j – Page 8 – Triple Take

J’s Take on Botchan

We usually decide on what books we’re going to do months in advance of when we actually read and review them. As evidenced here. So by the time it was Botchan‘s month, the only thing I really knew about it was that it was a classic Japanese novel and that a new translation had come out a few years ago.

What I ended up reading was not at all what I expected. I think I have, and perhaps many people have, a vision of Japanese ‘classics’ as full of poetry, nature.. just sort of perfect, neat, tidy, calming things. Like the embodiment of haiku, in novel form. Or the embodiment of ikebana, or the tea ceremony, or.. any number of other Japanese art and cultural forms.

And no, this was rather more in the line of a somewhat crazy anime. So, yea, there’s flower arranging and origami, but there’s also anime like Kodocha (Kodomo no Omocha), which I guess I had forgotten about! Or I didn’t expect it in something ‘classic’, which in this case means a hundred years old. Which, as far as Japanese history and even Japanese literature goes, is not really all that old. For someone used to reading science fiction and fantasy though, anything older than 50 years is nearly nonexistent.

Botchan is the story of a guy who happens into a job as a math teacher at a boys’ middle school. He’s not a very morally upright kind of guy. You wouldn’t want to be friends with him. But you’re perfectly happy to hear him tell his story. And at first I thought that he was an unreliable narrator when it came to what other people think and feel, being a guy who certainly seems to have very little empathy. So I was ready to think the best of all of the people he encountered, and to feel a bit smug that I understood them better than he did. And ready to feel a little sorry for them that they had to interact with this guy. Except, that, actually, no, all these other people aren’t exactly morally upstanding either.

It reminded me of Goodbye, Mr. Chips or To Serve Them All My Days in its focus on being a new teacher and having to navigate the political sphere of the school faculty. Yet I was also reminded of Bertie Wooster. The way the narrator talked to us, is I think the reason. As if we were reasonable people who think the same way they do about things, and that we would have the same opinion we do of the people around them.

I did quite like it and I think it’s a very good thing I read it, because now I’ll have a different view of Japanese ‘literature’.

I can’t end this review without talking about the translation a little bit. At first I questioned the translation. Very early on there’s mention of a Yamashiro-ya, a pawn broker. And I know that -ya is the suffix for a store. So I thought there was some confusion of the name of the store versus the name of the person/family. Looking at the original convinced me that the text did say Yamashiro-ya.. though I still wonder, given the narrator’s proclivity to nickname people, if that wouldn’t have been better translated as, something like, Mr. Pawnbroker and Pawnbroker’s property. Or even Pawnshop’s property.

And then there was a word here or there that didn’t sound quite right to me. ‘Sissy’? Wuss would’ve been better. But then, do you translate it so it sounds modern, or do you translate it so it sounds a hundred years old? A little ways in, I gave up thinking too much about the translation. (Apart from the appearance of ‘na moshi’.) I just got into the story and went with it. — Though I did find some odd typos that should’ve been caught by a computer: ‘and and’ and ‘suddden’.

The translation I read was by J. Cohn. I did not read the introduction. I think I’ll do that now.

Okay, well, the introduction said some of what I said above, actually. Apparently it’s not a ‘typical’ Japanese novel, for whatever typical might be. And it stands out even to the Japanese as being unusual, and appealing because of it. But then Cohn starts talking about Freud and I’m like.. whaaaaa…

I had to read and discuss Freud in at least one comparative literature class too, and just.. dude, Freud was not all that great. Was a downright idiot when it came to women, and gay people, and.. tons of things. And what does he really have to do with literature anyway? :P

I was not intending to end the review with annoyance at Freud and literature professors. You know what? Skip the introduction completely. Seriously. Usually a good policy to adopt anyhow.

Let me gaze at the happy grasshopper on the geta on the cover of this book. It was a good choice to represent the book. Though until you’ve read it, it’s completely incomprehensible when it comes to guessing what’s inside.

Oh! Now I feel like I should end with a haiku…

happy grasshopper
sits on a wooden geta
for the camera

(now the grasshopper
wants me to tell minna-san
that it’s a locust)

Doubletake: J on The Sky is Not the Limit

All I really knew about Neil deGrasse Tyson going into this book is from his appearances on The Daily Show, his hosting of NOVA ScienceNOW (seriously, what is up with that capitalization?), and perhaps short appearances in documentaries about science. So I guess I knew him as an interesting, fun guy who is big on all that science stuff.

