please not throw at his head anymore. It makes his wife and children worry."
The catcher flashed an appropriate look of concern. He bowed slightly, then assured them it was all an accident and promised that such a terrible thing would never happen again.
Solaita nodded. The two shook hands and the meeting ended.
The catcher went away feeling somewhat sympathetic toward the gaijin. Solaita went away feeling that he had defended his honor. And Shimada went away satisfied that he had singlehandedly averted a major fight on the ball field in that evening's game.
At the risk of sounding ridiculous, reading this book gave me a lot of insight into all the baseball anime I've been inhaling over the past year or so, & should I continue to write fic featuring these series, I hope I will better be able to convey the cultural context. I was glad to read the 2009 afterword & intro, but even more I'd like to read the next chapter in the history of US & Japanese baseball intersecting, because I think a lot of things (like the lifelong job with one corporation) have changed in Japan, & thus will be reflected in, for example, team-coach relations & power balance. Whiting did write a book about Ichiro playing in the US that I would like to read, but really I want the next volume of this one too.