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Some things I read last year
Jan. 2nd, 2024 07:27 pmIn Japanese, I finished:
plus a decent amount of manga, and half of another older-children's book. Onward and upward!
In English, I read books in translation from Romanian, Tibetan, Yiddish, and Japanese.
The most disappointing book I read last year (though not my least favorite) was the Kyoshi duology. I thought the first one was a pretty decent YA novel, albeit with some writing issues - I remember lots of head-hopping in particular, and the bending descriptions in the battle scenes were sometimes hard for me to follow - and, okay, this is petty but the description of how her makeup worked showed a complete lack of research into traditional Japanese theater makeup, and that really annoyed me. (Maybe it works for traditional Chinese theater makeup, a topic on which I haven't been able to find much in English, but I would guess they probably didn't have everlasting greasepaint, either.) Overall, I liked that that I could see how Kyoshi got from there to her depiction in the show and that she had a queer romance. I also thought the idea of the Avatar being chosen wrong was an amazing premise, though for a good chunk of the book I wondered if they'd wasted it until Yun came back at the end in a chilling scene.
The second one, while it had reduced head-hopping, felt like there was too much of Kyoshi flailing about how she's a bad Avatar while things happen, which was a disappointing turn. One thing I noticed in the fight scenes that I think contributed was a kind of... 'kabuki rule' happening, where it seemed like Kyoshi was just standing around while her opponent did things and didn't react until the author was done describing the cool thing that her opponent was doing. The romance took a back seat and didn't get a lot of development outside of a boring 'oh no are we breaking up? :'(' bit. I also didn't really buy Yun's sudden murder rampage that had absolutely no spirit interference, surely not, by the way we were totally teaching him to kill people and never mentioned it so that totally helps explain it. There were still some interesting aspects to his writing, and the scene where paintings start flowing down the walls because he's bending the pigments in them was the best in the book and stunning imagery, but I felt like it wasn't the most interesting direction they could have taken his character. Not sure if I want to check out the Yangchen books now unless I see a strong rec for them.
My favorite book I read in English was Under Alien Skies: A Sightseer's Guide to the Universe by Phil Plait, which is kind of like one of those nonfiction books where the author can't stop telling you about the beautiful locations they visited for their research, but it's places around the solar system and universe. The formatting of the ebook bugged me a little, but the content was lovely and interesting, and great imagination fuel for thinking of what someone on an alien world might see. If I had let myself, I could have zipped through it in one go. I also very much enjoyed Sarashina Diary, the edited-for-others diary of a woman in Heian Japan who loves fiction while her older self keeps admonishing herself for enjoying something considered frivolous instead of taking a hint and dedicating herself to Buddhism. The beginning also has some beautiful travel observations.
In Japanese, my favorite read was probably「女の子がいる場所は」, a oneshot manga by Yamaji Ebine. It's a series of vignettes about five girls from various countries running into gender roles and limitations, often about education, and illustrates feminist ideas within a great storytelling framework. The art style is very black and white in a way that serves the story. The one I thought had the most striking art was the one of a girl who is annoyed when her elderly aunt's friend stays with them and keeps saying that things like books and school are for boys, until she learns that the older woman is completely illiterate, which led to her being in a terrible accident because she couldn't read a sign saying that the road she was taking was unsafe. The girl imagines how the world could be confusing and even scary for someone who can't read, and how the joy of reading a book was stolen from her, ending with a shot of the woman hanging up white cloths to dry as books fly around her, as blank and unreadable for her as the cloths.
My reading-related resolution is to try to reduce my tsundoku. So in English, no buying books and minimize borrowings from the library this year, and in Japanese, buying at most one volume for each volume I've already read (I will try to keep it to less than that). I also have a few already-read physical manga volumes in Japanese that I don't plan to keep but don't really know what to do with... I've heard Book-Off gives you almost nothing, and I don't live incredibly close to any of their US stores anyway. Might offer them online somewhere for free and see if anyone wants them. (I mean, if anyone reading this might want some free Japanese reading material, I can let you know what I have!)