The Sky is Not the Limit is pretty much a memoir. He talks about his love of astrophysics and how it grew from childhood onward.

At first this book read like a love letter to the Hayden Planetarium! Which before reading this book, I could not have accurately placed in New York City. It’s the Hayden Planetarium that inspired him to become an astrophysicist, and the Hayden Planetarium that really educated and pushed him that way (more so than school). And eventually the Hayden Planetarium that he became director of.

But eventually he does talk about other things. You wouldn’t think a black kid in the city would be particularly privileged, but he was very lucky. The Hayden Planetarium led him to a connection to this guy who was in um.. some sort of Explorer’s Club. I forget the name of it. And that led to opportunities to take trips and things. While still only 14, he was on an eclipse cruise with Isaac Asimov! Of course it helped that he decided on a career path early and avidly pursued it.

His story is interesting, although the book certainly has its less than stellar (wait for it…) moments.

Typographically: He misspelled Stephen Hawking’s first name once, though he got it right subsequently. Also there were a number of sentences that just.. made me stop and reread them. They weren’t constructed quite.. right. Or quite clearly. I guess it’s not necessarily something a copyeditor would notice, but it would’ve been nice if someone did.

Thematically: The last two chapters are about the end of the world and about god and science. They didn’t seem to quite belong in this book. Or, if they were going to be there, they should not have been the concluding chapters. I would’ve preferred a final chapter talking about his daily life now (what do astrophysicists do all day?), the Hayden Planetarium, or science education in the US.

Pictures: In the copy I read, there were pictures. Although we had our hands on another edition and that one did not. Oversight! Though I hate that pictures are usually in the middle of a book. It’s probably for pure physical publishing reasons, but.. it means that you’re already chapters away from a person’s childhood before you see a picture of them as a kid. And then if you look at all of the pictures when you come to them, you’re spoiled for the rest of the book! I’d prefer the pictures either spread out or entirely at the back.

When I started reading this book, I could strongly hear his voice narrating it for me. But soon enough that dropped away and it was just my usual inner reading voice. (Which sounds like me, but much cooler.)

He said a couple of things in this book that I disagree with. First, he seems to go on this rant against good students. Straight-A students will be Straight-A students regardless of their teacher. People with high IQs aren’t successful. They aren’t out saving the world. And though I can understand if he’s trying to tell kids who don’t get high marks that that doesn’t mean they can’t be successful after high school and do great, amazing, awesome things.. it felt kind of insulting to me. And could read as an excuse to slack off in school and go play with your telescope. Which will not get you into a good school with a scholarship!

Though I do agree that the terms ‘gifted and talented’ are problematic. I’ve read Talent is Overrated. I know that hard work and just sitting down and doing it will take you further than anything you inherited genetically.

It was a bit amusing to hear him rant about the starscape in the movie “Titanic”. Apparently it was wrong. And it was our scientific illiteracy as a nation that made this okay. He said more critics should be alert to these things. I think maybe he hasn’t been reading the geeky reviews I generally do. Believe me, if people notice a problem, they’ll say so! See Exhibit J and Exhibit K. (Those were even about astronomy!)

He devotes a chapter called “Dark Matters” to discussing a bit of what it’s like to be a black man and an astrophysicist. From the cops who pull him over more often than if he were white to the person at a wedding who assumed he knew more than Tyson did about how popcorn falls out of plane. (How cool is that, by the way? If I get married, prepare to see popcorn dropped from a plane!!) He also talks about the pressure he felt to succeed in athletics and how he got told at one point that he shouldn’t be studying something so frivolous as astrophysics. And how he eventually got past that idea to the idea that being seen on television and other places as a scientist and (later) television personality who just happens to be black was pretty darned important itself.

Taken all together, this book is an interesting look into how Neil deGrasse Tyson views the world. His passion for science in general and astronomy in particular really shines through. Especially when he’s trying to convince us that mathematical equations are easy, interesting, and fun! And you know what? He kind of makes me regret not growing up in a big city.

I’m thinking this book might be a good gateway into reading his more astronomy topic-specific books. Especially for people, including kids, who might be more inclined to like a biography than a science book.

Now go add NOVA ScienceNOW to your Tivo season passes.

Jâ€™s Take on Zita the Spacegirl

I think I first saw an ad for this in Shelf Awareness, a book industry newsletter. The artwork is really eye-catching and appealing, especially combined with the title. How can you not be drawn to something called Zita the Spacegirl?

There aren’t enough spacegirls, if you ask me.

Since the first thing I did when I went to read it was stare at the cover a little while, I’ll start with that. Zita appeals to me because she looks like a kid. It could easily be a boy in that outfit, except that it has a little skirt-like flare to it that most boys probably wouldn’t wear. She doesn’t look older or more feminine than a girl that age should look. Not that I’m entirely sure of her age, but I’m guessing somewhere between 7 and 10.

The art appealed to me throughout. I think it’s the combination of bright colors (the whole book is in color, score!) and fun characters yet within a realistic sort of style. You know how in some manga the character reactions are unrealistic? People facevaulting onto the floor, sweatdropping left and right, and going SD for no reason. Unless and until you’re used to that, it’s kind of annoying and distracting. There’s none of that in here. All of Zita’s expressions convey her emotions, very well I might add, and not in an over-the-top way.

Oh! So the basic story is that Zita and her friend come across a crater left by a ‘meteoroid’, which misnaming I can forgive because it’s in the mouths of the characters and they’re kids. They discover a mysterious red button in there. And naturally Zita pushes it! Her friend, Joseph, disappears through a portal that opens up.

And the next bit is like the best bit of the book, I think. We get several pages of no dialogue. The author/artist, Ben Hatke, also resists the urge for Zita to have an internal (or external) monologue. We have no idea what she’s thinking. Except that we totally do. Just by looking at the panels. That, ladies and gentlemen, is how you draw/write a graphic novel.

As you might guess, she goes to rescue Joseph. And she finds herself in this weird place, probably another planet, surrounded by weird creatures, probably aliens. Only there’s a meteor coming. Utoh. So she needs to find Joseph and get home, before the whole planet is destroyed.

Along the way she meets people/creatures/robots and makes friends. Some of them are quite unlikely friends, especially at first. A giant mouse, maybe. A killer robot? Ummm..

For a bonus, one of the characters is reminiscent of, or perhaps meant to be, the Pied Piper of Hamelin. Who I’m rather drawn to.

To not give away the whole story, I’ll go back to talking about what we can see, rather than what we read. There are a lot of different creatures, so that it’s fascinating to look at all of them. Some of them look familiar. Some in a vague way, where you’re not quite sure if you’ve seen them somewhere before or not. Others that you could say ‘That’s Star Wars’ or ‘That’s Fraggle Rock’. But still, never exactly the same as from there. Just that they seem to have been used as inspiration, and that they’re there as inside jokes.

If it still needs to be said, I quite liked Zita the Spacegirl. Even her outfit with the sashlike Z on it. Maybe I’m just a sucker for Zs (for the same reason I like the names Diego and Alejandro). The story rings true as a girl’s story. By that I mean that she gathers friends along the way to help her, rather than bullying through it alone.

You know, I have not a single negative thing to say about this book. Even the 11$ pricetag seems reasonable for a full color graphic novel of this size. I’d be quite happy to recommend this to a kid, of any gender, and I look forward to reading and viewing more adventures of Zita the Spacegirl.

I feel like I should close this with a tagline. But I don’t know that Zita has a tagline. There, there’s my negative thing. She needs a tagline.

J’s Take on The Eyre Affair

I’m not quite sure I knew what I was getting into when we decided to read The Eyre Affair by Jasper Fforde. I’m not quite sure I knew what I was getting into when I started to read it. Or when I was in the middle of reading it. Or now that I’ve finished.

What the heck is this thing?!

Our library has labelled it Mystery. Which most likely means Fforde is typically a mystery writer. Because I can’t say there’s much of a mystery involved in this book, though there is a crime. I guess. Yet I can’t call it an alternate history either. Or science fiction. I would call it fantasy if I had to, but a fantasy reader would typically be disappointed by it. Then again, I can only assume a mystery reader would be completely confused!!