- 2 short stories
- 2 books (read half of one of them the year before, though)
- 1 short story collection
- 2 children's books
plus a decent amount of manga, and half of another older-children's book. Onward and upward!
In English, I read books in translation from Romanian, Tibetan, Yiddish, and Japanese.
The most disappointing book I read last year (though not my least favorite) was the Kyoshi duology. I thought the first one was a pretty decent YA novel, albeit with some writing issues - I remember lots of head-hopping in particular, and the bending descriptions in the battle scenes were sometimes hard for me to follow - and, okay, this is petty but the description of how her makeup worked showed a complete lack of research into traditional Japanese theater makeup, and that really annoyed me. (Maybe it works for traditional Chinese theater makeup, a topic on which I haven't been able to find much in English, but I would guess they probably didn't have everlasting greasepaint, either.) Overall, I liked that that I could see how Kyoshi got from there to her depiction in the show and that she had a queer romance. I also thought the idea of the Avatar being chosen wrong was an amazing premise, though for a good chunk of the book I wondered if they'd wasted it until Yun came back at the end in a chilling scene.
The second one, while it had reduced head-hopping, felt like there was too much of Kyoshi flailing about how she's a bad Avatar while things happen, which was a disappointing turn. One thing I noticed in the fight scenes that I think contributed was a kind of... 'kabuki rule' happening, where it seemed like Kyoshi was just standing around while her opponent did things and didn't react until the author was done describing the cool thing that her opponent was doing. The romance took a back seat and didn't get a lot of development outside of a boring 'oh no are we breaking up? :'(' bit. I also didn't really buy Yun's sudden murder rampage that had absolutely no spirit interference, surely not, by the way we were totally teaching him to kill people and never mentioned it so that totally helps explain it. There were still some interesting aspects to his writing, and the scene where paintings start flowing down the walls because he's bending the pigments in them was the best in the book and stunning imagery, but I felt like it wasn't the most interesting direction they could have taken his character. Not sure if I want to check out the Yangchen books now unless I see a strong rec for them.
My favorite book I read in English was Under Alien Skies: A Sightseer's Guide to the Universe by Phil Plait, which is kind of like one of those nonfiction books where the author can't stop telling you about the beautiful locations they visited for their research, but it's places around the solar system and universe. The formatting of the ebook bugged me a little, but the content was lovely and interesting, and great imagination fuel for thinking of what someone on an alien world might see. If I had let myself, I could have zipped through it in one go. I also very much enjoyed Sarashina Diary, the edited-for-others diary of a woman in Heian Japan who loves fiction while her older self keeps admonishing herself for enjoying something considered frivolous instead of taking a hint and dedicating herself to Buddhism. The beginning also has some beautiful travel observations.
In Japanese, my favorite read was probably「女の子がいる場所は」, a oneshot manga by Yamaji Ebine. It's a series of vignettes about five girls from various countries running into gender roles and limitations, often about education, and illustrates feminist ideas within a great storytelling framework. The art style is very black and white in a way that serves the story. The one I thought had the most striking art was the one of a girl who is annoyed when her elderly aunt's friend stays with them and keeps saying that things like books and school are for boys, until she learns that the older woman is completely illiterate, which led to her being in a terrible accident because she couldn't read a sign saying that the road she was taking was unsafe. The girl imagines how the world could be confusing and even scary for someone who can't read, and how the joy of reading a book was stolen from her, ending with a shot of the woman hanging up white cloths to dry as books fly around her, as blank and unreadable for her as the cloths.
My reading-related resolution is to try to reduce my tsundoku. So in English, no buying books and minimize borrowings from the library this year, and in Japanese, buying at most one volume for each volume I've already read (I will try to keep it to less than that). I also have a few already-read physical manga volumes in Japanese that I don't plan to keep but don't really know what to do with... I've heard Book-Off gives you almost nothing, and I don't live incredibly close to any of their US stores anyway. Might offer them online somewhere for free and see if anyone wants them. (I mean, if anyone reading this might want some free Japanese reading material, I can let you know what I have!)