Then again again, I was completely confused!!

Just when you think you’ve got the world and the story figured out, it’d take a 90 or 180 degree turn. And not necessarily in a horizontal direction either. And to label it bizarre might make you think it was bizarre in a cool and interesting fashion. It’s not.

It’s just not.

So the premise? Okay, it’s 1985 for starters. Which normally wouldn’t be a problem for me, but it was just one more thing I had to keep reminding myself of. And it’s the UK. Erm, I think. Well, I guess not, really, since Wales is its own country. But, anyway, something resembling the UK. And it’s an alternate history, in that people are really obsessed with literature. By which is meant classic British literature for the most part, I think. Shakespeare is really big. And there are a couple of really cool points around this part of the premise. Shakespeare animatronic coin-op machines. The original manuscript of Jane Eyre being on display and a page turned every couple of days, so regulars can read it… verrry slowly. I liked that idea. It may even be true. And then there was a Rocky Horror Picture Show version of.. was it Richard III? Very big on audience participation.

Frankenfurter — The real author of Shakespeare's plays...

Shakespeare — ... is, of course, Tim Curry!

The main character is a SpecOps operative, LiteraTec, basically a book cop. And since the Dickens Chuzzlewit manuscript is stolen, well, it’s what she does, right? Or something.

So then to add to this premise, there’s a ChronoCorps, which does time travelly-fixy-uppy stuff. The main character’s Dad is one of those guys. And she ends up dabbling in it herself, of course. He tends to retroactively fit things into the time stream. So that bananas were genetically created and then planted back in the past. And things like that.

Do I need to even mention the blimps and the dodos? Probably not. Steampunk and alternative history readers won’t be at all phased by those. And, really, minor point. And nothing to do with anything.

11 days of The Doctor: Day 9 — Great Source of Potassium

Okay, so have you got your mind wrapped around all that yet? Because there’s also vampires and werewolves for no good reason.

And the bad guy is like immortal or a wizard or something I don’t even.

AND THEN! The main char’s uncle is a crackpot mad scientist, but the lovable sort, you know, and he invents something to let you go into books and change the story. And if you change the story on the original manuscript OHNOES!

If this all sounds awesome to you, more power to you, go ahead and read it. If you’re just confused, then, believe me, reading it won’t make you less confused.

Aside from all of that, the story was not, I believe, very well-written. I was halfway through the book and I felt like we were still at the setting-up-the-story phase. Sometimes there’s be odd bits of text that.. well, I thought the main char was also narrating part of it, but how could she know what was going on? She sort of guessed things she wasn’t there for. And then when it came to the big climax, I was confused. Granted my mind was also wandering because I was bored.

And then I can also quibble that in one chapter there were two misuses of the word ‘onto’. And then later on there was the reverse problem with ‘near by’.

As for the characters themselves, I felt the main character was pretty detached from her emotions. Colleagues are killed and she doesn’t seem to really feel anything. She has conversations with a man she claims to love, but they’re all very analytical conversations. She’s even pretty detached and third person narraty when she’s giving a report to her superiors about something that went down. I mean, narraty in a pseudo-literary sort of way, not a detailed-police-report kind of way.

For the whole Jane Eyre thing, I have not read Jane Eyre. Yet when they discuss the ending of it and Eyre running off to India, I did kind of guess that was a false ending. This was pretty much confirmed for me by the way that the characters in the book (Jane Eyre) are forced to do and say things that you really don’t think they would have given the narrative of this book. Kind of like reading a parallel novel where, now that we know a lot more about the secondary character of the first book who is now the main character of the second book, you can’t quite believe that character would do and say the things s/he did, but the author’s kind of stuck with the scene the way it was written the first time.

Apparently there are more books about this main character, whose name is Thursday Next, which totally reminds me..

The names in here are stupid! And none more stupid than Jack Schitt.

So there are more books in this series, but I can only imagine what they’re about. Will Next be going into another book? Who knows? Will she be messing with the past? Travelling to the future? Fighting more vampires? Eating brains because she’s been turned into a zombie? Going to Mars on a recumbent bicycle? There is just no telling. None at all.

Before I close, I probably shouldn’t neglect the Crimean War. Which is still going on. But I know nothing about the real Crimean War. Except there was one. So. Yea.

In summation, not the worst thing I’ve ever read, but possibly the most uneven hodgepodge thing I’ve ever read. And I will not be reading another thing about Thursday Next. And probably not another Jasper Fforde either.

J’s Take on The Man Who Loved Books Too Much

Allison Hoover Bartlett introduces us to a bookseller on the trail of an unusual book thief, and to the book thief himself. Along the way, she and us her readers learn more about the rare book trade. Though I still find the desire to own a bunch of old books incomprehensible on a gut level.

I can understand it from a bookseller’s point of view. Heck, reading this book makes me want to learn more about rare books so I know how to spot them at library booksales! I’ve been watching a lot of Auction Kings, Pawn Stars, and American Pickers, so I can definitely see the thrill of the hunt. Discovering this expensive little gem in the midst of a bunch of worthless dusty books. That’d be cool. And then, of course, attempting to sell it at a profit. Not that many people get rich in the business..

It’s the collector’s and by extension the thief’s point of view that I can’t quite understand. I want books so I can read them. I want old books because they’re out of print and it’s the only way I can read them. I do like owning books that I like, so I know I have them and can reread them when I want. But I don’t need to own every book I’ve read, or even every book I want to read.

I own books that have been signed, but when it comes to standing in line for autographs, I sometimes wonder why I’m doing it. To have a chat with the author, or to support the author, sure. To then have a signed book I’m reluctant to read and unwilling to sell. Well.. what to do with it?

So.. why own a book that’s signed, or was owned by someone famous, or is just old. What’s so special about a first edition compared to a third or fourth? Especially if there’s no change in the text. Why?

The thief in this book wants to own an impressive library. Well, I have visions of having a large library with one of those rolling ladders. But I don’t need to fill it with books to impress people. I don’t need them to be old books, rare books, expensive books. I want it filled with cool books! Awesome books!

Will my view of this change as I get older? As I have more money to spend? As ebooks take over and print books become extinct? I dunno. Maybe, like the author of this book, I should try buying a rare book and seeing how I feel at buying it and owning it.

I dunno.

Speaking of ebooks, I have one quibble with the author. You are not allowed to disparage ebooks when you use the word ‘ebook’ to mean ‘ereader’. I would’ve even accepted ‘device’.

“Andy and his wife had each bought an e-book shortly before moving to Guadalajara. They were glad they had, since it’s nearly impossible to find books in English there, and the mail system is unreliable.”

Well, I hope they’re slow readers, that’s all! One book each to last them their whole time in Guadalajara.

Though she does then go on to say she thinks the physical books we do keep will have more meaning. And reminisces about books from her childhood and her kids’ books and whatnot. And I don’t know that I have a whole lot of books I have an emotional attachment to, as the physical object. So.. I dunno.

Reading the book made it obvious to me that there is more than one type of booklover. In fact, there may be 2 distinct types. (Or perhaps it’s a spectrum.) The ones who like books primarily for their content. And the ones who like books as objects, of which content is only a part.

Not that I don’t think most manga is pretty. Not that I don’t love the look and feel of the Doctor Who and Torchwood books (over and above the lackluster content). But few publishers are making books I love in that sort of way.

One other thing bugged me. Along about 2/3rds of the way in, she starts foreshadowing how she got all caught up in the thief and faced a moral, ethical, legal dilemma as he revealed more and more about this thieving to her. And the foreshadowing lends you to think that she’ll go to jail, or she’ll testify against him, or he’ll commit suicide, or.. something. I hope it’s not a spoiler to say that all that foreshadowing didn’t appear to lead up to anything to me! Maybe it was too subtle for me.

It was rather cool though to see how a book we read here on Triple Take had a great influence on the thief. The book is Booked to Die by John Dunning. This book would’ve reminded me of that book even if it hadn’t been mentioned.

This review is much more about me than about the book, but I’m okay with that! As I said, the book was interesting, and if you’re interested in learning more about the rare book trade or the mind of a thief, definitely you should read it. You can skip Booked to Die though. We all agreed it was mediocre at best.